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. Browser SlipKnot version 1.0 was completed and released as shareware 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. Technical SlipKnot's rendering engine was written in C, 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