Gopher Novice - Part IX.
Cont. [Gopher Novice - Part VIII].
Zines
Unexpectedly, I got an answer to a long asked question (at the beginning - [Gopher Novice - Part II]). Is there any zines in Gophersphere? I've been browsing through it, and I didn't spotted to many evidences for that. As if they weren't there. Last memories of people who I've summarized in last entry pointed to two hypotheses which could explain this state. Gophersphere could be less social than we think, and local communities of that time prefer BBS. Some people seem to be so engaged in BBS, that they didn't noticed Gophersphere at all.
So if the zines were probably outside Gophersphere, I should look at them, in aspect of what they are showing about Gopher. Earlier, I ignored this website because it seemed to be overwhelming. But [Textfiles a BBS dump] has many of zines, which were published inside various BBS. So I try to find something about Gopher.
"The Journal of American Underground Computing" zine
"Review Of Slipknot 1.0" by Scott Davis
I found something about [SlipKnot at Wikipedia], and I hadn't know what is it. Today's information from Wikipedia was precise.
SlipKnot was one of the earliest World Wide Web browsers, available to Microsoft Windows users between November 1994 and January 1998. [...]
[...] 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.)
So this was exactly the time Gopher was about to end. From the 1995's zine [REVIEW OF SLIPKNOT 1.0] inside "The Journal of American Underground Computing", where we can read that many users of "first" web browser were certain, that it need to support Gopher also. We can read on [Features (as of version 1.40)] that Gopher was finally supported - only for registered users.
On December 23, 1994, I contacted Felix Kramer (felix@panix.com) to let
him know that I would be happy to run his article/promotion for the
software called 'SlipKnot'.
[...] I polled some users on the Internet regarding their
experiences with the software and here's what some of them said;
[...] Other than that, SLIPKNOT is highly recommended for a
low-budget approach to WWW. [one@netcom.com]
Steve:
Very nice and easy to use developmental software. Web works well [...]
Inability to support ftp and gopher from within the html page is a
bother, but as development continues I hope Peter Brooks will be able to
add that capability. [...]
Jeff:
I have used SlipKnot for about six weeks and have come to rely on it for
an easy alternative to mistyped Unix commands. [...]
While I approve of Version 1.0e as far as it goes, I can certainly suggest
a number of needed improvements:
1. gopher support
2. telnet support [...]
Bill:
Another problem is the inability to use gopher servers, something
that's still widely implemented and integrated with the Web.
Tom:
The program is not perfect. It still has some bugs to work out, and
lots of features to be developed (forms, gopher, etc do not work at
this time).
"WWW - The Junkyard Of The Internet" by Ram Samudrala
In the same zine (listed in [Volume One, Issue Seven - January 17, 1994] - there could be mistake in year, I think that it should be January 17, 1995) was also article "WWW - The Junkyard Of The Internet by Ram Samudrala" which I can't find on the textfiles.com. But fortunately it was archived by author, on his [The WWW: the junkyard of the Internet] page.
I happened to get seriously addicted to the Web at the beginning of this year, but I got over it soon. [...]
the Web incorporates several existing information retrieval mechanisms out on the net, primarily gopher and ftp. I never thought gopher would be a big hit, and with the advent of the numerous Web browers for almost any imaginable platform, there really is no need for gopher clients. [...]
There are a lot of advantages to having entertainment information available on the net---but it also results in a lot of spam. [...]
A few months ago, an advertisement on the net would've been flamed to ashes. Now there is a weak response, and the people who opposed this are fighting a losing war. [...]
The ease with which computers can transmit hypermedia (pictures/movies/sounds) has not only furthered the Web revolution but is pushing bandwidth to its limits (a state that we may perpetually exist in). All this has contributed to an increase in the noise:signal ratio on the net as a whole, but particularly in USENET newsgroups and the Web. [...]
[Features (as of version 1.40)]
[Volume One, Issue Seven - January 17, 1994]
[The WWW: the junkyard of the Internet]
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