Editing SlipKnot (web browser) (section)

==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 account]]s with their employers' [[Unix]] machines or with commercial UNIX [[internet service provider|ISP]]s (e.g. [[Netcom (USA)|Netcom]]).  They would run a [[terminal emulator]] program on their PCs, temporarily turning the machines into [[Unix shell|black screen terminals]], dial into the Unix server, and then run text-based internet software such as [[pine (e-mail client)|pine]] and [[elm (e-mail client)|elm]] for [[e-mail]], [[Gopher (protocol)|gopher]] for file retrieval, and [[lynx (browser)|lynx]] or [[Line-Mode Browser|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 [[Serial Line Internet Protocol|SLIP]] and [[Point-to-point protocol|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.