Mosaic Netscape: One Small Step for the Web...

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Netscape has a host of features designed to make it easier and quicker to navigate the Web, but the most significant is the way it allows the user to go on browsing while it downloads items not immediately needed in the background. Rather than forcing you to wait for a graphic to load, Netscape, loads a page's text first, allowing you to scroll down the page or jump ahead to another URL while that nice looking, but perhaps not immediately necessary graphic, loads a piece at a time and without the need to wait for the page to paginate.

This "continuous document streaming," combined with Netscape's ability to download several documents or images at the same time has the effect of dramatically reducing time devoted to waiting, and increasing the time spent exploring the Internet's bewilderingly diverse content. Coupled with an overall performance increase optimized for 14,400 kbs modems, this makes Netscape, by far the speediest Web browser currently available.

Netscape also represents a complete revamping of the original NCSA Mosaic interface. A new row of buttons now puts commonly used commands a mouse click away. Another row of buttons give you immediate access to some of the Internet's most popular services including the phenomenal resources provided by Mosaic Communications' own Web site. These include a very thorough "What's New" page and one of the best Internet directories around.

In the Mac version that I used, menus and commands were intuitive and easy to navigate even before I accessed the on-line handbook. Add to this support for a whole new group of HTML programming tags, and you have a package that not only enhances ease of use, but makes web pages more pleasing to the eye than ever before. (That is if the page you're browsing has been programmed to support these new tags.)

The momentum toward an integrated, user-friendly Internet is too great.

For me, one of Netscape's most exciting aspects is what seems to be the beginnings of an effort to do away with all those little "helper" applications that we use either separately or in concert with Mosaic in all it's other versions. These little goodies give us access to some of the Internet services that aren't part of the WorldWide Web and allow users to display pictures, listen to sounds, and search net resources. Included in Netscape is native JPEG support and the ability to send (but not receive) e-mail, as well as support for Gopher, FTP and other protocols supported by older versions of Mosaic. Small steps but significant.

And that really is the direction I would like to see interfaces for the Internet go; an integrated all-in-one approach to sending mail, searching for information, downloading and uploading files, exchanging ideas or just browsing. What the Netscape of the future should be is a single window that allows full access to every aspect of the net completely transparently.

The argument has been made that in the software world as a whole, the trend is in the direction of smaller more specialized applications. (Then again, maybe it's not. Have you seen the latest version of Microsoft Word?!) But in the case of the Internet, there is such a vast amount of information to sift through that it really should have one, simple interface. When Newsweek did it's cover story on the Internet, they didn't subtitle it? Telnet, Wais, Gopher, Archie, Usenet, SNMP, JPEG, FTP, HTTP, etc. What the average user wants is to seamlessly navigate an intuitive easy to configure integrated electronic world just a local telephone call away.

Very soon, America Online, the world's fastest growing on-line service, will be adding World Wide Web access to its existing suite of Internet access points. It's in Mosaic Communications' interest to move quickly toward establishing NetScape as THE browser. Considering the speed with which they got product out the door (about 6 months) they are on the right track. Giving away a fully functional version is also vital to making inroads. Even before AOL has fully joined the fray, the competition has become feverish. With the rapid growth of NCSA's licensing program for it's version of Mosaic, there are still plenty of opportunities for others to move ahead of Netscape. This is being encouraged by the phenomenal growth of commercial sites, many of which are giving away proprietary browsers with hooks to their own sites and services.

Whatever happens, it'll only get better for WWW users. The momentum toward an integrated, user-friendly Internet is too great. With well over twenty million people connected to the net, an intuitive graphical interface is as inevitable there, as it was in the world of personal computing. We'll keep you posted.

Mosaic Netscape is available from MCom's FTP Server.