Mosaic User's Guide

Navigating the WWW with Mosaic

Following Hyperlinks

Mosaic provides an easy-to-use point & click interface to the World Wide Web. A single-click with the left mouse button on a hyperlink causes Mosaic to retrieve the document associated with that link, and display it in the Document View window. A single-click with the middle mouse button also causes Mosaic to follow the link, and open a new Document View window on top of the existing one. From that point, either Document View window can be used for further navigating.

Back through the Window History

Each open Document View window maintains a window history, recording every document it visits. Clicking with the left mouse button on the Back button on the bottom control panel travels back through the window history, as does selecting Back from the Navigate menu, or hitting b (a hotkey) while the mouse cursor is in the Document View area. After travelling back through the window history, subsequent hyperlinks will write over the existing window history from that point, as expected.

Forward

After moving back one or more documents through the window history, the Forward button will travel forward through the already-determined window history, as if the previously-selected hyperlinks are selected again. Selecting Forward from the Navigate menu or hitting the hotkey f while the mouse cursor is in the Document View area has the same effect.

The Window History List

Travelling back and forward through a Document View window's history can also be achieved with the Window History feature under the Navigate menu. Mosaic can jump to any document in the window history, forward or back. Simply double-click on any document title, or highlighting a title and hit the Go To button. Hitting lowercase h with the mouse cursor in the Document View area also causes the window history list to pop-up.

Home Document

When NCSA Mosaic is first executed, it retrieves and displays the "home document." By default, this is the NCSA Mosaic Home Page, but your copy of Mosaic may have been configured to use a different home page (probably a local document that does not have to be retrieved from a distant server). To jump to the home document in any Document View window, click the Home button or use the Home Document feature under the Navigate menu. Note that Mosaic will add the home document to the window history, rather than jumping to the first node in the window history list (which is not necessarily the home document).

Opening New Windows and Cloning

The New Window button can be used to pop-up an additional Document View window on top of the existing one(s). The new Document View window will retrieve and display the home document. On the other hand, the Clone button can be used to open a new Document View window displaying the same document currently being viewed. The New Window and Clone Window features can also be selected from the File menu, or with the hotkeys n and c.

Closing Windows

Any Document View window can be closed with the Close Window button, the Close Window feature under the File menu, or the ESC hotkey. Only the current Document View window will be closed. If the current window is the only window currently open, the entire application will be shut down when the window is closed.

Aborting Document Transfers

Occasionally, you may want to abort the retrieval of large documents or documents stored on distant servers which require greater transfer time. At any point in a data transfer process (hostname lookups and certain stages of direct WAIS queries excepted), you can click on the icon in the upper right corner of the window to stop the current network action.

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National Center for Supercomputing Applications

alanb@ncsa.uiuc.edu