The World Wide Web
One of the fastest growing segments of the Internet is the World Wide Web or WWW for short. Currently, the WWW allows individuals, businesses, organizations, educational institutions, and whoever to create a textual and graphical, somewhat multimedia, presentation that anyone with an Internet connection and Web browser software can access. Of course, with the currently available transfer speeds, it is not yet a true multimedia system. Rather, it is an infant in its crawling stage. However, with higher transfer speeds (ISDN and cable access) and new file compression schemes, it will soon begin to pull itself up and start cruising along the couch. Hopefully, by the end of this millennium, it will be walking tall and beginning to run.
Getting Connected
There are essentially two ways to connect to the Internet. One is a direct connection; the other is an indirect connection. The former requires you to purchase all the equipment necessary to connect with a communications company that offers Internet services. This can cost thousands of dollars up front and is therefore mostly limited to businesses and institutions. The latter only requires purchasing a modem and connect time with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who themselves have a direct connection into the Internet. This method is relatively inexpensive if you already own a computer.
To give you an idea of the cost, my name-brand 28.8 Kbps fax modem cost about $200 several months ago. Some off-brands with the same speed are now available for about $100. My local ISP has two basic levels of service available. The first level is $9.95 per month and allows 10 hours of connect time. For each hour above 10, I pay $0.95 per hour. This service also includes 10 MB of hard drive space for storing files or creating a personal home page. Space above 10 MB costs $1.00 per MB per month. The second level of service is $24.95 per month. It provides a "common sense" unlimited access to the Internet as well as unlimited disk space within reason. I have heard that in some areas, major educational institutions offer unlimited access to the Internet for about $15. If you live in such an area, check it out. Just be aware that there are many different services available on the Internet and some ISPs may not offer all of these to their customers. My ISP has a mail server, a news server with all newsgroups available, an FTP server, a WWW server, a chat server, personal home page capabilities, an 800 modem number for out-of-town access (with a surcharge), backup numbers, and good tech support. They are also continually increasing the number of lines available so no one will ever get a busy signal when they try to connect. Just because a particular ISP is cheaper doesn't mean it's a better deal. It all depends on how you plan to use the service.
Web Browsers
There are many different Web browsers on the market. Unfortunately, as Rob Hayes said in his February 1996 column, AMosaic is the only one currently available for the Amiga. Further, it does not support some of the newer features available with browsers on other platforms, although some of these features will be added in future updates.
The most advanced browsers are available for PCs, Macintoshes, and Unix systems. The most popular browser by far is Netscape Navigator. It is a multi-platform (but not Amiga) product and is free for students and staff of academic institutions and charitable non-profit organizations. For everyone else, it costs about $49. However, anyone can download the software and use it for 90 days before deciding to purchase it. Netscape has been praised by some and disparaged by others for offering features that are not yet standardized and sometimes not even on the drawing board for future standardization. Netscape defends itself by saying that the standardization process is too slow and cannot keep pace with customer demands.
Microsoft is now giving Netscape a run for their money. Its new Internet Explorer Web browser is totally free to everyone. However, until recently, it was only available for Windows 95. It is now available for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh platforms in beta form. Although the Internet Explorer supports some of the newer browser features and has some of its own custom features, it is still behind Netscape Navigator.
Many other "free" Web browsers are available, but none are as feature laden as Netscape Navigator. Also, most online services such as America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and others have their own Web browsers built into their access software. I am only familiar with America Online's browser and it is no match for either Navigator or Internet Explorer.
Home Page Creation
Now we get to the meat of what this series of articles will be about: creating your own Web pages on the Internet for the world to see. In order to do this, you will have to have an account with an ISP that allows its customers to create Web pages and all the necessary programs for connecting to their server. (See Rob Hayes' On-Line Amiga Telecommunications column in the February 1996 issue of AC for comprehensive information on this topic.) Once this is taken care of, there are several software tools you will need. A text editor or word processor capable of saving ASCII text files, a graphics package capable of saving files in GIF or JPEG format (preferably both), an FTP program for transferring files to the ISP's server, and one or more Web browsers for testing your Web pages.
Web pages are created in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) format. HTML files are in ASCII format so as to be totally portable across computer platforms. An HTML file contains the text that will appear on the Web page along with some special codes for formatting the text, referencing graphic files, and creating hypertext links to other documents. For anyone who has created AmigaGuide help files, this will be familiar. (See my article on CanDo programming in the March 1994 issue of AC for information on creating AmigaGuide files.) In next month's column, I will begin a tutorial on creating HTML files for the WWW. Along the way, I will point out features that are not available in AMosaic since your target audience, as was mine, may be mostly Amiga users. I will use my own home page (Figure 1) in the tutorial.
Web Creation Tools
Web creation tools for the Amiga are very slim, but are in abundance on other platforms. For this reason, I currently produce my Web pages on a PC running Windows 95. I use an HTML tag editor, a graphics file conversion program that can write files in both GIF and JPEG formats and can read IFF files. In some cases, I use a WordPerfect add-in called Internet Publisher for saving WordPerfect files in HTML format.
A tag editor is nothing more than a text editor that has an easy way of inserting HTML codes into the document, thus alleviating the user from typing them in. I know of no HTML tag editors on the Amiga. However, if you have an editor that allows macros to be created or supports ARexx, then you can build your own tag editor. I will discuss this more in a future article. If you would like to check this out now, you can download an evaluation copy of HTML-Heaven from PKS MultiMedia Consulting at http://www.iaehv.nl/users/paul/heaven.html. It uses ARexx with many popular ARexx aware text editors for adding HTML tags to documents. This software is shareware. The registered version is $15 and adds several extras to the evaluation version.
Since GIF and JPEG are the standard graphic file formats for Web browsers, they need to be used in your Web pages so everyone can view your pictures. Although it would be nice for the program you use for creating graphics to be able to save files in these formats, it is not absolutely necessary. Another program capable of converting IFF files to GIF or JPEG can be used for this task.
The Future of the Amiga and the Internet
Although it can be a daunting task gathering all the tools together for browsing the Web and creating your own Web pages and then getting them all to work on your Amiga, this may change in the near future. As you have probably heard, Amiga Technologies GmbH (http://www.amiga.de) has already released in Germany a system called the Amiga Surfer. It should be available in North America soon. The hardware in this package consists of an Amiga 1200 with 2 MB of RAM and a hard drive, a 14.4 Kbps fax modem, a telephone connection, and a power supply. The software consists of the Wordworth text processor, Datastore database, TurboCalc spreadsheet, Organiser personal organizer, and Personal Paint graphics program. Internet software is also provided in the form of a PPP driver, I-Net 225 TCP/IP stack, Mindwalker Web browser, VooDoo E-mail program with MIME support, AmFTP FTP program, AmIRC chat program, MultiTerm SE terminal program, and MultiFax Light faxing program. This package costs DM 1199 (about $810).
For people who already own a compatible Amiga, the Amiga Surf Kit containing the modem and the Internet software will be sold for DM 299 (about $202). For those already owning a modem, the Amiga Surfware package containing only the Internet software will be sold for DM 199 (about $135).
I hope to be receiving a demo unit of the Amiga Surfer to test out. If so, I will be writing a review of the package, comparing it to the software currently available on the PC platform.
See you soon. In the meantime, check out my home page at http://fly.hiwaay.net/~rcfinch. I have all of my past AC articles online there. My E-mail address is webmaster@rcfinch.com.