Chapter 7

EXPLORING THE WORLD WIDE WEB USING LYNX

7.1 Introduction to World Wide Web

If you thought you needed a TCP/IP account to surf on the World Wide Web (WWW) of Internet, you are wrong. You can use Lynx, the versatile WWW browser designed for text-based Internet accounts like your VSNL Terminal account, which is available in your First Menu as option 4.

For general information, Lynx can be accessed by either a terminal which can dial up to the account, such as a VT100 terminal, or a PC-based software package emulating the VT100 terminal, such as Telix and Procomm. Lynx is used very widely for accessing information from the WEB, and it makes this information available to a wide audience. The power and utility of Lynx is manifested by its ability to address WEB, Ftp, Gopher, and Wais sites. In fact some people seem to use only Lynx for all their information search and retrieval needs.

Here, the intention is to cover only those aspects of Lynx which will get you started and enable you to use its most common and useful features. The rest of the properties and aspects of Lynx are left for you to discover as you find the need.

7.2 Entering and exiting lynx

After you log on to your Terminal account at VSNL and come to the First Menu, type 4 to select option 4, Lynx. The screen at this point appears as shown in Fig.7-1. :

Figure 7.1 First Menu Screen with Lynx Selected

Press <Enter>, after which you will get the Lynx WWW browser screen, as shown in Fig.7-2 :

Figure 7.2 Lynx WWW Browser Screen

You are now in the Lynx browser. The various items listed are the Web sites and other Internet services pre-configured by VSNL, for you to explore. All these items will be briefly described here.

a. User Manual

With the arrow keys, move the cursor to the first item in this menu, and press <enter>. This takes you to the WWW site named "User Manual". When you open this site you will see the following two items on the screen:

Frequently asked questions
Uses'Guide

Under frequently asked questions you will see:

Questions? Comments? Input? Queries? Concerns? Advice?

* Bombay Helpdesk
* Delhi Helpdesk
* Calcutta Helpdesk
* Madras Helpdesk
* Bangalore Helpdesk
* Pune Helpdesk

Here VSNL is inviting you to give feedback to any of the listed helpdesk of different cities. If you take a cursor on any of the items and press <Enter> you will get a form to write your comments and mail it to the helpdesk of that city. Please not be too heavy on criticism, after all we are also human, and a bit of praise will go a long way.

If you select User Manual, you will get online interactive version of this book at the Web address:

http://www.stanford.edu/~jnw/gias.htm
or
http://www.bayside.net/rajm

Of course you will get the text version only if you surfing via lynx and the online version is specifically configured to be available to lynx.

b. Search the Net

Move to the second item, "Search the 'Net", press <enter>, and you see the list of some of most often used search engines on the World Wide Web.

Dogpile
Yahoo
AltaVista
Hotbot
Lycos
Khoj
Excite
NlightN
Wbcrawler
Infoseek
WAIS

Search engines are sites where you can enter a word or a phrase and search for the documents which contain that word or the phrase. In recent times the second item—"Yahoo" (nothing to do with our illustrious celebrity Shammi Kapoor—though he was the one who brought this word to this sub continent in 1960s). If you move the highlight to "Yahoo" and press <Enter> it opens with the following screen, shown in Fig.7-3:

Fig.7-3 Yahoo Screen

As you can see, this site has information divided in different categories, for convenient searching. For example, if you wanted to find out about education in the American universities, you would go (move your cursor) to "Eudcation" and fairly quickly get to the catalogues of all the universities. You can then start browsing for the desired information. This is quite a rapid way to get to the information. Exploration of this site is very highly recommended.

One thing to note. The last item on search the Net is WAIS. It is another form of putting up information on Internet. "WAIS" stands for "Wide Area Information Servers" and is designed for retrieving information from networks. The people who designed it intended to make it the dominant publishing medium, but with the advent of the WEB, it has lost its importance.

c. Internet Tools

The next item, "Internet Tools" will show you following items:

Gopher
Archie
Veronica
Anonymous FTP sites

Before 1993, when the graphical browsing was not available on the Net, other tools were developed to search for information and software. Available on the Internet. Lot of very interesting and pre 1993 information and software is available is available can be searched through these tools only.

i. Gopher

This service is not a site on the WWW. Rather, "Gopher" gives you the option of searching Gopher Space, which is also on the Internet but different from the World Wide Web. In the past, before the WEB, as the problem of large amounts of information grew, people at the University of Minnesota devised way to present information in nested menus. When you start Gopher, it shows you a menu. After you pick an item, it shows you another menu that divides the picked item into further categories, and so on. After browsing a while, you will run into a menu that actual has useful information you can read. You can then mail the information to yourself or copy it to your computer.

The collection of all the computers supporting Gopher is called Gopher Space, which has a lot of interesting information buried in it. If you don't succeed in finding information with the WEB, you certainly should try your hand at using Gopher to look for it.

ii Archie

This takes you to a server in the UK, ArchiePlex (http://sc.doc.ic.ac.uk/archieplexform.html). An Archie Gateway for the WWW. It is a form based version of ArchiePlex. Archie is a large database of FTP sites that have software, and includes a way to search those sites for the software you want. The use of Archie is described in more detail in Chapter 4, under FTP. While it is a valuable source for software, it is unfortunately very slow.

iii. Veronica

"Veronica" is an acronym for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index of Computer Archives". Gopher quickly became a victim of its own success. So many Gopher servers are out there that finding the right menu that you may want, itself became hard. Veronica comes to the rescue. Like "Archie" for FTP software sites, "Veronica" has big databases of available services, for Gopher Space. Veronica tracks all the Gopher menus that can be accessed directly or indirectly from the mother Gopher in Minnesota. If you are planning to use Gopher Space for the information, do look into "Veronica".

iv. Anonymous FTP Sites List

This Web site has the most exhaustive list of FTP sites around the NET. It is worth exploring in case you have run out of other tools for the search for your information.

This completes a brief explanation of all the items on the opening screen of the Lynx browser. Suppose now that you have finished your work (or entertainment) and want to quit. Several options are given at the bottom of the screen, and one of them is "Q" for quit. If you press Q or q, and then "y" to confirm that you really want to quit, you will get out of Lynx and back to the First Menu.

Exotic Indian Links

If you take the cursor to next item, "Exotic Indian Links" and press <Enter> you will get following links displayed. If you are after information on India on the Net, it is worth your while to explore these sites. Just note that many sites related to India are being added to Web everyday so don’t assume that the following list is exhaustive. It is list VSNL people thought you should have at hand.

India: Virtual Library
123India
its India Time
India on Internet
India world
National Informatics Centre
Discover India
Reachthough "Khoj"
Indiaserver
InformationEntertainment Online
Glance at Indian Economic Links
Indian Vibes
Manpasand
India access website
Internet India
Webindia
Welcome to Indozone
Indian Languages
Indian Designers hit the net
Indian Railways:An overview
Medical Information
Magazine world

e. News Archive

This item gives you page of links to News related sites on the WWW for India. If you are a person addicted to the news, you will may have lot of fun here. The sites listed are thus:

*The Hindstan Times
*The IndianExpress
*The Times of India
*The India Daily
*The Hindu
*IME
*CNN
*The BBC
*Economic Front
*The Economic Times
*Hindu Business Online
*The Wall Street Journal
*The Hindustan Times
*The Ecomomist
*Forbes
*The Fortune
_____________________________________________________________

Why not create your own newspaper Here

____________________________________________________________

f. Travel India & The World

Are you planning a trip within India? Or even around the world? And you want to find out certain information? Well! Explore the links given under this heading. It will be well invested time. You may be able to discover some very pertinent information. You may even know the flight schedule and other valuable nuggets of information. When you enter this item you will have following three choices:

Flight schedule
Air India
Travel India

Under Travel India link; for example you can list of Museums in different cities in India. Of course you have be interested in visiting Museums in the first place. But time you spend searching on the Web for information is well worth your while.

g. Know your Habitat

If you are interested in learning about our planet Earth and its health, this page is especially for you. It gives links to some of the best sites on World Wide Web related to preserving the life earth. We recommend it very highly to take your time out to explore these sites .

National Geographic Magazine
The Discovery Channel
Greenpeace
World Wildlife Fund
LivingPlanet

h. Sports World

If you are a cricket addict and can’t leave your desk to watch the TV broadcast of a match and still want to keep track of how a given match is progressing. Or want to find out how machine is faring when pitted its artificial intelligence in the game of chess? Well links on this page will certainly give you access to such information and more. As open this link you will see:

Cricket Information
Chess Info.
KHEL site

Well! Explore.

i. Technical World

If you are a techie and computer nerd and want the latest shareware software then the links on this page which are displayed below are for you. You can overdose to your heart’s desire on in finding and downloading shareware.

Windows95
Shareware
Winsock software
Freeware
Download
Jumbo Download

j Public news servers

If you are kind of person who like to know what people are writing to each other about different topics (about 28,000) of them, then you are at the right place. Links here give you access to Newsgroups on the Internet. On a given day on a given server you can read what others are saying to your heart’s content. And if you get so moved add your two bits to it!

Following is only one screen of listing of news servers that VSNL can access. You will see this listing if you activate this link by pressing <Enter>. There are several pages of them,

news.vsnl.net.in
123.netYesnb:673dt:0.00bps:673.00ng:16
146.107.1.11Yesnb:108949dt:92.00bps:1184.23ng:2384
146.115.60.146Yesnb:291057dt:46.00bps:6327.33ng:8697
165.113.1.76Yestimeoutonretrieve_grouplist()
165.221.16.20Yesnb:165dt:10.00bps:16.50ng:9
194.72.86.5Yesnb:152dt:0.00bps:152.00ng:4
194.74.234.14 Yes nb:690821d:95.00 bps:7271.80ng:22217
198.111.199.100Yesnb:192504dt:5.00bps:38500.80ng:5706
202.190.133.2Yesnb:160435dt:19.00bps:8443.95ng:3522
203.65.164.158Yestimeoutonretrieve_grouplist()
205.179.207.1Yesnb:16596dt:1.00bps:16596.00ng:427
205.230.28.4Nonb:73262dt:1.00bps:73262.00ng:1740
206.138.127.100Yesnb:26819dt:1.00bps:26819.00ng:527
206.139.152.37Yesnb:466400dt:77.00bps:6057.14ng:15088
206.154.149.2Yesnb:259293dt:6.00bps:43215.50ng:8514
206.168.216.12Yesnb:901949dt:37.00bps:24377.00ng:31823
206.54.185.133Yesnb:33dt:1.00bps:33.00ng:1
206.65.242.196Yesnb:1252dt:0.00bps:1252.00ng:31
206.80.43.1Nonb:328465dt:93.00bps:3531.88ng:7970
.
.
.
If you click on anyone of these servers, you will get a list of newsgroups which are hosted by the server. Once, you have that on your screen, you could read a given posting.

7.3 What is a URL ?

Every WWW page has a unique name, so you can jump right to it. This identification of the page or site is known as URL, an acronym for Uniformly Resource Locator. It includes information about the machine the page is stored on, the pathname of the file that contains it, and other technical points. Those details are irrelevant here.

For example, the URL for the University of Kansas home page is the following :

http://kufacts.cc.ukans.edu/

This is a good place to start, as the University of Kansas developed Lynx and used to distribute it. Now, further development is taken up by other people. They still have the best help files on Lynx.

The first part of the URL, "http://", is short for "hyper text transport protocol" and tells Lynx that we are going to look at a hyper text page. The string of characters "kufacts.cc.ukans.edu" identifies the host (computer system) on which the home page is residing. This is for general knowledge, there is no need to remember the details. If you have a URL, you can just enter that into Lynx and off you go, browsing the WEB.

7.4 Logging on to a WEB SITE

Now you are ready to log on to a Web site or read a Web page. Go to the Lynx screen by the procedure shown in Section 7.2, and then press "g" for Go. At the bottom of the screen, a prompt message asking for a URL, appears. Move the cursor to the prompt and type "http://kufacts.cc.ukans.edu". The Lynx screen now appears as shown in Fig.7-4:

Fig.7-4 Lynx WWW Screen with URL

Now press <enter>. Lynx then retrieves and displays the HomePage of the University of Kansas, consisting of four pages, out of which only the first and last pages are shown in Fig.7-5:

Fig.7-5 University of Kansas Home Page

Here, if you were exploring the WEB, you may want to see the news or the weather. To do this, you must move your cursor to the Inter-Links line of page 4 of 4 of the University of Kansas home page, shown in Figure 7.4. This line will now be highlighted, and by pressing the <enter> key, you will go to the screen of services provided by Inter-Links. In a similar manner you may choose further and explore the Inter-Links, until you find the news, or the weather, for example.

7.5 Maneuvering around a WEB page using keys

Once you have a WEB page on your screen, how do you maneuver around the page and follow the "hypertext links" on that page? The process of moving within a hypertext web, selecting and displaying links is known as "navigation." With Lynx, almost all navigation can be accomplished with the arrow keys and the numeric keypad. Fig.7-6 shows the functionality of these keys for moving the cursor, if you have an extended keyboard and a numeric keypad.

Fig.7-6 Keys for Moving the Cursor on a Web Page

When you are on a WEB page, you will see certain text in boldface -- those are the links to other pages. You can move from link to link by pressing the arrow keys, as shown in Fig.7-5. For example the 'down' key will select, i.e. take you to, the next link (boldface text), the 'up' key to the previous boldface text and so on and on, in that page. If you just want to move around the page and not jump between links, press the 'spacebar" to advance 25 lines, or the '-' (hyphen) key, to go back 25 lines.

If the cursor is on a link, i.e. on boldface text, press the 'right' arrow key to display the text associated with the link, and press the 'left' arrow key to display the previous document. This is all summarized in Figure 7.5, and all there is to it, to navigate on a given WEB hypertext page.

There are also a few other keyboard commands to aid in navigation. Some of these commands depend on the fact that Lynx keeps a list of each file you visit called the "history list". The 'backspace' or 'delete' key will show you the whole history list. Any of the documents shown in the list may be revisited by selecting them from the history screen.

7.6 Saving a site address and using the "Bookmark" file

If you visit a page or site and know that you will visit it again a number of times, for example http://www.cnet.com, which changes its contents very often, Lynx provides a method for quick access. The site address is saved to a file which can be viewed, where the site may be selected and visited by Lynx.

To do this, type 'a' for adding the site address to the bookmark file, when you are at the desired page or site. An example of the resulting screen is shown in Fig.7-7:

Fig.7-7 Site Screen after Adding Address to Bookmark File

At this point, the address is actually not yet saved. You can either save the whole document or just the link address. If you press 'L', the link will be saved in the Bookmark file in your account.

The bookmark file may be viewed by pressing 'v'. You may do this at time you are in Lynx, highlight any link (address), and go immediately to the site, instead of typing the URL. Fig.7-7 shows an example of a bookmark file, in response to pressing 'v'.

Fig.7-8 Lynx Bookmark File Screen

In the screen shown in Fig.7-8, you can for example highlight "About Microsoft". Then pressing <enter> will take you to that page as shown in Fig.7-9, below:

Fig.7-9 Web Page Got by Using Bookmark File

7.7 Saving the current page to your account

If you want to save the page you are visiting for your reference, there are two ways to do it:

• While you are viewing the page, press 'a'. The following prompt will then appear at the bottom of the page:

Save D)ocument or L)ink to bookmark file or C)ancel? (d,l,c):

Answer 'd' to save a link to the document you are currently viewing or 'l' to save the link that is currently selected on the page. Selecting 'c' will cancel without saving anything to your bookmark file.

Then press 'd' to save the page to your account at VSNL.

While you are viewing the page, press 'p' for the print option. The following screen, Fig.7-10, will then appear:

Fig.7-10 Lynx Print Screen

In this screen, highlight "Save to a local file" and press <enter>, to save the page you were viewing to your account. The file saved to your account can be later downloaded to your computer as discussed in Chapter 13, UNIX Prompt.

7.8 Searching a site for a particular string

The "/" command activates searching in Lynx. While viewing a normal document use it to find a word or phrase within the current document.

7.9 Other useful commands

! When '!' is pressed your default Terminal will be spawned. When you quit or exit the Terminal you will return to Lynx. (Usually 'exit' under UNIX and 'Logout' under VMS.) This command is usually disabled for anonymous users.

g The 'g' command allows any URL to be viewed. Pressing the 'g' command will bring up a prompt asking for a URL. Type in the URL that you wish to view.

= The '=' command shows information about the current document and the currently selected link if there is one. The number of lines in the file, URL, title, owner, and type are shown.

z Lynx supports completely interruptable I/O processes. Press the 'z' key at any time during a connect or transfer process and the process will be halted. If any data was transferred before the interrupt, it will be displayed.

+++ KEYSTROKE COMMANDS +++

7.10 Searching the WEB for information

The WEB is most widely used for information on a subject of interest. The Internet is a large repository of information put up by the users. Searching for information is a complicated task owing to the size of Internet, the amount of information, and its many possible methods of storage. A software package for this purpose is called a search engine.

There are search engines you can use to find information of your interest. They include:

1) Altavista
2) Webcrawler
3) Yahoo
4) Lycos
5) Infoseek
6) Aliweb

VSNL has provided ready links to them. From the Lynx browser screen, which is shown in Figure 7.2, highlight the third item, "Surf the 'Net", and you will see the above engines displayed, as shown in Fig.7-11:

Fig.7-11 WWW Search Engines

Use the cursor movement keys (arrow keys) to hightlight "Altavista", press <enter>, and you will come to the screen of this search engine, developed by DEC, as shown in Fig.7-12 below. In the screen, on the blank line before the word "Submit", type your text string to be searched -- for example, type VSNL, assuming we are interested to find information about VSNL:

Fig.7-12 Altavista Web Search Screen

Now press <enter>. This will result in a search of the Altavista site for any information on our query, VSNL. The links to any documents that are found will be displayed. A sample of them is given in Fig.7-13, below:

Fig.7-13 Result of Altavista Search

This search found 400 documents which have VSNL in it. In the above screen only one of those is shown.

At a search engine, you can insert any string you want to search, and there is good likelihood that you will get some information from the search. You can highlight any document found, and by pressing <enter> you will bring up the hypertext document. You will have to do a bit of searching this way to pinpoint the information you are looking for. More than likely you will get a direction to follow.

7.11 Other services accessible via lynx

In addition to hypertext protocol (http), Lynx supports other protocols. specifically, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), GOPHER and WIAS. Each of these have their utility in information search and retrieval. Here we are only going to look at FTP, as it is one of the most commonly used services to get software and information available on the Internet. Other services like GOPHER and WAIS, which are not very commonly used but have their strong points, should be explored when you feel comfortable with the basics of the Internet, and you need to expand your horizons.

7.12 Downloading software

Here we give an example of downloading software using Lynx, from a FTP site. Let us log on to the site "oak.oakland.edu" and see if we can retrieve "calc-10.zip", a calculator utility for DOS.

Instead of giving a URL, press 'g' for Go, and supply the FTP site address, in this case "oak.oakland.edu". Lynx will then take you there, and you will see the following screen, shown in Fig.7-14:

After maneuvering to the correct subdirectory, you can download files from that site as described in Chapter 5, FTP.

Fig.7-14 An FTP Site Screen, to Find Software

By going to the next page, and so on, we connect to the OAK repository of software. Finally we go to the MSDOS subdirectory "/pub/simtelnet/msdos/calculte" , where the desired software is found. This is by no means a complete description of how to do the search, but is meant only to give a general indication of how it goes. Specific help from the menus available at the site in question will be initially required, in order go ahead with useful work.

The following screen, Fig.7-15, shows the contents of the "calculte" subdirectory, where our desired software file was found sitting:

Fig.7-15 An Information Screen at an FTP Site

In this screen, move the cursor to highlight the file "c_calc10.zip", and press <enter>. Lynx then asks if you want to Download the file. Press 'D' to select to Download, which takes you to the Lynx downloading screen, shown in Fig.7-16:

Fig.7-16 Lynx Download Options Screen

You can use the option "VSNL USERS"-USE THIS FOR SAVING ON DISK to save the file in your VSNL account. If your file is large this may be advisable in case the connection from your computer to VSNL is not solid and breaks often. However, you can use the Zmodem option to download the file to your computer directly. In that case it will go to the download directory of the communication software you are using.

A word of CAUTION: At the VSNL server, Lynx is configured in such a way that it gives it own name to a file which it is downloading to your computer, and it does not retain the original name of the file. So you will have to note this down and rename the file, on your computer.

After you have the file on your computer, you can use it.

7.13 Learning more about lynx: - The help screen & lynx user's guide

We have gone through some of the main features of Lynx. There is more-- much more to Lynx. If you are in Lynx and press 'h' you should get following screen, shown in Fig.7-16 :

Fig.7-16 The Lynx Help Screen

It is very strongly recommended that you explore each one of these items. You may Save the "Lynx users guide" and have it on your computer, for easy reference and further study, at any spare moment. Lynx is one of the best ways to search and find information, and it deserves to be mastered.

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