Using a BBC on the Internet        
      Using a BBC on the Internet        
                                         
     A few answers, but more questions   
              By Chris Richardson        
                                         
  As many of you may already know, I     
  maintain an internet website for 8BS.  
                                         
  There are many things on it that       
  advertise 8BS.                         
                                         
  Things such as animated pictures of    
  rotating BBCs, sounds of BBC being     
  switched on, the 8BS advert, the 8BS   
  catalogue, articles and many other     
  things.                                
                                         
  HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) pages 
  that make up a website are actually    
  just plain text full of commands that  
  tell the PC 'web browser' software how 
  to present the information.            
                                         
  It is obvious from this that it is a   
  very simple thing for a BBC to read    
  these HTML pages. Simply strip out the 
  commands (that are surrounded by       
  chevrons <>) and you are left with     
  plain text.                            
                                         
  Sprow sent a ROM that does this (on    
  this issue). I wrote a very simple     
  Basic program that does it too as a    
  demo for those that cannot use the ROM.
                                         
  A PC web browser loads the whole page  
  in and then you can read up and down it
  by scrolling the page. The page is     
  usually covered in 'hypertext' links.  
  These can be a word, series of words or
  even a picture that when clicked on,   
  something that has been defined to     
  happen will happen. Usually this will  
  be a link to another part of the page, 
  another page or another website. It    
  could also be a file to download or a  
  program to run or a tune to play and so
  on.                                    
                                         
  I would dearly like to be able to use  
  my BBC on the internet.                
                                         
  Unfortunately I see a number of        
  obstacles. Firstly, I have an internet 
  connection, but there are loads of     
  protocols that need to be observed and 
  passwords to pass, I have not the first
  idea how these would be passed. Code   
  would have to be written to do this job
  to dial up and log on.                 
                                         
  Secondly, some HTML files are huge, so 
  it would not be a simple case of       
  reading the file into memory and then  
  scrolling up and down it. Saving it to 
  disc may not work either as I could see
  a file being larger than a BBC floppy  
  disc capacity. So unless a hard drive  
  is used, that only leaves the  'read it
  as it goes by your nose' option which  
  is not the ideal situation (but better 
  than none).                            
                                         
  Thirdly Hypertext. This could be       
  implemented fairly easily as the BBC   
  browser would only act on the few      
  commands that it could do something    
  about. Mainly download files and jumps 
  to other pages. The problem here is,   
  when would the link be presented?      
                                         
  1. As it appears on the screen? Maybe  
     you want to read the rest of the    
     text first though.                  
  2. At the end? Then it might be out of 
     context and you may have forgotten  
     what it was about.                  
                                         
  Search Engines!                        
  There are very important things on the 
  internet called search engines. If you 
  don't use a search engine, you could   
  flounder around on the internet going  
  nowhere and wasting loads of time.     
                                         
  Someone like myself who wants people to
  visit the 8BS website will visit many  
  different search engines, submitting my
  internet address.                      
                                         
  The search engine software will then   
  visit the 8BS website and put some of  
  the words from the site into its       
  database.                              
                                         
  Imagine Joe Bloggs comes along and     
  wants to find 8BS. He puts a search    
  into that search engine, something like
  '8-Bit Software'. The search engine    
  looks through its database for         
  occurrences of those words and presents
  a list of internet addresses where     
  those words appear. Other combinations 
  of words such as BBC and Master will   
  bring up a wide variety of results too.
                                         
  So, how would a BBC be able to use a   
  search engine?                         
                                         
  Then there is Email. How would that be 
  handled?                               
                                         
  Remember, that to get on to the        
  internet you must first find an        
  internet provider that you will have to
  pay. They then give you a phone number 
  and series of codes and passwords that 
  you use to log on to the internet      
  through their server.