The basis of my dissatisfaction is that all on-ramp products have three separate components: a TCP/IP protocol stack, a dialer to call your Internet service provider and negotiate the login sequence, and the actual applications themselves such as a Web browser, email and news readers, and file transfer protocol (lower-case ftp) tools. The level of integration among these three components is lacking for both Emissary and Explore, and you'll need to install various components depending on which version of Windows you use and how it is configured.
The first problem is figuring out which version of the software you'll need: Emissary can be used in both LAN and dial-up situations, and comes in a desktop and office versions, the latter with more functionality. Explore is just for dial-up connections: if you require LAN connections, you'll need either Explore Anywhere or its bigger brother On Net.
I set out to see how easy both products were to install on bothWindows NT Server 3.5.1 and Windows95 and be up and running on a variety of Internet service providers. While I liked Emissary's documentation, nothing is mentioned about NT or Win95 specifically, and Explore's information is somewhat misleading.
Another issue is that while both products go a long way towards making installation and configuraton easier, it isn't a complete cakewalk. First off, Windows support for TCP/IP is implemented differently between NT and Win95. While Microsoft includes its IP stack in both operating systems, it is a different piece of software and interacts differently with the on-ramp applications. Emissary doesn't include any IP stack (and if you want to use Wollongong's IP stack instead of Microsoft's, you'll need to install the bundled copy of the company's Pathway Runtime). Explore comes with its own IP stack, but won't install it if it detects someone else's already running. That is an exemplary feature. None of this stack stuff is well explained in either product, and I had problems getting both products installed on NT, but did get both to work eventually.
Second, dialing is done differently in each Windows product. In NT, dialing a remote computer is handled by Remote Access Software and all login scripts are stored in a file called SWITCH.INF. Win95 has its own dial-up application and each script is contained in separate files, not to mention that Win95 scripting syntax differs from NT. Emissary and Explore come with their own dialing routines, but you first need to install their respective IP stacks. None of this explained in either product's manuals.
Explore comes with two ready-made registration routines to connect to the Internet via both Portal Information Network and MCI, and also supports ISDN connections to other providers. However, if you don't install the FTP Software IP stack you won't get access to either the registration routines or ISDN connections. Emissary comes with no pre-registered providers nor supports ISDN connections in its dialer.
Let me move on to the actual applications. Emissary's manual is slim, exceptionally well-written, and will take you on a quick tour of the product's features. This manual is essential to understanding what the product does, because Wollongong has attempted to do something very different from other on-ramp software makers: instead of throwing together a variety of applications in a single box, they have rewritten them to make use of a single interface which looks much like Windows95's Explorer. No matter whether you want to surf the Web, connect to a gopher site, or transfer files, you use the same interface and series of mouse movements to do the job. Many actions can be accomplished by dragging something from one window pane to another, and after some help from the manual they begin to be intuitive, especially for a new user who doesn't know the difference between the Web and email.
You can customize this interface, for example assign actions to particular buttons, quite readily. And Emissary's email module has the ability to filter and file messages, like what Lotus' cc:Mail and other products offer. One nice feature is the ability to click on a Universal Resource Locator (URL) in your email message and directly connect to the resource. So if your friends send you mail with locations of web sites, for example, you can easily browse them with just a click of the mouse.
Speaking of the web, neither Explore's Mosaic web browser or Emissary's web component yet support the Netscape table tags. Emissary's browser also has one glaring omission: the ability to supress the display of graphics, and speed up data transfer of complex web pages. The company indicated that this will be available in a future release.
Explore's manuals are slim, poorly written, and don't really provide you with much information. The product itself is still very much in the old school of knowing what you want to do before choosing a particular Internet application.
Some niceities: Explore and the Emissary Office (but not Desktop) edition both come with a file transfer protocol (ftp) server application. Both products allow you to view images and files directly by clicking them, although I liked the way the viewer was integrated in Emissary better. Overall, I wished I could take the integration of Emissary and some bits and pieces from Explore and combine them into a single product.
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David Strom
Port Washington, NY 11050 USA
+1 (516) 944-3407