What's new in '92

New browser

Direct access to internet news groups

Direct access to " gopher " campus-wide information systems etc. (Gopher is system similar to W3 but using a web of menus and plain text files rather than hypertext. It is all readable as hypertext using W3)

Browsing of remote directories using FTP. Before, files could be read - now you can browse around as well! Any FTP site becomes a W3 information source.

Follow links directly to telnet (and rlogin) sites. This allows hypertexts to point to online communications facilities which don't have servers.

Extensibility using gateways - you can configure www to use specific gateways for any access protocol which might turn up in the future which it can't handle directly.

The browser version can be picked up by anonymous FTP in the usual way including source binaries for several platforms.

Those who have built other hypertext systems (such as Hyperbole and Viola) on top of the www browser will immediately gain access to the all this newly accessible information.

W3 at SLAC

Browsing on VM/CMS

Browsing under X with viola

Conferences

As I write Jean-Francois is presenting it live at the Software Engineering and AI for High-Energy Physics workshop in La Londe, France. We've also been asked to demonstrate, as well as present a paper, at the Joint European Networking Conference (JENC3) in Innsbruck, Austria, in May. _________________________________________________________________

(next issue: April)