Browsing HCI on the World-Wide Web

ACM interactions, Volume 1, No. 3, pp. 9-10.

Gary Perlman, Ohio State University

Table of Contents

In the previous issue of interactions, the What's Happening Department described Lewis & Rieman's online book on HCI Design (interactions, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 12). To say that online resources are "what's happening" is like saying that personal computing was "happening" in the 1980s; it's a huge understatement. That shareware book is part of an avalanche of HCI materials now available on the internet.

This is the first of a series of Departments on Resources for HCI developers, researchers, educators, and students. I hope to provide you with information so that you get the most out of HCI resources. Some resources I plan to cover include:

In this first Resources Department, I'd like to introduce you to the World-Wide Web: what it is, how to browse it, and some of what you can find there.

The World-Wide Web (WWW)

The WWW is a very large network of loosely connected information. My introduction to it was in a poster presentation by Tim Berners-Lee at the ACM Hypertext'91 conference in San Antonio, Texas. He described a client/server architecture that used a formal notation for the name or address of a document (i.e., a "link" to that document that could be traversed anywhere on the internet). A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) includes all the information needed to access some information: a protocol or program name, a machine name, a full path name to a file. For example, Kevin Hughes recently announced version 6.1 of "Entering the World-Wide Web: A Guide to Cyberspace" at: http://www.eit.com/web/www.guide/. This compact expression means: use the HyperText Transport Protocol (http) to access the machine at the company Enterprise Integration Technologies (www.eit.com), and look in the directory: /web/www.guide/ The notation is open to accommodate new protocols, but it currently supports at least the following: file, ftp, gopher, http, news, telnet, and wais. Files accessed by http are written in the HyperText Markup Language (html), -- you will often see URLs pointing to files that end in .html -- which allows basic formatting (titles, headings, paragraphs, lists) and the integration of in-line and external images. Files written in html often usually called "pages".

World-Wide Web Browsers

The URL notation would be a curiosity at best, or an example of yet another cryptic language at worst, except for the existence of some wonderful browsing software. The browsers insulate you from need to know about how the files are accessed and displayed, so all you need to do is click here and there to find yourself jumping from Amsterdam to Ohio to Zurich without noticing.

I'm going to describe two browsers: Mosaic and Lynx, but other browsers are described in the Frequently Asked/Answered Questions (FAQ) list on WWW: (URL: http://siva.cshl.org/~boutell/www_faq.html). The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has written graphical user interface (GUI) browsers for the X Window System, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows platforms/environments. NCSA Mosaic is so popular that people often refer to WWW and HTML as Mosaic. It is available for free via anonymous ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the Mosaic directory. (Use the ftp program to log in the the NCSA machine, login as "anonymous", and provide your email address as password; then get help on file transfers with "help".) As the ftp.ncsa site is often quite busy, a "mirror" site (one with the same files) is: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/packages/www/Mosaic.

For non-graphical interfaces on UNIX, VMS, and other operating systems, lynx (a pun for "links", I think) is available via anonymous ftp from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the pub/lynx directory. (A mirror site is: ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/packages/www/lynx.) Lynx works reasonably well for ANSI/VT100 terminal emulations, so it makes the WWW available on dialin lines to UNIX and VMS systems using telnet, kermit, etc. on PCs and Macs.

There are other WWW browsers described in the the WWW FAQ (and at: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html). These include browsers for Macintosh, MS-Windows, DOS, NeXTStep, Amiga, and others. Many of these require special connections (e.g., SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol), PPP (Point to Point Protocol), or other TCP/IP networking) so if you do not have such connections, dialing in to a UNIX or VMS system and running lynx may be the easiest way for MS-Windows and Mac users to get started. If your system does have the right connection, then you can use a GUI Mosaic browser.

If you do not have an account on a machine on the internet, there are $10-20/month commercial internet providers such as delphi and netcom (and there must be many others). And if you can "borrow" an account, you can telnet for a trial. I tried the delphi 5-hour free trial from PC Magazine (dial: 1-800-365-4636, at username: enter joindelphi, at password: enter PCM45A) and I could find everying mentioned here in about 10 minutes using their lynx WWW browser. Current internet users can telnet to delphi.com, and email users can send internet mail to info@delphi.com. To try out netcom, internet users can telnet to netcom.com login as guest, and use your login name as the password. Or you can call their sales line at 1-800-501-8649 or 1-408-554-8649. I don't know if netcom has a free trial offer.

What's Out There on the Web

It would take pages to describe all the material that is on the WWW for people interested in HCI and user interfaces, so I will mention two of the most interesting overview "pages". Before describing the pages, I want to make it clear that everything on the internet, and hence the WWW, is changing. Sometimes change means that information has moved or has been removed, but for the most part, change means updates and additions of new information, so what is on the WWW is constantly improving and increasing.

Keith Instone's "HCI Launching Pad" at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio has the URL: http://www.cs.bgsu.edu/HCI/. The Launching Pad contains information about conferences, bibliographies, laboratories, technical reports, newsgroups, education, standards and guidelines, and pointers to other HCI pages (including the following page).

Hans de Graaff's "Index of HCI-Related Material" at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands has the URL: http://is.twi.tudelft.nl/hci/. The Index contains information on the HCI Bibliography, newsgroups, mailing lists, conferences and workshops, books and other publications, book reviews and announcements, research groups, and related information sources (which, of course, has a pointer back to the HCI Launching Pad).

These two HCI URLs (and the two WWW URLs) should keep you occupied for hours, days, weeks, or even months, because they will lead you to most of the HCI resources available on the internet. Keep in mind that it is NOT a good idea to make copies of everything you see because not only does the information take up space, the information you copied will probably be updated; just make sure to note the URLs you find useful.

Abbreviations

ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
ANSI
American National Standards Institute
FAQ
Frequently Asked/Answered Question list
FTP
File Transfer Protocol for copying files
GUI
Graphical User Interface
HCI
Human-Computer Interaction
HTML
HyperText Markup Language for writing WWW pages
HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol for accessing WWW pages
NCSA
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (wrote Mosaic)
URL
Uniform Resource Locator (access method and file specification)
WWW
World-Wide Web (also, W3)

Next resources department: Usenet Newsgroups and Frequently Asked/Answered Questions on HCI

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