WebCommando Moves In
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by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
Netscape plug-ins are all the rage these days (see Jeff Carlson's
MailBIT above), stuffing multimedia features galore into the
overburdened Netscape Navigator browser window. We've got
Shockwave playing Director movies, Amber displaying PDF documents,
and a host of QuickTime and PlainTalk plug-ins that only work on
the Mac.
In all this multimedia fuss, a small group of students at
Linkoping University in Sweden are fighting back with a new type
of plug-in for Netscape. You know how Netscape is attempting to
turn Navigator into an operating system in its own right? Well,
the new WebCommando plug-in takes that one step further, providing
a full Unix-based command-line interface within Netscape
Navigator's browser window.
Finally! Enough frothy movies and scratchy sounds! Now you can get
back to basics with such long-time Unix favorites as ls and cd.
Worried about Java applets deleting files? I'd worry more about
accidently typing "rm *" in WebCommando. As an added bonus,
WebCommando has a couple of Web-specific features. You can grep
the contents of Yahoo and Alta Vista with it, and if you need to
test a Web page, you can even run Lynx within WebCommando.
Pining for pine? Anxious for awk? Sighing for sed? WebCommando is
the answer. Installation is a breeze - you just download the
plug-in and put it in the plug-ins folder. Make sure Netscape
Navigator has at least 32 MB allotted to it and that the disk
cache is set to 80 MB, and launch Navigator. The requirements may
seem a little steep, but remember that you're running Unix,
actually a variant of Linux, within Netscape Navigator.