NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows User Guide: Tips and Tricks


Modem Optimization
Using a modem to connect to the Internet is fairly common, and the speed of your modem is important. NCSA recommends you use a minimum of a 14.4 modem, which is fast but has performance limitations. A 14.4 modem can only transfer 14,400 bits or 1,800 bytes of data per second.
To improve your modems performance optimize it according to the modem manufacture's instructions and use the modem's built-in data compression.
Because most hypertext documents contain inline images that tend to be larger files, you must choose between images and speed:
- displaying the HTML file without images achieves maximum speed but sacrifices the initial visual impact of pages (you can always retrieve images later)
- displaying HTML files with inline images impacts performance but improves the initial visual impact of pages
You can use Mosaic options help improve performance. Select Preferences... on the Options menu; then choose the menu indicated below.
Document Menu
- Display Text While Loading
- Displays the HTML or ASCII data as it is being downloaded.
- Display Images While Loading
- Displays the inline images as soon as they are received.
- Display inline images
- Turns off display of inline images. (Excessive time to download and display large or multiple inline images is sometimes blamed on NCSA Mosaic; however, the long delays are actually due to modem limitations.)
Cache Menu
The disk cache caches multiple documents and images to disk. Select the various options as shown below to maximize your performance while using a modem. See "Viewers" on page 4-19 for more information.
- Enable
- Check this option
- Fast Image Caching
- Check this option
- Check Modification Date from Server
- Select Once per session
- Size (KB)
- Enter the amount of disk space you want Mosaic to use for disk caching (1024 KB = 1 MB)
- Disk Cache
- Caches multiple documents and images to disk.

