One of the newest and most powerful of Internet services is World Wide Web (WWW), which integrates text, graphics, movies and sound into multimedia documents. Thanks to an intuitive interface and the widespread availability of NCSA Mosaic software for the Mac and PC, WWW is growing faster than any other Internet service. Users typically come away from their first Web experience awestruck.

The key to the power of WWW is its user interaction model. While other tools such as FTP and Gopher display Internet computers as lists of files, the Web displays these computers as an integrated multimedia document similar to that produced by desktop publishing programs. Document words and graphics are actually composed of hypertext, which means that the physical file making up a Web document may reside anywhere on the Internet.

In a typical session, users jump to dozens of sites around the world. For example, a WWW document describing sculpture might have a paragraph mentioning the type of marble used. If users click on this text, they might jump to a computer on another continent describing the physical properties of marble. A click on a marble picture might take users to a university site near the quarry where the artist worked. Finally, the university hypertext might mention the original artist, and a few clicks would take users to the artist's biography on the original Web computer.

Another advantage of WWW is the ease of constructing a web site. HTTP software needed to develop a Web site can be downloaded freely. Unlike commercial cross-platform software, there are no royalties. The Web's language, HTML, is so simple that several elementary school classes have created their own servers.

Despite this power, don't expect to see the Web on your online service soon. Unlike many other Internet-wide protocols, WWW requires a full Internet connection rather than the partial gateways offered through online services. None of the current online services support WWW [Authors' Note: Delphi supports text-only web browsing using a program called Lynx.], and due to the inline-graphics requirement, they are unlikely to do so in the future.

On the other hand, it's possible to set up WWW as a local BBS. Excellent Mac and Windows NT versions of HTTP server software are available that run over modem lines using SLIP or PPP protocols. An example of a WWW BBS [sic] is Kaleidospace, a Web site that promotes works of independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, performers, writers, artisans, CD-ROM authors and software developers. Users anywhere on the Internet can view a CD-ROM image they're interested in and click on titles to hear 10-30 second cuts. Filmmakers showcase short video clips; artists include canvas miniatures.

Users with Mosaic 2.X can use order forms to buy artists' works directly over the Internet. Other Web sites that provide direct online ordering are GNN (O'Reilly & Associates) and Marketplace (Cyberspace Development).

In short, WWW may be the Internet's 1-2-3. Its fusion of multimedia and hypertext serves as a model that other services will strive to match.

Jeannie Novak & Pete Markiewicz