Cello is an early, discontinued graphical

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

for

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

; it was developed by

Thomas R. Bruce Thomas R. "Tom" Bruce is an American academic and former software engineer who co-founded the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School with Peter Martin (Law Professor), Peter Martin in 1992. Education Bruce earned a Bachelor of Arts ...

of the

Legal Information Institute The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a non-profit public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce, LII ...

Cornell Law School Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private university, private, Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, Cornell Law School offers four degree programs (Juris Doctor, JD, Maste ...

. It was released as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

in 1993. While other browsers ran on various

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

machines, Cello was the first

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, using the

winsock In computing, the Windows Sockets API (WSA), later shortened to Winsock, is an application programming interface (API) that defines how Windows network application software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standar ...

system to access the Internet. In addition to the basic Windows, Cello worked on Windows NT 3.5 and with small modifications on

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

. Cello was created because of a demand for Web access by lawyers, who were more likely to use

than the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s supporting earlier Web browsers, including the first release of

Mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

. The lack of a Windows browser meant many legal experts were unable to access legal information made available in

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. Cello was popular during 1993/1994, but fell out of favor following the release of

for Windows and

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

, after which Cello development was abandoned.You can view yahoo browser statistics at https://web.archive.org/web/20021204042351/http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~ejk/bryl/ which show Cello being used. Cello was first publicly released on 8 June 1993. A version 2.0 was announced, but development was abandoned. Version 1.01a, 16 April 1994, was the last public release. Since then, the

has licensed the Cello 2.0 source code, which has been used to develop

commercial software Commercial software, or, seldom, payware, is a computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes. Commercial software can be proprietary software or free and open-source software. Background and challenge While ...

. The browser is no longer available from its original homepage.The original cello site at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cello/cellotop.html is no longer up. The original ftp site at ftp://ftp.law.cornell.edu/pub/LII/Cello is no longer up. The original gopher server at gopher.law.cornell.edu:70/11/listservs/cellol/ is no longer up. However, it can still be downloaded from mirror sites.Cello can still be downloaded at https://browsers.evolt.org/browsers/archive/cello .

Development and history

The development of Cello started in 1992, with beta versions planned for June 1993 and a release for July 1993. It was publicly announced on 12 April 1993. The

created the first law site on the Internet in 1992 and the first legal

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

in 1993. However, at the time, there were no

s for the

operating system, which was used by most lawyers. Thus, to allow lawyers to use their website, the Legal Information Institute developed the first Windows-based Web browser. This was made possible by a grant from the National Center for Automated Information Research.This can be seen in the "About Cello" dialog in Cello. It is also stated in the "Notices, Acknowledgments, Disclaimers" section of the included .hlp file in Cello. Although other browsers at the time were based on

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

's WWW libraries called

libwww Libwww is an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for web browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), released libwww (then also ca ...

, PCs of the time were not powerful enough to run the UNIX-oriented code. As a result, Thomas Bruce had to rewrite most of the WWW libraries to work on

. Unlike most commercial browsers at that time, Cello used none of

's source code and thus had a different look and feel. Steven Sinofsky, president of the

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

division at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

wrote in a June 1994 email: ''We do not currently plan on any other client software n the upcoming release of Windows 95 especially something like Mosaic or Cello.'' Nevertheless, on 11 January 1995, Microsoft announced that it had licensed the Mosaic technology from Spyglass, which it would use to create

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

. On 15 August 1995,

debuted its own web browser Internet Explorer 1 for

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

. While it did not ship with the original release of Windows 95, it shipped with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95.

Usage

When released in 1993, Cello was the only browser for the

platform. Shortly after launch, Cello was being downloaded at a rate of 500 copies per day. As such, it achieved a fair amount of use and recognition within the legal community, including a number of PC users with between 150,000 and 200,000 users. In 1994, most websites were visited using either the Cello browser or the Mosaic browser. Despite having fewer features than Mosaic, Cello continued to be used due to its simpler interface and lower system requirements. Cello was praised for being easy to install, because it wasn't necessary to install

Win32s Win32s is a 32-bit application runtime environment for the Microsoft Windows 3.1 and 3.11 operating systems. It allowed some 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit operating system using call thunks. A beta version of Win32s was available in ...

or a TCP/IP stack for Windows 3.1. Following the release of

, which offered a much better TCP/IP interface, Cello fell into disuse and was abandoned. By 1995, Cello, like the Mosaic browser, was overshadowed by two newer browsers —

and Internet Explorer — and fell into disuse. By 1999, Cello was considered to be a "historical" browser. Cello is considered to be one of the early casualties of the first

browser wars A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war" (1995–2001) occurred between proponents of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and the "second browser war" (2004–2017) between tho ...

Features

Cello had the following features: Unlike

, ''Cello did not have toolbar buttons'', and instead commands were accessed through pull-down menus. ;Supported Protocols Cello supported the following protocols:

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

1.0,

Gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They ar ...

(but not Gopher+), read-only

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...

mailing,

Telnet Telnet (sometimes stylized TELNET) is a client-server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main ...

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

, CSO/ph/qi directly and WAIS, HyTelnet, TechInfo, Archie, X.500, TN3270 and a number of others through public gateways. ;Supported FTP servers Cello supported the following FTP servers: most Unix servers (including SunOS, System V, and Linux), IBM VM, VMS systems, Windows NT, QVTNet, NCSA/CUTCP/Rutgers PC servers, FTP Software PC server, HellSoft NLM for Novell. ;Internet Connection Cello works best with a direct

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

connection, but it also supports SLIP and PPP dialup connections through the use of asynchronous sockets. Cello has an integrated

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

runtime stack.

Release history

The following versions were released: Although Cello 2.0 had been announced, development ceased before a public release. IBM released a fix for their TCP/IP V2.0 stack so that Cello would work with OS/2 WinOS/2 on 9 February 1994.

Browser comparison table

The following table shows how Cello compared to browsers of its time.

Derivatives

* The first edition of BURKS, a project to produce non-profit CD-ROMs of resources for students of Computer Science, was based on Cello. * InterAp, by California Software Inc, was based on Cello and featured a web browser with Telnet, FTP, and a

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic (.NET), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (classic), the original Visual Basic suppo ...

-compatible scripting language called NetScripts. * A version of Lovelace came bundled with Cello.

Technical

While originally Cello required the Distinct Corporation's TCP/IP stack, with the release of Cello Beta Version .8, Cello dropped support for Distinct, and became exclusively

Winsock In computing, the Windows Sockets API (WSA), later shortened to Winsock, is an application programming interface (API) that defines how Windows network application software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standar ...

-based. Originally, although Cello could run on

, OS/2's implementation of Winsock had bugs that prevented Cello from accessing the Internet. The bug, ''APAR #PN52335'', was later fixed allowing Cello to properly work on OS/2. The

user agent On the Web, a user agent is a software agent responsible for retrieving and facilitating end-user interaction with Web content. This includes all web browsers, such as Google Chrome and Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland jour ...

for Cello is

LII-Cello/  libwww 

Libwww is an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for web browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), released libwww (then also ca ...
/2.5

DDE support

Cello featured Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) support.

OLE OLE, Ole or Olé may refer to: * Olé, a cheering expression used in Spain * Ole (name), a male given name, includes a list of people named Ole * Overhead lines equipment, used to transmit electrical energy to trams, trolleybuses or trains Co ...

support and DDE client support were planned, but never released. An example of how to invoke Cello from a

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

macro: Sub MAIN ChanNum = DDEInitiate("Cello", "URL") DDEExecute(ChanNum, "http://www.law.cornell.edu") DDETerminate(ChanNum) End Sub

System requirements

Cello has the following system requirements: * Processor:

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...

(386SX) at 16 MHz or better *

Operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

/ 3.11 / Windows NT 3.5 /

. *

Ram Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

: 2 MB

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

, 4 MB RAM recommended * A TCP/ IP connection running Winsock

Criticism

Cello was not very stable and its development halted early. Cello did not render graphics well and required that the user reload the webpage when resizing the window. Like most browsers at the time, Cello also did not support any web security protocols. It was also said that Cello rendered html "crudely" and pages would appear jaggedly. Cello also had sub-par performance in accessing the Internet and processing hypermedia documents.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cello (Web Browser) Windows web browsers Gopher clients Cornell University 1993 software 1994 software Discontinued web browsers OS/2 web browsers