Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog

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Title Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog
Author Ed Krol
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Computer Science
Publisher O'Reilly
Released 1992

The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, by Ed Krol, was published in 1992 by O'Reilly. It was one of the first popular user's guide to the history and use of the Internet. The title was a reference to the popular Whole Earth Catalog.

Contents

[edit] Background

At the time in which this book was written, the Internet was difficult to use and this book was a popular source of guidance [1]. The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog also serves as a useful time capsule for the development of the Internet as well as offering insight to what the Internet was like prior to the introduction of the Mosaic web browser (which is never mentioned in the text).

[edit] Uses of the Internet

In the May 1993 edition, the most popular Internet applications were listed as:

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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 rigeur for anyone writing a dissertation or an academic book. With the Web, a few hypertext documents make that all obsolete (232).

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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).

[edit] Printing History

From inside cover of the May 1993 edition:

  • September 1992:First Edition
  • November 1992:Minor corrections
  • February 1993:Minor corrections
  • May 1993:Minor corrections

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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