NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows User Guide: Document View Window

Window Elements

The NCSA Mosaic Document View window is divided into several areas.

  1. title bar
  2. menu bar
  3. toolbar
  4. location bar
  5. NCSA Mosaic logo
  6. document view area
  7. status bar
Display of toolbar, location bar, and status bar is optional. You can hide or display them at your discretion by making the appropriate selection on the Options menu.

Title Bar

The title bar displays the name of the NCSA Mosaic program and the title of the current document.

The buttons on the title bar are the standard Microsoft Windows control buttons. The button on the left is the system menu that controls the window size and the application. The buttons on the right let you iconify or maximize the Mosaic window.

Menu Bar

The menu bar displays the seven NCSA Mosaic menus. (See Chapter 3, "Menus," for more information.)

Toolbar

The toolbar provides quick access to the most commonly-used Mosaic functions. The display of the toolbar is a toggle, which means it is either on or off--displayed or not. If the toolbar is displayed, select Show Toolbar on the Options menu to hide it. Repeat the process to display the toolbar again. (You can also toggle the toolbar by pressing Alt+T.)

Each toolbar option is also available on a menu.

Below is a brief description of each button's function and the corresponding menu where the same function is available:

Open Document
opens the Open Document Location dialog box (File)
Save to Disk
saves the current document to disk (File)
Print
opens the Print dialog box (File)
Print Preview
opens a preview copy of the current document (File)
Copy
copies the selected text to the clipboard (Edit)
Paste
pastes the contents of the clipboard into active window (Edit)
Back
displays the previous document in the history list (Navigate)
Forward
displays the next document in the history list (Navigate)
Reload
reloads the current document (Navigate)
Load Home Page
loads your home page (Navigate); see "Home Page" on page 4-10
Find
opens the Find dialog box (Edit)
Add Current to Hotlist
adds the URL and title of the current document to the current hotlist (Navigate)
Read Newsgroups
loads a list of the subscribed newsgroups (File); see "Services" on page 4-16 for more information
Send Internet Email
opens the Mail... dialog box (File)
About NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows
opens the "contents" page of the Mosaic help file (Help)

Location Bar

The Internet "address" of the current document--its URL or URN-- appears in this field (see Appendix A, "Glossary"), which is located to the left of the NCSA Mosaic logo. The check mark and X are active only if you are working in the field.

  1. X--cancels the input of a new document address and returns to the address of the present document
  2. check mark--opens a new document; enter a document address in the field and either click on the check mark or press ENTER
  3. location field--the current document's address
  4. listbox arrow--click to display a linear list of all URLs visited during the current session
If you don't see the location bar, select Show Current URL from the Options menu (or press Alt+L) to display it. Repeat the process to hide it again.

While the cursor is over the gray area around the location bar, three right mouse button menu features are available:

Load to disk
loads the file defined in the location bar to your local hard drive
Load document
submits the address in the location bar and loads the file in the document display area, or passes it to a viewer (equivalent to pressing ENTER or clicking with the left mouse button on the green check)
Cancel
cancels the current address and returns the address of the current document; equivalent to clicking the red X.

NCSA Mosaic Logo

The NCSA Mosaic logo serves several purposes. The globe is stationary while you are reading a document and starts to spin when you request a file. It continues to spin as long as NCSA Mosaic is connecting to a server or working on a file transfer.

The globe is a transfer interrupt mechanism. Cancel the transfer of a file at any time by clicking on the globe with the left mouse button. (Pressing the ESC key also cancels a transfer.)

The Mosaic logo is a toggle--it is displayed only when the location bar or toolbar are active. The size of the logo changes depending on the number of bars you have displayed. The logo is largest when both the location bar and the toolbar are displayed.

Document View Area

Documents are displayed in this area, including inlined images, graphics, and forms. Use either keyboard commands or the mouse and scroll bars to move a document in the window.

Keyboard Commands

Up and down arrow keys
scrolls up and down one line respectively
PgUp
scrolls up one page
PgDn
scrolls down one page
HOME
scrolls to the top of the document
END
scrolls to the bottom of the document

Scroll Bars

One or two scroll bars may be available in a document view window:

These scroll bars work exactly like the scroll bars that commonly appear in Microsoft Windows applications. Click in the scroll bar area on either side of the button to move the document in one page increments. Click on the small arrow at either end of the scroll bar to move the document in one line increments.

Status Bar

The status bar displays information about the current download. Located at the bottom of the Mosaic screen, it is divided into three fields: message display (left), visual status display (middle), and progress indicator (right). Display of the status bar is optional. If the status bar is displayed, select Show Status Bar on the Options menu (or press ALT+S) to hide it. Repeat the process to display the status bar again.

message display
displays messages generated by Mosaic and can display the URL of documents when the cursor rests on an anchor (see "Options Menu" on page 3-3 for information on optionally displaying URLs)
visual status
displays icons that indicate the current status of an information download (see "Visual Status Icons" on page 2-5)
progress indicator
may display the day, date, and time and may serve as a visual indicator of the progress of a file transfer. The icon below appears incrementally according to the number of bytes being received from the server. When the file transfer is complete, the entire icon ( ) is displayed.

Visual Status Icons

Seven icons may display in the visual status field to indicate an action:

connecting (light off)
attempting to connect to a server
connected (light on)
making a connection to a server
cache
reading data from your disk cache
reading
receiving data from a server
waiting
waiting for a server to provide a document
inlined image
displays if there are inline images in the current document; indicator remains in the window until the image(s) are paginated in the document
CCI
sending or receiving data from an external CCI application (see "Access Authentication" on page 5-12 for more information)