Gibraltar

Web Client Specification

Note: Generally, this project is not being discussed under NDA with any accounts or third parties.
Should you require permission to discuss this with a particular organization outside the company,
please contact the author.

Revision: 0.1
Date: April 12, 1995
Author(s): J. Allard (JAllard)
Document: client.doc

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1. OVERVIEW..................................................................................................................................................

2. REQUIRED CHANGES..............................................................................................................................
HYPERLINK SPECIFICATION.................................................................................................................................
EDIT->PREFERENCES DIALOG REWORK..............................................................................................................
EDIT->GATEWAY CONFIGURATION... DIALOG ADDITION....................................................................................
MENU WORK.......................................................................................................................................................
KILL MULTI-WINDOW MANAGEMENT..................................................................................................................
KILL NEWS READER FUNCTIONALITY..................................................................................................................
KILL HELP->ABOUT->SUPPORT..........................................................................................................................
CHANGE HISTORY CONTROL...............................................................................................................................
MIME........................................................................................................................................................
ADD GOPHERSPACE ADMIN CAPABILITIES..........................................................................................................
CLEANUP ERROR MESSAGES...............................................................................................................................
ADD HELP BUTTONS TO ALL DIALOGS...............................................................................................................
FIX MINIMIZE BEHAVIOR.....................................................................................................................................
CHANGE APPLICATION NAME “MICROSOFT MOSAIC CLIENT”............................................................................
3. RECOMMENDED CHANGES..................................................................................................................
SYNCHRONIZE TOOLBAR W/ O’HARE..................................................................................................................
FIX FILE ACCESS TO URL PATHS..........................................................................................................................
ADD CONTEXT MENU SUPPORT..........................................................................................................................
ADD PERSISTENT CACHING SUPPORT..................................................................................................................
SUPPORT FOR HTML3.0......................................................................................................................................
ADD “KIOSK” MODE...........................................................................................................................................
KILL FILE->PAGE SETUP.....................................................................................................................................
EDIT->VIEW SOURCE..........................................................................................................................................
REPLACE (IMAGE) PLACEHOLDER.....................................................................................................................
PRINT STATUS DIALOG........................................................................................................................................
NEW “SPLASHSCREEN”.......................................................................................................................................
REPLACE SPINNING GLOBE.................................................................................................................................
4. O’HARE CATAPULT ENHANCEMENTS...............................................................................................

5. OPEN ISSUES..............................................................................................................................................

6. REVISION HISTORY.................................................................................................................................

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Microsoft Confidential
1 Overview
This document outlines the changes necessary to the SpyGlass 2.0 codedrop to ship WfW and NT 3.x
clients for Gibraltar. This is not a complete functional specification for the Gibraltar client, it simply
represents the deltas from the SpyGlass 2.0 reference base. You may pick up the SpyGlass 2.0 reference
drop from \\tcpip\spyglass for your reference. The specified functionality will be broken down into
components that the usability group feel must be changed, versus minor changes that would better
represent the quality of the product. This latter section is presented (roughly) in priority order - although
customer feedback should help drive the priorities here. The goal of this document is to present as
complete a view as possible of the required changes to prepare the client for product.

Although the author agrees that investing as little time as possible on “throwaway” code is a good goal, it
should be recognized that the product will be reviewed/perceived based on the quality and functionality of
the client application in many cases. With this in mind, we should consider implementing the most useful,
simple and leveraged non-requirements wherever appropriate. It is assumed that the Win95/O’hare team
is responsible for the “premier” Web browser and future innovations and that they will provide a catapult-
compatible version of their web client compatible with Win95, the NT shell release and future versions of
both products.

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2 Required Changes
This section outlines the changes which the author and usability team agree are necessary to make before
shipping the product.

HyperLink Specification
Motivation: Usability Compliance (necessary for the colorblind/vision impaired)
Work item(s): Make hyperlinks a different font in addition to alternate, underlined color as default
Add checkbox to Edit->Preferences to optionally disable alternate font use (see
Preferences dialog design below)
Change cursor when passing over hyperlinks
Estimated cost:
Notes:

Edit->Preferences Dialog Rework

Motivation: Windows/Microsoft Application Compliance
Work item(s): Replace dialog (see notes)
Estimated cost:
Notes: This new dialog brings the user preferences into Windows/Microsoft application
compliance. The alternate font will be predefined - e.g., the user will not have control
over which font is used. The hyperlink colors will be limited to the Windows 16 color
standard palette a la Word. Except for the Startup Home Page, the default values are
presented here.

Issue: Do we want to add the ability to configure the duration for visited hyperlinks?

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Edit->Gateway Configuration... Dialog Addition
Motivation: Catapult configuration requirement
Work item(s): Add one new dialog (see notes)
Estimated cost:
Notes: This dialog permits the user to configure and/or discover Microsoft Internet Server
gateway(s) and provide a list of local servers which will be access directly rather than
through the proxy. Pressing the Discover... button will pop up the same dialog used in
the Internet Server admin tool while it goes to the network to discover the server(s). No
defaults will be present in this dialog.

Issue: do we want to retain the ability to go through a CERN-style proxy in this dialog?
Note: this dialog probably needs some additional work

Menu Work
Motivation: O’Hare Compliance, simplification
Work item(s): Delete many items, reposition/rename others (see notes)
Estimated cost:
Notes: The menu structure should look like this:

File Edit View

Open... Ctrl+O Cut Ctrl+X ü Toolbar
Save As... Ctrl+S Copy Ctrl+C ü Location
--------------------------- Paste Ctrl+V ü Status Bar
Print... Ctrl+P --------------------------- ----------------------------
Page Setup... Select All Ctrl+A Fonts ð Small
--------------------------- --------------------------- ü Show Images Medium
Exit Alt+F4 Find... Ctrl+F ---------------------------- üLarge
Find Next F3 Reload Ctrl+R ---------
Load images Ctrl+L Plain
Stop loading Ctrl+O Fancy
ü Mixed

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The Fonts submenu allows us to get rid of the concept of style sheets in the preferences dialog and
complies with the O’Hare client. We also get rid of Print Setup, Open Local, Cut, Helpers, Home, and all
of the Window menu.

Help
Tools Contents
Back Ctrl+B Index
Forward ----------------------------
------------------------------- About Microsoft Mosaic...
History ð
Favorites ð Global ð Microsoft’s Web Server
Add Favorite Submenu... The WhiteHouse
------------------------------- Lycos Information Server
Add to Favorites Ctrl+D Novell Corp.
-------------------------------
Security ð ü Cache Passwords
Preferences... Clear Password Cache

The Favorites menu will initially have one submenu called Global. The user can add named submenus
through the Add Favorite Submenu option. This permits a user to manage the 100’s of sites they might
visit in some organized fashion. Without the hierarchy, saving favorites would become useless after ~30
items for most users. When more than one Favorites submenu exists, the user will be asked to choose
which submenu to add the favorite to when selecting the Add to Favorites menu option.

Kill Multi-window management

Motivation: Windows Compliance
Work item(s): Remove File->New Window item
Remove Window menu
Remove File->Close item
Estimated cost:
Notes: The current SpyGlass multi-window model is completely non-standard

Kill news reader functionality

Motivation: Dead weight/not supported under Catapult
Work item(s): Kill all news stuff in browser
Estimated cost:

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Kill Help->About->Support
Motivation: Microsoft Application Compliance
Work item(s): Remove Help->About->Support button and dialog resources
Estimated cost:
Notes: This just isn’t the way it works in Redmond - if we want to, we can replace with the
common Microsoft System Info dialog, but I don’t really think it’s that important.

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Change History Control
Motivation: Microsoft application compliance
Work item(s): Minor rework of dialog
Provide access to dialog through Alt+Tab
Estimated cost:
Notes:

Current SpyGlass 2.0 History dialog

Suggested History replacement dialog

This dialog adds the ability to add a history item to the favorites list and labels the controls.

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MIME
Motivation: Catapult Compliance
Work item(s): Kill all helper anything in the application
Adapt browser to use MIME APIs and to launch applications based on that
Consider adding a hook to a menu to launch the control panel
MIME control panel development
Estimated cost:
Notes: Per-application helper/MIME configuration is bad

Add GopherSpace Admin Capabilities

Motivation: Required for Gopher administration
Work item(s): Add context (right-click) menu for gopher links
Add document context menu to add new gopher links
Add Gopher Item dialog support
Hook to Gopher RPC API
Estimated cost:
Notes: We need some mechanism to permit the administrator to alter the names of gopher items
and to create links to other gopher servers. This is probably the easiest way to
accomplish this rather than implementing a new tool. Proposed dialog:

to be specified

Cleanup Error Messages

Motivation: Microsoft application compliance
Work item(s): Work through all error messages and reporting and clean it up
Estimated cost:
Notes: Example:

means “you need to configure the anonymous user password in your .ini file”.

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Add Help Buttons to all Dialogs
Motivation: Microsoft Application Compliance
Work item(s): File->Open...
File->Save As...
File->Print...
Edit->Find...
Edit->View Source...
Tools->Add Favorites Submenu...
Tools->Preferences...
Estimated cost:
Notes: This also implies adding HelpID’s in dialogs if they are not present for context-sensitive
help.

Fix Minimize Behavior

Motivation: Windows Compliance
Work item(s): Minimize should drop the application to a single icon which represents the application
and identifies the title of the current document.
Estimated cost:
Notes: Presently two or more icons drop (one for the application, one for each window). Also,
the minimize behavior yeilds odd results on the Win95/newshell.

Change Application Name “Microsoft Mosaic Client”

Motivation: Consistency/branding
Work item(s): Replace instances of “enhanced Mosaic” or “SpyGlass” as appropriate
Estimated cost:

Issue: This name is not final. Marketing needs to decide this.

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3 Recommended changes

Synchronize Toolbar w/ O’Hare

Motivation: Microsoft Application/O’Hare Compliance, documentation and support simplification
Work item(s): Synchronize toolbar icons with O’Hare
Use tooltips on buttons rather than in status bar
Estimated cost:
Notes: O’Hare team has reworked toolbar, added Microsoft-style tooltips and changed names
for some of the concepts (e.g., “hotlist” to “favorites”):

O’Hare browser toolbar w/ tooltips

Spyglass 2.0 browser toolbar using status bar

Fix File access to URL paths

Motivation: Customer Request/Microsoft strategy
Work item(s): Investigate current FILE:// codepath
Consider adding new method type URL://
Estimated cost:
Notes: This is an extremely useful feature for internal organization Webs or for the Web/content
administrator. Presently, SpyGlass does some funky stuff with FILE:// access and it is
unclear how this should be used. We should clean this up and make it natural for people
to access HTML files using Mosaic in conjunction with SMBs.

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Add Context Menu Support
Motivation: Microsoft application consistency
Work item(s): Add context (right click) menu for links (necessary for gopherspace admin anyway)
Add Copy URL... option
Add Add to Favorites... option
Add Preferences... and Print... options when clicked on document rather than link

Estimated cost:
Notes: The ability to copy a URL to the clipboard to email or store somewhere other than the
favorites list is very important. This implementation is consistent with other Microsoft
applications

Add Persistent Caching Support

Motivation: Customer request
Work item(s): Add persistent cache support
Add configurability of cache (e.g., number of documents, directory name, max size of
cache)
Estimated cost:
Notes: Enable the application to do local caching of documents to improve performance and
allow mobile users to work effectively offline

Support for HTML3.0

Motivation: Customer Request
Work item(s): Sync up with O’hare code
Added test hit
Estimated cost:
Notes: A number of extremely useful features such as tables and custom backgrounds have been
introduced by NetScape in HTML3.0. These features are in use on many servers already
and will be even more prevalent by the time we ship.

Add “Kiosk” Mode

Motivation: Customer Request
Work item(s): Disable configurability of application
Allow replacement of progman.exe with Mosaic
Restore home page after some configurable inactivity timeout
Estimated cost:
Notes: Several customers requested this feature at Internet World to allow them to setup
workgroup or lobby kiosks for access to public information. Requests came from
libraries, universities, and large businesses equally.

Kill File->Page Setup

Motivation: Microsoft application consistency
Work item(s): Kill page setup menu item and associated dialogs
Create unobtrusive defaults
Estimated cost:
Notes: This is simply a lame dialog. If the application printed worth a damn, we could consider
keeping it. The only thing I’d keep is the ability to optionally do page numbering if
there’s a simple way to do it and a smart place to put it.

Edit->View Source
Motivation: Nice debugging feature for Web server administrators to check the contents of a
document
Work item(s): Add Copy button
Estimated cost:

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Notes: If we do not add a Copy button to this feature (a la Microsoft multimedia titles), we
should just kill it.

Replace (IMAGE) placeholder

Motivation: Usability/O’Hare consistency
Work item(s): Change behavior from always presenting the user with an (IMAGE) placeholder to
something more meaningful (e.g., MAP, or the image name when known)
Estimated cost:
Notes: Can probably pick usp O’Hare work

Print Status Dialog

Motivation: Windows application compliance
Work item(s): Clean up this dialog as simply as possible to make it more standard and less goofy
Estimated cost:
Notes:

New “SplashScreen”
Motivation: Microsoft branding
Work item(s): Replace SpyGlass bitmap
Estimated cost:
Notes: If we opt not to change this, we should kill it. If we don’t do something about the boot
time of the application, it is probably worth considering.

Replace Spinning Globe

Motivation: Microsoft branding/usability
Work item(s): Replace globe bitmaps with some from the design group
Estimated cost:
Notes: Might be useful to have different progress indicators depending on whether it is local or
catapult access to the resource. Some BSD derived image would be cool.

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4 O’hare Catapult enhancements
This section will detail the minor enhancements necessary to make O’Hare “catapult friendly”

To be specified

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5 Open Issues
· Haven’t investigated FTP
· Haven’t investigated Gopher
· Is there Unicode/DBCS work to do?
· Investigate memory usage (e.g., 5.5mb working set?)
· I don’t understand what the Security menu items do on the browser - what are we going to do about
this?
· Need to add the ability to force an item out of catapult cache.... (this could just be a reload?)
· Have not extensively reviewed NCSA Mosaic and NetScape for key features or control
synchronization
· .ini file configuration options not exposed in UI that we should investigate:
· Custom URL menu (useful for pointing to Microsoft resources)
· Document caching
· Image caching
· Anchor visitation horizon (expiry of visited links)
· History expiry
· Temporary directory/kill temp files on exit
· Help file pointer to local HTML file
· Disk cache

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6 Revision history
Version Author Notes
0.1 Jallard Initial draft

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