a sub-program of ArcWeb that is used to actually get the pages - ArcWeb is purely a display program and knows nothing about how to get the pages - it just sends out a message and any fetcher that is loaded and supports the required protocol gets the page and returns it to ArcWeb for display - thus it is possible to use FTP and Gopher through ArcWeb as well as the more obvious HTTP - there is also the special Local fetcher for getting pages stored on your hard disc