Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog

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Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog
Author Ed Krol
LanguageEnglish
GenreComputer Science
Publisher O'Reilly
Publication date
September 1992
Publication placeUnited States

The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, by Ed Krol, was published in September 1992 by O'Reilly. The Los Angeles Times notes that the Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog was the "first popular book about the medium" and "was later selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the 20th century." [1] [2] The title and format were inspired by Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog . [3]

Contents

Contents

The World Wide Web

In the May 1993 edition, the World Wide Web was described in terms of Gopher protocol:

In Chapter 14, Hypertext Spanning the Internet:WWW, we'll discuss ...The World Wide Web. On the surface, the Web looks like a variation on GOPHER (p. 189).

In addition, Krol notes:

The World Wide Web or WWW, is the newest information service to arrive on the Internet. The Web is based on a technology called hypertext....Like GOPHER and WAIS, the Web is very much under development, perhaps even more so. So don't be surprised if it doesn't occasionally work the way you'd like. It's certainly worth playing with (p. 227).

The Web v. Gopher

Krol compares the Web and Gopher, stating:

The Web and Gopher: You may be asking yourself what is so great about this. After all, what we've done so far isn't all that different from what you can do with Gopher. The Web appears to have a subject-oriented flavor, which is an advantage, but at first glance, it doesn't seem fundamentally different. That's not really true though. While there are a lot of similarities, the Web and Gopher differ in several ways. First, the Web is based on hypertext documents, and is structured by links between pages of hypertext. (231).

He further notes:

The Gopher just isn't as flexible. Its presentation is based on individual resources and servers...the web eliminates the barrier between your data and "public data" ... Ten years ago, a few dozen boxes full of index cards was de rigueur for anyone writing a dissertation or an academic book. With the Web, a few hypertext documents make that all obsolete (232).

Browsers

While Krol notes that a number of web browser options exist, he highlights ViolaWWW stating that, "The one called Viola or 'ViolaWWW' is probably the most feature rich" (p. 227).

Hypertext editors

At the time of publication, HTML editors or "hypertext editors" were rare. Krol states:

Hypertext Editors: At this time, hypertext editors, which are needed to take full advantage of the Web, are scarce. The WorldWideWeb browser for the NeXT workstation incorporates a hypertext editor; the ViolaWWW browser will eventually add a hypertext editor. For the moment, if you don't have a NeXT, you're out of luck. If you poke around in the online help long enough, you'll find a description of HTML, the markup language. If you're really bold, you can create hypertext 'by hand.' But that's beyond the scope of this book. We expect that use of the Web will really explode once hypertext editors are available. For the moment, though, its hobbled by the lack of editors (p. 241).

Printing history

From inside cover of the November 1994 edition, supplemented with that of the December 1992 edition:

As the Internet and PC operating systems evolved, the book was updated and re-released as two newer editions:


Related Research Articles

The Gopher protocol is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but ultimately fell into disfavor, yielding to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTML</span> HyperText Markup Language

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypertext</span> Text with references (links) to other text that the reader can immediately access

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynx (web browser)</span> Text-based, cross-platform web browser

Lynx is a customizable text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals. As of 2024, it is the oldest web browser still being maintained, having started in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Wide Web</span> Linked hypertext system on the Internet

The World Wide Web is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists. It allows documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NeXTSTEP</span> Operating system from NeXT Computer

NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprietary workstation computers such as the NeXTcube. It was later ported to several other computer architectures.

Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" (Z39.50:1988) to search index databases on remote computers. It was developed in 1990 as a project of Thinking Machines, Apple Computer, Dow Jones, and KPMG Peat Marwick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NCSA Mosaic</span> Early web browser (1993–1997)

NCSA Mosaic was among the first widely available web browsers, instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. Mosaic was the first browser to display images inline with text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperlink</span> Method of referencing visual computer data

In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided to by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is known as anchor text. A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system, and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink. A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WorldWideWeb</span> First web browser, later renamed Nexus

WorldWideWeb is the first web browser and web page editor. It was discontinued in 1994. It was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ViolaWWW</span> Popular web browser in the early 1990s

ViolaWWW is a discontinued web browser, the first to support scripting and stylesheets for the World Wide Web (WWW). It was first released in 1991/1992 for Unix and acted as the recommended browser at CERN, where the WWW was invented, but eventually lost its position as most frequently used browser to Mosaic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Line Mode Browser</span> Command-line web browser

The Line Mode Browser is the second web browser ever created. The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable to several different operating systems. Operated from a simple command-line interface, it could be widely used on many computers and computer terminals throughout the Internet. The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an example and test application for the libwww library.

The Global Network Navigator (GNN) was the first commercial web publication and the first web site to offer clickable advertisements. GNN was launched in May 1993, as a project of the technical publishing company O'Reilly Media, then known as O'Reilly & Associates. In June 1995, GNN was sold to AOL, which continued its editorial functions while converting it to a dial-up Internet Service Provider. AOL closed GNN in December 1996, moving all GNN subscribers to the AOL dial-up service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libwww</span>

Libwww is an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for web browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), released libwww in late 1992, comprising reusable code from the first browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the World Wide Web</span> Information system running in the Internet and its history

The World Wide Web is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Krol</span> American network engineer (born 1951)

Ed Krol is the former network manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the former assistant director of Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is also the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet and The Whole Internet .

IBox was one of the first commercially available Internet connection software packages available for sale to the public. O'Reilly & Associates created and produced the package, in collaboration with Spry, Inc. Spry, Inc. also started up a commercial Internet service provider (ISP) called InterServ.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet, by Ed Krol, was published in 1987 through funding by the National Science Foundation. It was the first popular user's guide to the history and use of the Internet. The title was a reference to the popular The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of hypertext</span>

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Early conceptions of hypertext defined it as text that could be connected by a linking system to a range of other documents that were stored outside that text. In 1934 Belgian bibliographer, Paul Otlet, developed a blueprint for links that telescoped out from hypertext electrically to allow readers to access documents, books, photographs, and so on, stored anywhere in the world.

References

  1. Tech guru challenges next generation to get serious Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2008
  2. Books of the Century New York Public Library
  3. The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog O'Reilly radar, October 28, 2006