Cyberdog 1.x

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On: 2014-04-14 23:00:15
Updated by: MR
On: 2023-12-23 11:22:30
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What is Cyberdog 1.x?

Cyberdog is a suite of Internet components that allows you to browse the World Wide Web, receive and send e-mail, read articles from Usenet newsgroups, browse AppleTalk zones and servers, exchange files with FTP, and log into other computers with Telnet. Cyberdog provides tight integration between these components, and with other OpenDoc applications. Cyberdog also allows you to customize your use of the Internet. These capabilities make Cyberdog more appropriate for Internet-savvy users.

See also: Cyberdog 2.0OpenDoc 1


Cyberdog is an odd mutt. In fact, looking at Apple’s OpenDoc-based collection of Internet tools and technologies in a quick comparison with the ambitious features of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer might lead you to conclude that Cyberdog is the runt of the litter. Like a lot of runts, though, Cyberdog has great potential.

Cyberdog was originally created to demonstrate the document-centric OpenDoc technology, but when the Internet tsunami hit the computer industry, Apple decided to release Cvberdog as a full-fledged product. Currently, Cyberdog is available for free from Apple’s Web and FTP sites...

Introducing OpenDoc

To understand Cvberdog, you need to understand OpenDoc. OpenDoc and other component software are meant to replace behemoth programs overburdened with features with leaner, meaner computer applications. Component software uses specialized “parts” with only the features needed to perform a certain task. Parts are like mini-applications that work within documents created by “container” applications. For example, you could embed an image-editor part in a document created in a container-application—say, an OpenDoc-aware version of Nisus Writer or Adobe PageMaker — and then use the part to manipulate images within the document. Think of OpenDoc as a sophisticated variation of Photoshop plug-ins but with dynamic and seamless integration across your work. It’s an exciting concept at an awkward adolescent stage.

Using Cyberdog

Once you’ve installed OpenDoc and Cyberdog, the best way to learn how to work with the Cyberdog parts is to open the included OpenDoc container Starting Point. Starting Point functions like a Web home page, with six buttons, each linked to a different Internet resource: Notebook, an address book for URLs; Log, a sortable record of the last 200 resources you visited; Explore, a link to an Apple Web site that explains the Net; Search, a link to the Alta Vista engine; Mail, an E-mail part; and News, a newsgroup part.

The Notebook tool stores addresses for E-mail, the Web, FTP, Telnet, Gopher, and newsgroups. Clicking on an address opens the appropriate Cyberdog part and connects you to that resource. The Notebook isn't particularly strong; there’s no search tool and you can’t crossreference categories. While you can organise your bookmarks into binder-like folders, you can go only one folder deep. Still, it’s likely to be one of the main ways you organize and access your Net addresses. It’s also probably the first part that will be replaced by a third-party commercial product. On Base Technology’s DragNet application... may be available as a Cyberdog part by the time you read this.

Cyberdog’s simple but handy Log keeps a history of the places you visit on the Net, saving them as active links and dropping the oldest links as you visit new sites. You can son the Log by name, time, and site location. If you forget to bookmark a site, its easy to check the Log and drag an address into your Notebook.

The Interface

When you click on a Notebook resource or on one of the buttons in the Starring Point container, Cyberdog opens one of two basic interfaces for accessing Net resources. Web, FTP, and Gopher sites share a simple-to-use browsing window, with contextual menus that change depending on the type of resource you’re browsing.

FTP and Gopher sites appear in the main window with familiar folder-style navigation. The part is well integrated with the Finder, allowing you to drag a resource’s icon onto the Finder's desktop, where it remains an active link. Clicking on a resource opens the Cyberdog browsing interface, making the Net feel like an extension of your hard drive. This kind of integration with the Mac OS makes Cyberdog worth while.

The Web browser uses the same type of window, but Cyberdog displays Web pages more simply than Navigator or Explorer doesn't supports HTML 2.0 standards, with a few additions, including tables and backgrounds, but without the bells and whistles, such as Java, animated GIF89a files, or Netscape-style plug-ins like Macromedia’s Shockwave, Apple plans to support these features in a version due later this summer.

For E-mail and newsgroups, Cyberdog uses a message-based interface. The news reader is functional but plain; it handles messages folder-style, so you can expand and collapse threads. It doesn’t translate binary files as well as other readers, but that’s a minor point for most users.

E-mail is full-featured but doesn’t really take advantage of Open Doc’s strengths. For instance, you can’t embed a Web page in an E-mail message except as a link or an attachment* Since embedding parts in documents is supposed to be a basic function of Open Doc, this is an egregious omission. Still, you can set up E-mail in-boxes for Internet E-mail accounts that use the POP protocol and have Cyberdag check for mail at scheduled intervals* The E-mail part uses the Notebook as an address book—not a particularly robust solution.

The strongest feature of the E-mail and news interfaces is Cyberdog’s “handlers" rules that screen your messages by subject, sender, or body text for special handling, like throwing all E-mail from a particular sender in the Trash. For newsgroups, a handler works as a kill file, screening out specific posters with ease. Handlers work on both incoming and outgoing messages.

Building the Net into Your Files

All the Cyberdog parts — Web browser, FTP, Gopher, E-mail, newsgroups, Notebook, and Log — are functional and decently designed, but OpenDoc’s real strength is its ability to create documents with directly embedded Net resources.

Imagine designing an annual report and embedding live Web pages that chart your up-to-the-minute stock price. Your child could create a term paper with live links to the Library of Congress or a museum. Software companies could ship their products with electronic docs containing FTP links to the latest versions.

Well, Cyberdog ain't there yet. You can get an idea of how it should work by playing with DocBuilder, a small application that comes with Cyberdog, but it's only a very basic drawing tool for creating simple OpenDoc containers for Internet resources that use Cvberdog parts. Until companies offer word processing and page-layout programs that support OpenDoc, we won’t really get the complete component-software experience.

This leads to my biggest complaint about Cyberdog: like OpenDoc, it's just not quite finished. While Apple designed Cyberdog parts to be replaced by more robust third-party tools, none are available. At press time, documentation was at the draft stage. Cyberdog has the feel of a first-generation Apple rechnology — it uses too much RAM, it feels clunky and slow, and certain elements (like DocBuilder and the Starting Point container) look as if a third-grader created them using an old version of HyperCard.

As it stands today, Cyberdog is a skeleton technology waiting to be filled out with third-party products — and that means getting Mac developers to support it. Like a bit of Internet technology, it’s best understood and evaluated as an architecture, a work in progress.

The Last Word

Cyberdog is a five-star concept; it’s where the Net should be headed. Integrating the Internet into the documents we work with and offering Net access across applications using dynamically loaded components seem natural and intuitive. Once again, Apple and the Macintosh are on the leading edge, outpacing Microsoft’s less elegant OLE/ActiveX system. Mix Cyberdog with innovations like Java and the features we'll see in Mac OS 8, and it’ll be a powerhouse way to use the Net.

But as a ready-to-use product, Cyberdog feels incomplete, despite its innovation. With Apple’s track record for launching new technologies, Cyberdog could end up as yet another stray in the Internet pound. While I'd love to take Cyberdog home, I think I’ll wait until this pup is a little more mature.

Hawn, Matthew. (September 1996). Cyberdog. Macworld. (pgs. 56-57).


Download Cyberdog 1.x for Mac

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Architecture


IBM PowerPC



System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5





Compatibility notes

Cyberdog requires a Power Macintosh and at least 16 megabytes of memory. (If less than 16mb of RAM is installed in your computer, use the Memory control panel to turn on Virtual Memory and set the amount of memory to 16M.) Cyberdog also requires System 7.5.3 or later, OpenDoc version 1.1 or later, and MacTCP 2.0.4 or later or Open Transport 1.1 or later with TCP/IP installed and configured.


Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II





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