Navigating The Web Navigators

by Daniel P. Dern

For corporate network users, there are already more than enough reasons to get a Web browser, and there are plenty of choices. As the reasons become more compelling, the browsers become more sophisticated and the beckoning call is difficult to resist. There's more than hype to this hyperworld.

The WorldWide Web has become the de facto drive-in window for on-line business.

There's a rich, growing portfolio of valuable, easy-to-use business information sources and services. Companies are creating multimedia hypertext databases and applications, even using products such as QuadRalay's WebWorks to let users meld desktop and database information with external Internet information.

A "Web browser" is a periscope into cyberspace. Some support Windows features like Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and scripting. Standard browser features like "hotlists" and "bookmarks" let you save names and locations of sites and documents for future reference; on the Web, third-party index and search tools like YAHOO, Lycos and WebCrawler are helping users locate resources in the unmapped on-line wilds.

Every Good Web Browser Deserves Features

Say good-bye to those multiminute waits until the entire page, graphics and all, has been downloaded before you see anything.

Pioneered by Netscape and quickly being implemented by the rest, today's browser starts showing you text as soon as it's got some, and then gets to work on embedded graphics and other nontext. This also lets you often decide within seconds if a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) isn't a winner. Another approach , used by NaviSoft, is multiple windows, so you can read one while the next one is retrieving.

With map-based URLs you can insert hypermedia pointers within portions of a map, such as a store-by-store city grid, state and countrywide listings of tourist information, colleges and businesses. We're also starting to see one-way authentication, more data type support, forms support and extensions to HTML/ SGML standards.

What's Coming!

1995 is already a busy year for Web-related products and services. BBN, Digital Equipment, Lloyd and Associates, Sun and others offer "Internet servers to go"--hardware preloaded with server software so all you do is pour in data, and add electricity and connectivity.

The "buy/sell" infrastructure for the Web is slowly emerging. Companies like CyberCash, DigiCash, First Virtual and OpenMarket each have solutions for pieces of the problem; big players like MasterCard, MCI and Microsoft are making deals in hopes of pieces of our action.

Don't expect "home shopping" that requires high bandwidth. This isn't a Web problem, it's a fact of life; until ISDN or cable/telco convergence arrives, we're barely at the "good enough for GIF" stage today.

Meanwhile, Web sites striving to "own the customer" include accounts smart enough to remember your profile and structure new information accordingly, and members-only discussion forums.

Web Events Likely in '95:

• AOL abroad--AOL, CompuServe, DELPHI and GEnie join Prodigy in adding Web access, helping further bring the net's free-for-access sites to their knees, arousing the ire of demograph-needy by caching and mirroring popular pages internally, and the ire of the info-owners by doing it badly.

• URL-sensitive browsers for e-mail, UseNet and so on for Windows users (a la NetWatcher for the Mac).

Things on Their Way:

• A global searchable Web index.

• Topical indexes.

• "Webzines" equivalent of TV Guide. Current recommendations include WEBster (pa y to receive, for information, e-mail sos@webster.tgc.com), the "What's New," "What's Popular" and "What's Cool" lists at YAHOO (http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo), Gleason Sackman's Net-Happenings (comp.internet.net-happenings), the comp.infosystems.www.* Newsgroups, and CMP's Publications' NetGuide).

• More security extensions, including authentication of site and object, user login/ID, the inevitable "Internet Express" credit cards and "Internet Cash Cards."

• "Web channel" packages of topical, regular information. It's only a matter of time before people start sending click-ready HotLists, for fun or money.

• Proprietary vendor-specific extensions: security, purchasing, formatting and so on.

• SLIPless Browsers. As SlipKNOT, Pipeline, The Internet Adapter and I-term have shown, a formal SLIP/PPP connection isn't necessary to browse and interact with the Web's multimedia contents directly. This is good news for people unwilling or unable to get SLIP service affordably.

Daniel P. Dern can be reached at ddern@world.std.com.