Navigating With Bobcat
Note: Once you've followed a link, you can always return to
the document you just left by pressing either the 'u' key or the
left-arrow key.
Select a topic
Contents
How to Navigate Using Bobcat
Part 1: How Bobcat Works
Bobcat allows you to perform two of the most basic navigational tasks:
read documents and follow links to
other documents.
When reading a document, hit the space bar when you want to go to the
next screen, and press either the 'b' key or the '-' (minus/hyphen) key
when you want to go back to the previous screen.
Links are pointers which can take you to other documents, or to another
section of an individual document, such as the explanatory notes in the
body of a large document. At the top of this document there is a
table of contents which serves two purposes: first, it informs you what
information this document contains, and second, it provides you with the
ability to jump directly to the section which interests you the most.
Embedded in this sentence is another example of a jump-to link, which
will take you back to the top of the page.
Some documents are merely a list of links. Bobcat's
Bobcat Help! is an example of this type of
document.
Whenever you choose a link, Bobcat moves to a different document, or a
different place in the same document. Even if the document is on a
computer on the other side of the globe, Bobcat will retrieve
it automatically and almost instantaneously--depending, of course, on the
time of day and the number of other people who are trying to access the
document you selected. No matter where you are, the peak time for internet
activity on the extends from approximately noon to midnight.
Part 2: Moving to and Choosing Links
If you don't have Bobcat set to display a bracketed number to the left of
each link, you should--especially if you're using a speech-synthesizer.
To set Bobcat to display numbered links:
- Press 'o' to load the "Bobcat Options Menu"
- Press 'k' to activate the "(K)eypad as Arrows or numbered
links" text-entry field.
- Press any key to change the value of the option from "numbers act as
arrows" to "links are numbered"
- Press the enter key or hit the carriage return.
- Type a '>' (greater-than sign) to save this setting in
the lynxrc file, so that every time you load Bobcat, a bracketed number will
appear to the immediate left of every hyperlink, alerting you to its presence.
To choose a link, simply type the corresponding number, and then hit
either enter or press the carriage return key. Here are a few links for
you to practice on--simply type the number that appears in the brackets
and press enter... Try it, and remember to press either 'u'
or the left-arrow key to return to this page.
You can also navigate from link to link by using the
arrow keys on the keyboard. The up and down arrows move to the next and
to the previous link, respectively. The current link (that is, the link
to which you would be taken if you pressed enter) will be displayed on the
terminal in an easily distinguishable manner--usually in reverse video,
although the actual appearance of the highlighted link depends on the type
of terminal you're using. If you are using speech-synthesis, you
should run Bobcat from the DOS prompt using the -show_cursor
switch, which will force Bobcat to indicate the current link with a
cursor, thereby allowing you to read the hyperlink text with your
screen-reader's "Say-Word" or "Say Line" command.
Once you've reached the link you want to go to, press enter (or hit the
carriage return) to choose that link.
Use the following list of links to practice navigating with the up
and down arrow keys by moving from one link to the other and then
pressing enter (or carriage return) to discover where the highlighted link
leads. Try it, and remember to press either 'u' or the
left-arrow key to return to this page.
Part 3: Online Help
Bobcat has two built-in help features. If you type 'h' or '?', Bobcat will
transport you to the internal Help file (Bcat_hlp.htm).
The second help feature is a list of keystroke commands, which you can
view by pressing 'k'. Try it, and remember to press either 'u'
or the left-arrow key to return to this page.
Part 4: A Short Summary of Some Simple
Bobcat Commands:
- Use the spacebar to move forward through a document
page by page, and use 'b' or '-' (the
minus key) to go back a page.
- Use the up-arrow to move back one link and the
down-arrow or TAB key to move forward
one link.
- Use the Control-P command to scroll backwards two lines
at a time. Control-N will scroll forward two lines.
- You can jump to the top of a document by pressing the HOME
key and the bottom of a document using the END key. These
keystrokes are valid even when Bobcat is set to display links as numbers.
- There are two ways to follow a link:
- If the link is preceded by a bracketed number, simply type the number, and
then press either the carriage return or enter.
- Move to the desired link with the up-arrow or down-arrow keys. When
the link you want to follow is high lit (displayed in reverse video) press
either the carriage return key or enter.
- Once you've followed a link, you can always return to the document you
just left by pressing either the 'u' key or the
left-arrow key.
- To go to a specific site on the web, type 'g'. Bobcat
will display a status-line prompt asking you for the "URL to open:" Type
in the URL of the document you want to load, and then press
<ENTER> or the carriage-return key.
- You can search for a specified text-string in a document by pressing
'/' (the forward slash). To find the next occurrence of the
text-string, press 'n'.
- Whenever you load a searchable index, Bobcat will prompt you to press
either an upper or lower case 's'. If you want to perform a
case-sensitive search, press shift-s; if you want to
perform a case-insensitive search, simply press an
's', and Bobcat will prompt you to "Enter a database
query:" Type in the string for which you want to search, and then press
enter to execute the search.
- If you want hard copy of the current document, press the
'p' key. Pressing 'p' generates the "Print
Options Menu", which will present you with a choice of writing out a copy
of the document to a file, sending it to yourself via email, or printing
it. While email might seem like an odd choice, if you're on a terminal
where you can't print out a copy of the document or can't save it as a
file on your remote home directory, email might be the only way you can
get a copy of the file. It's also a good way to send a copy of a
document to a friend.
- Given the nature of hypertext and the web, it is often difficult to
relocate a resource or a really cool site a couple of days after you first
stumbled across it. To preserve a customized lists of your favorite
links in "bookmark files" follow the following steps:
- Press 'o' to load the "Bobcat Options Menu"
- Press 'b' to activate the "(B)ookmark file" text-entry
field.
- To change the name of the bookmark file from the default,
hotlist.htm, hold down the control key and
press the 'u' key, then type in a filename that
- corresponds to the type of links contained in the file (for example,
news.htm)
- will be easy for you to remember, and
- which ends with an .htm extension
- Press enter or the carriage return key to accept the value you set.
- To exit the Bobcat Options Menu press either 'r', which
signals Bobcat to use the file you just defined as the (B)ookmark file for the
duration of the current session, or '>:' (greater-than),
which instructs Bobcat to use the file you just defined as the default
(B)ookmark file.
- Once you have defined your personal (B)ookmark file, you can save
links in it simply by typing the letter 'a', followed by
either 'd' (to save the currently displayed document),
'l' (to save the highlighted link), or 'c' to
cancel the operation.
- Note: choosing 'l' the is perfect way to save a link that
sounds interesting, but to which Bobcat was unable to connect.)
- Type a lowercase 'v' to view the currently chosen bookmark
file, and use the up and down arrows to move to a desired link.
- Press the Backspace key to view the Visited Links
Page. Use the up and down arrows to move to a desired link, or,
if Bobcat is set to display links as numbers, simply type the number of
the link you wish to follow and press <ENTER>.
- If, for any reason, the screen becomes garbled, hold down the
control key and type 'w' or
'l' to refresh the screen. To reload the current page,
hold down the control key and type 'r'.
- return to Bobcat's Local home page
- return to the Bobcat Help Menu
- return to the beginning of this document
What's the Web Spun From?
Most of the easily accessible information contained on the internet is
based on two technological protocols: hypertext--files marked up
in HTML (hypertext markup language)--and gopher, an information retrieval
protocol developed at the University of Minnesota.
You can find explore the technical underpinnings and inner workings
of the World Wide Web (WWW or W3 for short) at the following
sites:
An excellent indication of the networked nature of the Web is that the
documents listed above are located on computers in Switzerland and
Illinois.
This hypertext document was created for Bobcat by Gregory J. Rosmaita,
electronic archivist and webmaster for The BLINUX Documentation and Development Project and
BLYNX: a site dedicated to
speech-friendly documentation for blind and visually impaired Lynx users.
comments? criticism? corrections? suggestions?
email: bobcat@fdisk.com
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