OmniWeb
Netscape offers two ways to open a URL. The field that displays the URL of the current page loaded is editable, so one can simply replace the current text in the field and press enter to go to the desired URL. Another way to load a URL is to go to the File Open Location panel, or the hot key Control-L, and type in the URL.
To open an arbitrary URL, the user must press the 'g' key. She must then type in the complete URL. The specified location is then loaded. Once again, this is a fairly natural way of doing the task. It does not involved any mouse movements or dialog boxes, so the task is completed more quickly.
Mosaic offers essentially the same options as Netscape. However, there is one annoying addition, in that the panel that comes up to type in a URL has some values filled in from a pull-down list. This is very confusing, and not that easy to use, since the field must first be cleared.
Opening an arbitrarily chosen URL in OmniWeb can be accomplished in several different ways depending on the context. If the URL is in some other document or application, a news article for example, the user just highlights the text and then chooses Services OmniWebOpen URL (or command-U, if available). If necessary, OmniWeb is launched, and then the URL is loaded.
If the URL is not in another document, the user can either press the open button on the main screen, or choose File Open Location from the menu. The desired address is entered into the dialog box, and then loaded.
The method of selecting text from another document is incredibly useful when referencing URLs from another non-HTML source. It is clearly much quicker to press Command-U than to have to go through a rigamarole of copy-pastes and manual start-ups of the hypertext application.