3 ms·

I remember being underwhelmed by the www before the graphical browser. Gopher I felt was superior. I would read about the graphical web browser in magazines but

I remember being underwhelmed by the www before the graphical browser. Gopher I felt was superior. I would read about the graphical web browser in magazines but it required a slip Connection which may not have existed at this point. One day I read about a guy in brooklyn who had a website at www.soundtube.com and was selling music on the internet . I got in touch and went to his office in brooklyn to look at his website in a graphical browser. I than followed his lead in getting setup. The logo for the site was a half squeezed tube of toothpaste with the word sound tube on it. I don’t remember his delivery mechanism. The last time I visited the site it was the same logo but with the subtext that “what could have been”. I occasionally look for more information about sound tube. Seems to be lost but I hope it is only missing.

Scoundreller 2y ago
Every once in a while I fire up Lynx for various reasons. I’ll try to go to news.ycombinator.com and Lynx tries to make an NNTP connection and I don’t blame it.
jbaber 2y ago
Someone else told me they thought lynx came first. Is that really true? I thought images were there from the beginning.
- jbaber 2y ago
  Okay: - Lynx is far older than I thought. - WorldWideWeb 1.0 understood images, but didn't inline them, which is really what my creaky memory meant when it thought images were there from the beginning.
- robterrell 2y ago
  Lynx wasn't first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb
  - asveikau 2y ago
    Not first but the initial release was 2 years before Netscape was founded, and 1 year before Mosaic. It was definitely an early browser. I first used lynx years later when I was getting into Linux in the late 90s, and I found that part surprising at the time.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Lynx wasn't first, but images weren't there from the beginning either. At least, not inline images.
  - bananaboy 2y ago
    That’s right. Tim Berbers-Lee mentions that here https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html
    - dboreham 2y ago
      Heh, well yes since I was using these products at the time and haven't quite gone senile yet :) Almost nobody seems to remember Cello which was browser du jour for me, for about a jour.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  lynx's goal was running in-terminal/cli, not "full web, because web has no images". HTML was also designed to allow unknown tags to be ignored. back in those days I ran mosaic and netscape with image download off by default to speed navigation up.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  The second web browser came in 1992. Unlike the first one from 1990 that was written in "Objective C" for _only_ NeXT computers (thanks to Steve Jobs BS), this one was written in C and thus portable to multiple operating systems and multiple architectures. It was distributed with a library, libwww, and at least thirty(!) simple, example programs illustrating how to use the library to write programs to access websites. IMHO, it puts to shame the bloated, non-portable, overly-complicated, advertising-sponsored crap that is distrubuted today. https://www.w3.org/Library/Distribution/w3c-libwww-5.4.2.tgz https://www.w3.org/Library/Distribution/w3c-libwww-5.4.2.tgz 30 small example programs written in C plus documentation for every one. Good luck finding something like that today.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
    https://www.w3.org/History.html https://www.w3.org/History.html Line mode still works great. Text-only.
fellowniusmonk 2y ago
Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about slip connections, what a nightmare to try and figure out during the time period. Loved gopher, used it all the time.
- bane 2y ago
  Remembering other pseudo packet data connections that could interleave various data streams all at once, I wanted SLIP so bad, but could never figure it out. The paradox of the early internet is that we didn't have the internet at that time to help us out.
  - j45 2y ago
    At least most computers had a coffee cup holder built in to get through figuring it out.
dang 2y ago
Pretty sure that was my friend Joe. A passionate music fan and early tech adopter who ran one of the first online record stores out of his apartment in Brooklyn. I visited that apartment too! Inviting you over to show you a graphical web browser is exactly the sort of thing he would do. It was called Sound Wire, not Sound Tube - which is probably why you couldn't find anything... perhaps the name got mixed up with the toothpaste logo in your memory. Memory does that! https://web.archive.org/web/19961122055147/http://soundwire.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961122055147/http://soundwire.... https://www.wired.com/1995/05/net-surf-44/ https://www.wired.com/1995/05/net-surf-44/ p.s. I messaged him - maybe he'll show up in the thread
- fsckboy 2y ago
  animated toothpasted logo http://web.archive.org/web/19980116081704/http://soundwire.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/19980116081704/http://soundwire.c...
- detourdog 2y ago
  Awesome, missing not lost yes it was soundwire. Joe must have been the one that told how to register a domain name.
latchkey 2y ago
gopher client ux was really nice, but building the "gopherapps" was not fun at all.
- warpech 2y ago
  Can you expand what you mean by gopherapps?
  - latchkey 2y ago
    The content served up from the server. I ran a site for a bit there for my college, in the early 90’s on my a/ux server.

Scoundreller 2y ago

Every once in a while I fire up Lynx for various reasons. I’ll try to go to news.ycombinator.com and Lynx tries to make an NNTP connection and I don’t blame it.

jbaber 2y ago

Someone else told me they thought lynx came first. Is that really true? I thought images were there from the beginning.

jbaber 2y ago
Okay: - Lynx is far older than I thought. - WorldWideWeb 1.0 understood images, but didn't inline them, which is really what my creaky memory meant when it thought images were there from the beginning.
robterrell 2y ago
Lynx wasn't first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb
- asveikau 2y ago
  Not first but the initial release was 2 years before Netscape was founded, and 1 year before Mosaic. It was definitely an early browser. I first used lynx years later when I was getting into Linux in the late 90s, and I found that part surprising at the time.
dboreham 2y ago
Lynx wasn't first, but images weren't there from the beginning either. At least, not inline images.
- bananaboy 2y ago
  That’s right. Tim Berbers-Lee mentions that here https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Heh, well yes since I was using these products at the time and haven't quite gone senile yet :) Almost nobody seems to remember Cello which was browser du jour for me, for about a jour.
fsckboy 2y ago
lynx's goal was running in-terminal/cli, not "full web, because web has no images". HTML was also designed to allow unknown tags to be ignored. back in those days I ran mosaic and netscape with image download off by default to speed navigation up.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
The second web browser came in 1992. Unlike the first one from 1990 that was written in "Objective C" for _only_ NeXT computers (thanks to Steve Jobs BS), this one was written in C and thus portable to multiple operating systems and multiple architectures. It was distributed with a library, libwww, and at least thirty(!) simple, example programs illustrating how to use the library to write programs to access websites. IMHO, it puts to shame the bloated, non-portable, overly-complicated, advertising-sponsored crap that is distrubuted today. https://www.w3.org/Library/Distribution/w3c-libwww-5.4.2.tgz https://www.w3.org/Library/Distribution/w3c-libwww-5.4.2.tgz 30 small example programs written in C plus documentation for every one. Good luck finding something like that today.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  https://www.w3.org/History.html https://www.w3.org/History.html Line mode still works great. Text-only.

fellowniusmonk 2y ago

Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about slip connections, what a nightmare to try and figure out during the time period. Loved gopher, used it all the time.

bane 2y ago
Remembering other pseudo packet data connections that could interleave various data streams all at once, I wanted SLIP so bad, but could never figure it out. The paradox of the early internet is that we didn't have the internet at that time to help us out.
- j45 2y ago
  At least most computers had a coffee cup holder built in to get through figuring it out.

dang 2y ago

Pretty sure that was my friend Joe. A passionate music fan and early tech adopter who ran one of the first online record stores out of his apartment in Brooklyn. I visited that apartment too! Inviting you over to show you a graphical web browser is exactly the sort of thing he would do. It was called Sound Wire, not Sound Tube - which is probably why you couldn't find anything... perhaps the name got mixed up with the toothpaste logo in your memory. Memory does that! https://web.archive.org/web/19961122055147/http://soundwire.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961122055147/http://soundwire.... https://www.wired.com/1995/05/net-surf-44/ https://www.wired.com/1995/05/net-surf-44/ p.s. I messaged him - maybe he'll show up in the thread

fsckboy 2y ago
animated toothpasted logo http://web.archive.org/web/19980116081704/http://soundwire.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/19980116081704/http://soundwire.c...
detourdog 2y ago
Awesome, missing not lost yes it was soundwire. Joe must have been the one that told how to register a domain name.

latchkey 2y ago

gopher client ux was really nice, but building the "gopherapps" was not fun at all.

warpech 2y ago
Can you expand what you mean by gopherapps?
- latchkey 2y ago
  The content served up from the server. I ran a site for a bit there for my college, in the early 90’s on my a/ux server.