Introduction #

WiTTY is a cross-platform, open-source, web-based terminal emulator. It exports the terminal interface on the server (i.e., where WiTTY runs) to the browser. Simply run WiTTY on a computer and give it the command to execute when users connect via the browser. WiTTY has the following features that distinguish itself from other similar tools:

1. WiTTY allows users to easily record, replay, and share console sessions with just a few clicks.

   WiTTY was designed to help teach courses that use UNIX-like command-line interface, such as the software and system security parts of the SEED labs. The biggest challenge in teaching a large such course in the era of pandemic is how to answer students' questions in the first try, avoiding long exchange of emails and screenshots. WiTTY makes it a breeze to answer such questions. It is much easier to spot problems with the full history of console sessions.

   Instructors can also record their demos in WiTTY and send them to students. Students can replay these demons however they want. This would help them better understand the knowledge.

2. It allows others to view ongoing interactive sessions. This is useful for providing live remote help.

   An envisioned use of this feature is to allow students to view live sessions of demos by the instructors. It can also allow live, remote help to students.

   A challenge of this use case is that our home networks are almost always behind NAT, making it difficult to run WiTTY as a publicly accessible server. Security is also potentially a concern.

3. Great attention has been paid to ensure the cleanses of the code. This, hopefully, provides a useful counter-example of Do as I say, but not as I do.