Mosaic and the World Wide Web

The World-Wide Web, an information service on the Internet, uses hypertext links to other textual documents or files. Users can click on a highlighted word or words in the text to provide additional information about the selected word(s). Users can also access graphic pictures, images, audio clips, or even full-motion video through hypermedia, an extension of hypertext. One of the most popular graphics-oriented browsers is Mosaic, which was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) as a way to graphically-navigate the WWW. Mosaic browsers are currently available for Unix workstations running X Windows, PCs running Microsoft Windows, and Macintosh computers. Mosaic can access data in WWW servers, Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), Gopher servers, Archie servers, and several others. The World-Wide Web is still evolving at a rapid pace. Distributed hypermedia systems on the Internet will continue to be an active area of development in the future. The flexibility of the WWW design, its use of hyperlinks, and the integration of existing WAIS and Gopher information resources, make the WWW ideal for future research and study. Highly interactive multimedia applications will require more sophisticated tools than currently exist. The most significant issue that needs to be resolved is the mismatch between WWW system capabilities and user requirements in the areas of presentation and quality of service.<>