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• First Web Browser on Windows

  The first web browser for Windows was released 15 years ago by Thomas Bruce of the Cornell Legal Information Institute. June 8th marked the 15th anniversary of the 0.1 release, with a succession of followup releases soon after. Cello 0.2 was released on June 14th, 0.3 on June 16th, 0.4 on June 18th, 0.5 on June 24th, and 0.6 on June 30th. Fortunately, there were no more days left in June or else the web browser fad may have caught on. Cello quickly went into disuse and ceased being updated less than a year later. For those interested in nostalgia, here is Thomas's original release announcement. From: Thomas R. Bruce Date: Tue, 8 Jun 93 22:00:52 GMT-1:00 Organization: Legal Information Institute (Cross-posted to many lists and groups. Please forgive necessary duplications) Folks: This is an announcement of Beta Release 0.1 of Cello, a World-Wide Web browser for Microsoft Windows 3.1 Features: -- (HTTP/HTML) browser, with user-configurable colors and fonts. -- Full-featured Gopher (though unfortunately not yet Gopher+) client, including a hyper-ized CSO which permits (sorta dumb) SMTP mailing. -- Transparent access (via WWW) to FTP, HyTelNet, Telnet, etc. etc. ad infinitum. -- Graphics and PostScript viewing and sound playing via MSWindows Associations...feature, using add-on, shareware viewers such as SNDTOOL, GV057, and the Windows version of GhostScript. -- Ad-hoc Telnet, FTP, and Gopher sessions. -- SLIP/PPP support with dialup scripting language. -- Supports wide range of LAN configurations via Distinct TCP/IP runtime stack. Things you should know: -- Hardware: Cello needs a Windows 3.1-capable machine with enhanced mode and (preferably) swapping enabled. It is hungry for extended RAM. -- Software: Cello depends (for now...we're working on a Winsock version) on the Distinct TCP/IP runtime stack. The LII has licensed the use of a runtime version of this software for use by US academic institutions for a period of one year, starting June 1, after which we will renegotiate the license. Commercial organizations and non-academic users are strongly urged to contact Distinct directly at mktg.distinct.com. The Distinct software adds enormous functionality to the package, including SLIP/PPP support with scripting, and configuration for many types of LAN and networking layers. We are working on a Winsock version which will be available without restriction later this summer. --How to get it: FTP to fatty.law.cornell.edu, the /pub/LII/Cello subdirectory. The distribution Read More... Posted Monday, June 09, 2008 8:00 AM from Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: HTTP, History

• 20 Years of Content Types

  An invention that now seems to be ubiquitous turns out to only be 20 years old. RFC 1049 introduced the notion of a standardized Content-type field that message processors could use to automatically identify the type of a structured message and interpret it appropriately. This same convention went on to show up in the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) message format, HTTP, and other later protocols. It commonly continues to appear with its original name, content type, although you'll sometimes hear other phrases used instead, such as MIME type or media type. The original content type had a set of seven supported values. Postscript, a document description language that was the most prevalent format for exchanging rendered documents prior to the introduction of PDF. Scribe, a now obsolete word processing language that was marketed by the Unilogic corporation. SGML, a language for describing other markup languages. SGML was used in the creation of HTML and XML, which quickly led to those languages becoming preferred over having to use SGML. TeX, a typesetting language developed by Donald Knuth. Usage of plain TeX almost vanished as several rich TeX macro packages were developed, including LaTeX by Leslie Lamport. Troff, a document processing system that would have died out if not for its use as the default format for writing UNIX manual pages. DVI, a simple, device independent document layout format that was typically seen as an intermediate product when converting TeX or Troff files to Postscript. X-, the convention for starting a user-defined content type, inherited from the convention for user-defined mail headers. Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 04, 2008 8:00 AM from Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: HTTP, History