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SlipKnot (web browser)
Encyclopedia
SlipKnot was one of the earliest World Wide Web
browsers
, available to Microsoft Windows
users between November 1994 and January 1998. It was created by Peter Brooks of MicroMind, Inc. to provide a fully graphical view of the web for users without a SLIP
or other TCP/IP connection to the net, hence the name - SLIP...not. SlipKnot provided a graphical web experience through what would otherwise be a text-only Unix shell account. SlipKnot version 1.0 was released on November 22, 1994, approximately 3 weeks before Netscape's Netscape Navigator
version 1.0 came out. It was designed to serve a significant fraction of PC/Windows-based Internet
users who could not use Mosaic
or Netscape at that time. (Internet Explorer
was released in the following year after SlipKnot, in August 1995.)
s with their employers' Unix
machines or with commercial UNIX ISP
s (e.g. Netcom
). They would run a terminal emulator
program on their PCs, temporarily turning the machines into black screen terminals
, dial into the Unix server, and then run text-based internet software such as pine
and elm
for e-mail
, gopher for file retrieval, and lynx or www
for a text-based browsing experience of the new World Wide Web. While this text-based browsing was fine while web pages were text-only, Mosaic changed the browser and web-page landscape in 1993 by displaying and therefore encouraging graphical, multimedia and multifont web pages. It also pioneered the point-and-click navigation for web browsing that had been a standard for prior hypertext
applications, like Windows Help.
Mosaic had been developed by university programmers who had access to full TCP/IP connections and high-speed transmissions. This was evident in the design of the program—for instance, after clicking on a hypertext link, the user had to wait until all parts of the page had been retrieved by the browser before anything showed on the screen. High-speed connections allowed TCP/IP's ability to do multiple retrievals at once, and for the delay between the user's request for a page and its appearance to be short. Therefore, not only could Mosaic not be used by most home users because of their lack of TCP/IP connections, but even if they had TCP/IP, the low speed of home modem
s would bring out the problems in the Mosaic design for slower speed connections (typically 9600 and 14.4k baud
).
In 1994, some ISPs started to offer TCP/IP connections via dial-in modems, with protocols like SLIP
and PPP
. But this was leading-edge technology, and so it was extraordinarily difficult to set up and maintain a home TCP/IP connection. Therefore, a large fraction of home users were stuck with dial-up Unix shell connections, and could not use Mosaic, or Netscape, or any of the other TCP/IP-based browsers that business- and academia-based users enjoyed.
Having seen Mosaic late in 1993 and been captivated by its potential, Peter Brooks set out in April 1994 to create a fully graphic, multifont web browser for home PC users.
in November 1994, thus making
it the first purchasable browser on the market. Its name is a play on the term slip knot
(a type of knot) against SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) -- an early version of TCP/IP over modem lines—and not after the fact that, unlike Mosaic and Netscape browser offerings, a SLIP connection was not necessary to view graphical web content.
SlipKnot was given the Best Communications Shareware Program of 1995 Award by Ziff-Davis and was runner-up for the Best Overall Shareware Program of 1995.
By mid-1996 when further development ceased, the majority of home internet users were able to obtain TCP/IP connections that were easy to install, and all new internet software development was dependent upon that protocol.
, and its user interface
in Visual Basic
. Because it had only a Unix commandline to communicate with, it "drove" the Unix host by sending characters to its commandline as if a person were typing them (as a "bot"). First, SlipKnot would request the retrieval of individual parts of a desired web page—the text, and then each picture—into files on the Unix host. This was done by executing the text-based web browser "lynx" on the Unix host with command-line arguments indicating which URL
to retrieve, and the filename to create on the Unix host when the data was finally retrieved. This retrieval, from web page host to Unix host, was usually very fast, since these machines were connected by high speed communications lines. After the URL contents were moved to the Unix host, they had to be moved down to the PC. This was done by executing the communications program zmodem
(sending the zmodem command to the Unix command-line) and then instantly placing the PC into receive mode.
Once the text (HTML
) portion of a web page had been retrieved (it was always retrieved first), the page would be displayed by SlipKnot and could be read by the user, after which the pictures
were retrieved in the background and eventually the page fixed up to display them.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
browsers
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
, available to Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
users between November 1994 and January 1998. It was created by Peter Brooks of MicroMind, Inc. to provide a fully graphical view of the web for users without a SLIP
Slip
- In science and technology :* Slip , an aqueous suspension of minerals, and frequently deflocculant.* Slip , a positional displacement in a sequence of transmitted symbols...
or other TCP/IP connection to the net, hence the name - SLIP...not. SlipKnot provided a graphical web experience through what would otherwise be a text-only Unix shell account. SlipKnot version 1.0 was released on November 22, 1994, approximately 3 weeks before Netscape's Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
version 1.0 came out. It was designed to serve a significant fraction of PC/Windows-based Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
users who could not use Mosaic
Mosaic (web browser)
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
or Netscape at that time. (Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
was released in the following year after SlipKnot, in August 1995.)
History
In 1994 and 1995, the majority of home PC users who were interested in accessing the World Wide Web had to do so using terminal-based software. These users usually had dial-up shell accountShell account
A shell account is a user account on a remote server which gives access to a shell via a command-line interface protocol such as telnet or ssh....
s with their employers' Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
machines or with commercial UNIX ISP
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s (e.g. Netcom
Netcom (USA)
NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc. was an Internet service provider headquartered in San Jose, California.It was established in 1988 by Bob Rieger, an information systems engineer for Lockheed and Bill Gitow of System V. Netcom started off in San Jose, California as a service to allow...
). They would run a terminal emulator
Terminal emulator
A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture....
program on their PCs, temporarily turning the machines into black screen terminals
Unix shell
A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...
, dial into the Unix server, and then run text-based internet software such as pine
Pine (e-mail client)
Pine is a freeware, text-based email client developed at the University of Washington. The first version of this client was written in 1989. Source code was available for only the Unix version under a license written by the University of Washington...
and elm
Elm (e-mail client)
Elm, is a text-based email client commonly found on Unix systems. It became popular as one of the first email clients to use a text user interface, and as a utility with freely-available source code. The name elm originated from the phrase ELectronic Mail.Dave Taylor developed elm while working...
for e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, gopher for file retrieval, and lynx or www
Line-mode browser
The Line Mode Browser is the second web browser ever created.The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable to several different operating systems....
for a text-based browsing experience of the new World Wide Web. While this text-based browsing was fine while web pages were text-only, Mosaic changed the browser and web-page landscape in 1993 by displaying and therefore encouraging graphical, multimedia and multifont web pages. It also pioneered the point-and-click navigation for web browsing that had been a standard for prior hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
applications, like Windows Help.
Mosaic had been developed by university programmers who had access to full TCP/IP connections and high-speed transmissions. This was evident in the design of the program—for instance, after clicking on a hypertext link, the user had to wait until all parts of the page had been retrieved by the browser before anything showed on the screen. High-speed connections allowed TCP/IP's ability to do multiple retrievals at once, and for the delay between the user's request for a page and its appearance to be short. Therefore, not only could Mosaic not be used by most home users because of their lack of TCP/IP connections, but even if they had TCP/IP, the low speed of home modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
s would bring out the problems in the Mosaic design for slower speed connections (typically 9600 and 14.4k baud
Baud
In telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a...
).
In 1994, some ISPs started to offer TCP/IP connections via dial-in modems, with protocols like SLIP
Slip
- In science and technology :* Slip , an aqueous suspension of minerals, and frequently deflocculant.* Slip , a positional displacement in a sequence of transmitted symbols...
and PPP
Point-to-Point Protocol
In networking, the Point-to-Point Protocol is a data link protocol commonly used in establishing a direct connection between two networking nodes...
. But this was leading-edge technology, and so it was extraordinarily difficult to set up and maintain a home TCP/IP connection. Therefore, a large fraction of home users were stuck with dial-up Unix shell connections, and could not use Mosaic, or Netscape, or any of the other TCP/IP-based browsers that business- and academia-based users enjoyed.
Having seen Mosaic late in 1993 and been captivated by its potential, Peter Brooks set out in April 1994 to create a fully graphic, multifont web browser for home PC users.
Browser
SlipKnot version 1.0 was completed and released as sharewareShareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
in November 1994, thus making
it the first purchasable browser on the market. Its name is a play on the term slip knot
Slip knot
A slip knot is one of two different classes of knot. The most common are knots which attach a line to an object and tighten when tension is applied to the free end of the line...
(a type of knot) against SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) -- an early version of TCP/IP over modem lines—and not after the fact that, unlike Mosaic and Netscape browser offerings, a SLIP connection was not necessary to view graphical web content.
SlipKnot was given the Best Communications Shareware Program of 1995 Award by Ziff-Davis and was runner-up for the Best Overall Shareware Program of 1995.
By mid-1996 when further development ceased, the majority of home internet users were able to obtain TCP/IP connections that were easy to install, and all new internet software development was dependent upon that protocol.
Technical
SlipKnot's rendering engine was written in CC (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
, and its user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
in Visual Basic
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
. Because it had only a Unix commandline to communicate with, it "drove" the Unix host by sending characters to its commandline as if a person were typing them (as a "bot"). First, SlipKnot would request the retrieval of individual parts of a desired web page—the text, and then each picture—into files on the Unix host. This was done by executing the text-based web browser "lynx" on the Unix host with command-line arguments indicating which URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
to retrieve, and the filename to create on the Unix host when the data was finally retrieved. This retrieval, from web page host to Unix host, was usually very fast, since these machines were connected by high speed communications lines. After the URL contents were moved to the Unix host, they had to be moved down to the PC. This was done by executing the communications program zmodem
ZMODEM
ZMODEM is a file transfer protocol developed by Chuck Forsberg in 1986, in a project funded by Telenet in order to improve file transfers on their X.25 network...
(sending the zmodem command to the Unix command-line) and then instantly placing the PC into receive mode.
Once the text (HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
) portion of a web page had been retrieved (it was always retrieved first), the page would be displayed by SlipKnot and could be read by the user, after which the pictures
were retrieved in the background and eventually the page fixed up to display them.