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 accounts with their employers' Unix machines or with commercial UNIX ISPs (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 modems 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.
Read more about this topic: Slip Knot (web Browser)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)