January 1, 1997January 1997 INTERNET AND INTRANETS GUIDESoftware
programs make Netsurfing easy. t first, the Net was used
primarily by far-flung scientists and engineers to exchange
research data via government and university computers. Then, six
years ago, students at the University of Illinois' National
Center for Supercomputing Applications developed a software
program that introduced the Internet to an entirely different
group of users. Their program, called Mosaic, replaced the
Internet's arcane codes with user-friendly screens and colorful
graphics so that almost anyone could navigate through the Net
territory soon to be known as the World Wide Web. Documents on
the Web are presented in the hypertext markup language (HTML)
formatting code. Mosaic, which was distributed free of charge,
was dubbed a "browser" because it was able to "read" through
HTML code and convert the contents into colorful, graphical
documents containing "hypertext" links that enabled users to
jump to other Web pages by clicking on h