SlipKnot features and hints
- Getting and sending files. You can upload or download files to/from your UNIX
service provider using the commands in the Communications menu.
- telnet, gopher, mailto are services sometimes referred to in World Wide Web
documents. While SlipKnot WEB does not (currently) support these services, you can perform
any of these operations at any time through SlipKnot Terminal using your host's services.
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- Background document retrieval allows you to look at other documents while SlipKnot
communicates.
- Save your documents in folders. SlipKnot is the only WWW browser (at this time) that
allows you to save entire documents (including embedded graphics) for later viewing. Create your
own named folders (press the Documents/Folders menu item or the Folder icon), and save any document
by selecting the File/Save menu item in the document's window.
- Bookmarks allow you to save just the addresses of documents you have retrieved, and then
retrieve them again when desired.
- Comments: whenever you save a document or a bookmark to a document, SlipKnot will prompt
you to save a comment along with it, so that you can selected the document by browsing through
your own commentary.
- Print your documents from the File/Print menu item in the document window.
- The "Retrieve embedded graphics?" option (under the Configure menu), tells SlipKnot
whether or not to get the pictures inside your documents. Turning this option off often significantly
speeds up retrieval because the embedded pictures are not retrieved. Hint: if you are
doing quick browsing, turn this option off. Then if there is a document whose pictures you want to
get, turn the option on, and then press the "Retrieve again!" menu item in the document window.
- Queueing up retrieval jobs. You don't have to wait for a document to come in before
requesting another. Your requests are queued, and when one has been satisfied, the next
requested is automatically started (as long as there is another window to put it in). If you've
run out of windows (maximum of 5), when you close one, the next queued request will start up
automatically.
- Minimizing windows. 5 screen documents can clutter up your screen quickly. Press the
minimize button on the upper-right of a document window and the document will disappear and
be replaced by a numbered button at the top of the screen. Press the button, and the document
will reappear (try this now).
- One document hidden behind another? Press the right-arrow icon (under the "Navigate" menu
item) to cycle through your windows, bringing each, in turn, to the front.
- Display up to 5 documents at once. Not enough? SlipKnot keeps an unlimited history
(limited only by disk space) of all of the documents displayed in the current session. Press
the menu item: Documents/History to redisplay any document (or press the circular arrow icon). All
such unsaved documents will be erased when next you start SlipKnot.
- Use SlipKnot to display your saved documents without logging in -- for instance, for offline Demos.
You do not have to log in to your UNIX host to start SlipKnot WEB! Just press the "to World Wide Web" button
in SlipKnot Terminal. There, you can display previously retrieved documents, or ones that you have created.
And it will follow links embedded in these documents (even search your folders for the appropriate document
to satisfy a link).
- Use SlipKnot to develop your own documents. You will need to learn HTML (Hypertext
Markup Language). After you've gotten the hang of HTML, create an HTML document in a file with the
.HTM suffix. In SlipKnot, press the "Navigate/Display Local HTML File" menu item to display the
current state of your document. If there are problems, don't close the document -- simply go
back to your text editor, make changes, save the file, go back to SlipKnot and press the
"Retrieve Again!" menu item and SlipKnot will show the newly updated document. That is how we created and
edited this SlipKnot Features document.
- Use SlipKnot to retrieve anonymous FTP files. No need to run anonymous FTP from UNIX:
simply press "Navigate/Get document from the Internet" and type in the URL (Universal Resource
Locator) for any Internet file you want to retrieve. The file does not have to be a displayable
document -- it can be any file anywhere that you are allowed to retrieve via anonymous FTP. Here's
how you use this feature. Suppose you want to get a file called a.zip in a directory called
/public/programs at a location called ftp.majorsite.org. After pressing the menu item above,
type in the location as:
ftp://ftp.majorsite.org/public/programs/a.zip and SlipKnot will
then download the file to your SlipKnot download directory.
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First of all, SlipKnot is actually two, independent cooperating programs: SlipKnot Terminal
and SlipKnot WEB.
The Terminal is what you see when you first execute SlipKnot. It provides you with an ordinary
terminal session into your service provider's UNIX system.
The WEB renderer (SlipKnot WEB) is a different program that is launched by the Terminal when
you want to browse the World Wide Web. It paints and prints the documents, manages folders, keeps the
retrieval job queues, etc. (You are now using the WEB renderer.)
Here's what happens when you request a document to be retrieved, either by pressing on an
underlined link or typing in the name explicitly:
- The WEB renderer sends your request to the Terminal (which is still active but invisible).
- The Terminal sends the request to your service provider's UNIX system. In effect, it executes a standard
UNIX command to retrieve the document or file from the remote internet computer.
- The Terminal checks the status of this UNIX request periodically, and if it fails for
any reason, it tries again.
- When the file has been retrieved from the remote machine, it is placed by your UNIX system
inside your personal directory on your UNIX system.
- The Terminal then starts downloading that file to your PC.
- When Terminal is finished, it sends a message to the WEB renderer indicating that the requested
file is now available on your PC.
- The WEB renderer scans the file, looking for references to any pictures that must be included
in the document when it is displayed (the pictures are inside separate files on the remote computer).
- If the WEB finds that there are pictures to be retrieved, it sends these requests to the Terminal,
which retrieves them one by one.
- When all of the necessary files have come in, the WEB renderer converts the images, and then
"plots" the document (does the layout according to the typefaces you've specified in your Configure
options). Then the document appears.
The separation of these two functions (communications by the Terminal, display by the WEB renderer)
allows retrieval to be done in the background, while you are scrolling and reading documents in
the foreground.
Design note: SlipKnot was specifically designed for modem users. Unlike other World
Wide Web browsers, SlipKnot understands that its users will have to wait a while for each
document to be retrieved from the internet. Therefore, we included many features to allow
multiple documents to be seen, stored, and printed to prevent you from having to retrieve documents
unnecessarily.
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SlipKnot handles documents with "fill-in" forms by allowing you to go back
to SlipKnot Terminal, and then automatically retrieving the document using the
"lynx" program.
Lynx will display the page and allow you to fill in the responses to the questions in
the document. You will need to know how to control lynx using your up and down-arrow
keys and various single letter commands. Help for doing this can be found
in SlipKnot online Help, under the topic: Forms.
Whenever a document is retrieved by SlipKnot Web that contains forms, there
will be a white picture inside the document where the form questions would
normally appear. Also, there will be a new "forms" menu item in
the document window. Use this menu item to activate the return to Terminal,
and the automatic retrieval of this document by lynx.
Once inside lynx, you can browse the Web at high speed.
Retrieving a URL whose address you can see in SlipKnot Terminal
While using lynx, or reading mail, if you come across a document address (URL)
that you would like SlipKnot Web to display graphically, you can use
the following simple technique to capture the URL.
From inside lynx:
- press the "=" key to tell lynx that you want to
know the address of this document
- highlight the URL of the document
- press Ctrl-F8 or the menu item Communications/Get Highlighted URL
- press "q" and then "y" to exit from lynx
- press the World Wide Web button to return to SlipKnot Web, which will
automatically retrieve the document for you.
- Note: If you get stuck trying to retrieve something in lynx,
use your UNIX interrupt key (probably Ctrl-C or Del) to terminate lynx.
From inside your mail program, or a newsreader:
- highlight the URL
- press Ctrl-F8 or the menu item Communications/Get Highlighted URL
- get to your shell prompt (either exit the mail or newsreader program, or,
if you know how, "shell out" to your UNIX prompt).
- press the World Wide Web button to return to SlipKnot Web, which will
automatically retrieve the document for you.
Note on "Authentication"
Some Web sites require you to enter access codes (passwords) to retrieve their
documents (for instance: HotWired). You must stay inside lynx while retrieving
their documents; SlipKnot will not be able to get through to these sites.
As practice for Forms:
Here is a very useful site for searching the Web for documents of interest:
The Yahoo Main Page.
Inside this document, you will find a link for searching. If you retrieve
this "search" link, the document will have a form to fill in the keywords
you'd like to search on, and you can then exercise the SlipKnot Web Forms
menu option.
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Go to Advanced Features
"Gopher" is a browsing mechanism that predates the World Wide Web. Nevertheless,
there are a vast number of documents that are accessible though it. Gopher
URLs start with "gopher://" instead of the Web's "http://". On the SlipKnot
Local Home Page, there is a Gopher link to the University of Minnesota, where
Gopher was born (I believe it's named after their mascot). You can use Gopher
to browser through both documents and files worldwide, and then retrieve the
documents or files from the displayed listings.
Note: Gopher support is only available to registered SlipKnot users. Once
registered, this feature will be unlocked inside SlipKnot.
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Go to Advanced Features
SlipKnot can retrieve both files and directory listings available via
anonymous FTP. The URL for FTP retrievals starts with: "ftp://". As practice
for FTP usage, you can take a look at our anonymous FTP directory (one of the
our two sites that carries SlipKnot upgrade files). There may not be
anything terribly interesting there, but you will be able to see
what directory listings
look like.
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Go to Advanced Features
As you probably already know, Telnet is the name of a program that allows you
to log into and interact with a computer somewhere else in the world. In some
Web documents that you may receive, there will be Telnet links, along with
instructions on how to log into the computers named in the link, after you actually
make the connection.
When you click on a Telnet link, SlipKnot Web will take
you back to SlipKnot Terminal, and execute the Telnet program with the
appropriate address. SlipKnot Terminal is already a terminal
program, and this just what is needed to log into the remote computer
named in the link. After finishing with the remote computer session,
you can terminate your Telnet session, (log off, and then type "quit" or
"exit" to the Telnet prompt), get back to your UNIX shell prompt, and
press the World Wide Web button to return to SlipKnot Web.
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The Job Queue
You probably already know that you do not have to wait for a document to
arrive and be displayed before clicking on another link (in a document that
you are looking at). If you do this, a little message will come up (and
will automatically disappear after a couple of seconds), that the retrieval
request you just made will be put onto the Job Queue.
To see what has been queued up, press the "See Jobs!" menu item at the
top of the screen. You can queue up to 30 requests for retrieval -- this
makes it possible for you to request all of the documents that you see links
for in a page, one after the other, while any one of them is downloading.
You can also change the order of the requests and cancel them by using
the "See Jobs!" menu item. There is also a "Pause" option, so that you
can go back to SlipKnot Terminal temporarily to do some UNIX work (mail, or
news reading), and then resume the retrievals when you get back to SlipKnot
Web. Finally, you can Pause this job queue, and actually terminate
SlipKnot -- the requests will be resumed when you activate SlipKnot Web the
next time.
This feature is another browser innovation designed specifically for
modem (low-speed) Web users. Given that documents take some time to arrive,
you should at least be able to order ahead.
Notes on the job queue:
- If you ask for a
file that require a viewer to process, when SlipKnot retrieves that file,
it will pause the job queue until you view the file or save it.
- After 5 documents have been displayed on the screen, SlipKnot will
retrieve the 6th document, and retire one of the documents on the screen
to the History folder to make room for another window.
- Given the time it takes for large documents to come in (or large files
via FTP), if you have many queued up, perhaps you might consider going
out to lunch, or dinner, or getting married, and then coming back for the
results.
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Go to Advanced Features
Personal Home Pages
Under the Configure/Preferences menu item, you can tell SlipKnot to use
your own (HTML) document instead of the SlipKnot Local Home Page. After
creating this document with either an HTML authoring tool, or your
direct knowledge of the HTML language, save this page with a file suffix
of ".HTM". Make sure that you try out how it looks with the
Navigate/Display Local HTML File menu option in SlipKnot. Then you will
be able to tell SlipKnot to bring that page up automatically in the place
of the SlipKnot Local Home Page when SlipKnot Web is entered.
Notes on Personal Pages:
- This feature is only available to registered SlipKnot users.
- Despite the fact that you can replace our Local Home Page with yours,
you should periodically display ours, because inside ours is the link to
the SlipKnot What's New Page, which is the key to SlipKnot upgrades. You can
always do this by clicking on the icon which looks like a (shareware) house.
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Executing SlipKnot Web as an offline viewer
SlipKnot Web is a program called "SNWEB.EXE" inside your \SLIPKNOT directory.
For the sake of the example below, let's assume that your SlipKnot directory
is C:\SLIPKNOT. You can run SlipKnot Web to view your HTML documents without
having to launch all of SlipKnot. Let's suppose that you want to display
the HTML file: "C:\MYHTML\ME.HTM". Here are three ways:
- In Windows Program Manager, bring up the menu item: File/Run, and type:
C:\SLIPKNOT\SNWEB.EXE C:\MYHTML\ME.HTM
- In Windows File Manager, "Associate" files with the ".HTM" suffix with
the program C:\SLIPKNOT\SNWEB.EXE. Then you can double-click on any ".HTM"
file in your directory listings, and SlipKnot Web will come up and display
that file. Be sure to close SlipKnot Web before going back to File Manager
and asking for another file to be displayed.
- If you are a Windows programmer, you can ask Windows to execute the
SNWEB program as follows: "C:\SLIPKNOT\SNWEB.EXE filename.HTM", which will
bring up the viewer.
Note: SlipKnot Web will keep track of the number of documents displayed,
and if you are an unregistered user, it will stop after having displayed
200 documents.
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Viewing Web documents that are on your UNIX system
If you have HTML files of your own on your UNIX system -- for instance, those
of you who use lynx regularly may have a "lynx_bookmarks.html" file, or if
you've received an HTML file from someone and it is in you UNIX directory --
you can retrieve and display these documents in SlipKnot Web. Press
Navigate/Retrieve from Internet, and simply type the name of the UNIX file
without using the "http://" scheme. Example: If you want to display the
lynx-maintained bookmarks file, just retrieve: lynx_bookmarks.html.
Any filename without a URL scheme (like: "http://" or "file://" or "gopher://")
will be taken as a filename in your UNIX directory, and downloaded, and then,
if it is an HTML document, will be displayed.
By the way, you can also use this mechanism to retrieve ordinary files from
UNIX while you are inside SlipKnot Web, and save them accordingly. And if
a file turns out to be something that one of your installed viewers can
process, that viewer will be automatically called up to view the file.
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