Arachnid Preview Release 1
This is the first preview release of Arachnid, a new web browser I am
developing for the GS. This is something for people to have a look at
and play with, if they're interested. It is an awfully long way from a
completed product. Warning Warning Warning This is a Preview Release.
It's not even Beta quality software. It will crash your GS. It's not a
matter of if, it's a matter of when. Try it out at your own risk. I
don't see any reason why it should damage anything, but if it does, it's
your problem, not mine.

Arachnid requires Marinetti 2.0 installed and set up. You can still view
some local pages if you don't have this, but you won't be able to surf
the net.

Arachnid has been developed and tested on my Rom 1 GS, System 6.01, with
8M Ram, Zip 8/16 and Apple Rev C SCSI card. I would think it would run
on other systems with enough resources to Run System 6 and Marinetti.
Known Bugs Sometimes it sits forever saying it's reading. There's no way
to cancel the process, so you just have to restart.

Sometimes a file comes across the net partially correct, but with a
whole lot of garbage at the end. It then sits forever saying it's
formatting. You have to restart again.

Due to the very limited nature of the html parser in this release, most
pages don't display correctly. Some simple ones will. (At least
sometimes.)

The first time you enter a URL into the toolbar it uses "Negotiating PPP
options" instead of the URL. If you press Go again after it's returned
the not found page, it works correctly. If you enter a URL by choosing
New Web Window... from the file menu this doesn't happen.

Probably many others.
I want to try it anyway
OK. Once you have unshrunk the archive, you should have the Arachnid
folder with the following files:
Arachnid 	- the Application
Arachnid.prefs 	- the preferences file
Cache 		- a folder to hold pages which have been downloaded
Read.Me.Please 	- This file

Double-click on the Arachnid Application. It should open up for you and
display the toolbar. You will need to select preferences from the Edit
menu, and enter the details of your ISP's proxy server. Once you've done
this you can go to the file menu and Choose "Open New Web Window...".
Enter a URL to view. Arachnid should call Marinetti to connect to the
net and download the page. Don't get too frustrated if it doesn't work.
At this point there is no way to cancel a download once you've started
it, so if it fouls up, you'll have to restart if you want to try again.
If you succeeded in getting a page down, it may have some links on it
(shown in yucky purple). You can click on links and it will attempt to
go to those links.

That's about all it does at this point. The next stage of the project is
to rewrite the http transport so that it can reliably receive files, and
the user can cancel the process, rather than having to wait for it to
run it's course. When that part is done there will be another preview
release. Also note that this preview release has a drop dead date built
in. It will not operate after June 30 2000.

Constructive comments and questions are welcome. 

Email: khowe@omninet.net.au

The Arachnid web site is located at:

http://www.omninet.net.au/~khowe/arachnid/index.html.

Arachnid PR1 is copyrighted freeware. It is not public domain.

If anyone would like to contribute to this project, I am in need of the
Toolbox Reference manuals and a parallel card. Any donations towards
these items would be appreciated, and could result in the project being
completed more quickly.