Sunday, June 29, 1997

Mail Starting 6/29/97.

Saturday, June 28, 1997

PC WEEK on growing pains at www.microsoft.com. It's a huge complex high-traffic site.

How Microsoft manages www.microsoft.com. Explains how the servers work, but doesn't explain their editorial process, how templates flow, how people write for their site and how they update all those pages.

MacWEEK: Steve Wozniak says Apple's purchase of Next was a mistake. He says the money would have better been spent on education. Good point! I'd add, just think what a $400 million cash infusion could have meant to the Mac developer community. See Gotta Be Aretha!, 1/8/96, for some ideas. Of course what's done is done, the money is gone. Too bad!

And news.com wonders if Steve Jobs has sold his Apple stock.

Late June Home Page Changes.

Friday, June 27, 1997

A loop repeated... In the 80s, popular music was under attack in much the same way the web is. The PMRC was started in 1985 by Tipper Gore, Vice-President Al Gore's wife.

By the time a child is 18, he or she will see 80,000 murders on TV and will never see a couple making love.

In the San Jose Mercury-News, John Russo of GeoNet says "Obviously, no one advocates that children enjoy unrestricted access to porn sites." I understand that my views are not widely held, but I think exposing children to human sexuality at an early age would avoid many problems later in life. We lie to kids about sexuality. The lie is that it doesn't exist. The truth is that everyone, even children, are sexual.

Mail Starting 6/27/97.

Netgrams -- send a telegram to your congressperson.

Our runtime environment: The United States Constitution.

A great song! It's a small world.

Thursday, June 26, 1997

BIG NEWS! The Communication Decency Act has been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. The text of the decision. Party Today! in San Francisco. The White House statement. Special coverage sites: SJ Merc, www.news.com. The web blackout commemorative site. Mail Starting 6/26/97. I totally dig this picture!

If other people are into creating graphics to commemorate the victory, send me a link!

Other stuff...

News.com: Netscape's JavaScript is declared a standard. Borland, Sun and Microsoft contribute to the spec.

Yesterday was a big hit day on Scripting News. Makes sense. But I thought most of the hits would be on Java-related pages. Not true. Looking at yesterday's log digest, the top story was Brent's piece on Connectix Virtual PC for the Mac. That was a surprise!

Everyone who wants to understand high-tech marketing in 1997 should read Marketing Warfare.

Let's also take a look at where we were in the summer of 1995 just before Windows 95 launched.

Wednesday, June 25, 1997

More Java opinions in Doc Searls on Conversations.

Just-in-time search engines: NewBot -- June Report.

DaveNet: Making Sense of Java.

Mail Starting 6/25/97.

Brent Simmons on Virtual PC for the Mac.

How to choose the perfect PC. (Great use of Flash 2.0.)

NewsHub appears to be a just-in-time search engine.

News.com: Microsoft is adding Castanet-like features to IE 4.0.

The WebMonkey man named Taylor hates tables! (Me too...)

"Honesty is the best policy," said George Burns. "If you can fake that, you got it made."

Tuesday, June 24, 1997

Mail Starting 6/24/97.

Steve Wozniak on Web Graphics.

Tomorrow or Thursday: Rally Against Internet Censorship in SF.

Do you read German? If so, check out this review of Frontier in c't.

New scripting.com feature: Special Stories Site. It's a reverse-chronologic list of the special stories, dating back to 2/8/97. The page is rebuilt every night at 2AM so it will stay current automatically. The source for the macro that generates this page is on the fat pages site.

This is cooool! Turtle graphics in a CGI application.

From MIT's Media Lab: Turtle graphics for Java.

Inside Macintosh: Chapter 2 - Basic QuickDraw.

6/9/97: Macromedia Flash.

"It's a pure branding play" says Scott Guthery on Java.

Is Java write-once, run-anywhere? PC Magazine says no.

PC WEEK reports problems with JavaOS include stability, performance, printing, internationalization, font support and the lack of a device driver interface.

Monday, June 23, 1997

Microsoft's Cornelius Willis On Java.

MacWEEK's Carolyn Said likes Connectix Virtual PC.

Mail Starting 6/23/97.

Webintosh on Flash.

Infoworld: Compaq to acquire Tandem.

Leonard Rosenthol: ICScriptor 1.1.

C|Net launches Snap! Online.

Jeff Veen gets a scoop. Web browsers are boring! Right on.

Sunday, June 22, 1997

If you're using an older browser such as Netscape 2.0, please bookmark this page.

About Rhapsody and Scripting.

Saturday, June 21, 1997

The text-gifs are still there, but microsoft.com is back on the air with an explanation.

The most popular pages on www.scripting.com. This report is updated every night at 2AM.

The site changes file is rebuilt every night at 12:01AM. It lists all the pages that changed in each 24-hour period going back to 4/29/97. We think this is a more rational approach than CDF or MCF for telling crawlers what changed on a site. It's low tech, and it gives the crawler exactly the information it needs. We provide full source code for the suite that maintains this file. It's Mac-only, but it can easily manage NT sites accessible over a LAN thru file sharing.

Friday, June 20, 1997

News.com: Georgia and New York courts rule in favor of free speech on the Internet.

MacWEEK: reviews Virtual PC; Quark gets ready to upgrade QPS.

I think it's interesting that Apple is bundling Pointcast and Castanet in Mac OS 8, two bits of Mac software that are at best equivalent to their Windows versions; and are not bundling the native PowerMac Frontier, which is far ahead of its Win32 implementation. We've been open to discuss this with Apple, have invited such discussion many times over many years.

Scripting News June Design Update.

The latest rage: Internet auction sites.

donCrabb.com.

Scripting News redesign: Matt Daw.

According to www.news.com, Microsoft's web server is buckling under an increasing load. Now would be a good time to scrape off all those bandwidth-wasting bits of gif-text. Look at the link-bar at the top of this page for an example of a low-resource way to provide a consistent set of links.

Basic to Java on Mac.

Thursday, June 19, 1997

DaveNet: Anyone But Microsoft.

A rebuttal: Rich Siegel on Mac OS 8.

Mail Starting 6/19/97.

JavaWorld: Is Java development for Macintosh viable?

State parks in Napa County.

7/18/95: Huge Wingspans.

Wednesday, June 18, 1997

Check this out... Rob Glaser on Java.

And this... Craig Cline on Java.

8/22/95: What is a Platform?

Mail Starting 6/18/97.

Delphi 2 Java -- convert your Delphi source code to Java.

Two ISP listing services: #1 and #2.

SJ Mercury: great piece on Microsoft's J/Direct rollout. Lots of juicy quotes. The gloves are off folks!

4/2/97: Toolboxes.

Tuesday, June 17, 1997

Webintosh reviews Castanet Tuner 1.0 for the Mac.

News.com: Microsoft to tie Java directly to Windows.

"We're TGH on Java as a programming language," says a Microsoft product manager, in an InfoWorld report.

TechWeb: Wading thru the ISP Pool.

Inverse Network Technology -- monitors net performance from the user's perspective.

7/31/96: The Compaq of ISPs.

See The Promise of Push, 2/23/97: "If push technology can take email-like stuff to a higher level, software growth can happen..." Here's an example. Neomorphic announces a collaborative graphic environment for bioscience researchers.

PC WEEK takes a first look at Mac OS 8.

Caryn Shalita is an original DaveNetter, which has its benefits.

Monday, June 16, 1997

Mail Starting 6/16/97.

WebMonkey: HDML offers an alternative to the feature-rich world of HTML.

New Jersey Online: A frustrated Windows 95 user vents.

Sun's John Gage talks about Java, acquisitons, money and Apple.

Sunday, June 15, 1997

Friday, June 13, 1997

Netscape: JavaScript debugger, written in Java.

Venture capitalists on wheels! September 21 -- The Sand Hill Challenge.

PC Magazine confirms Netscape security loophole, but doesn't disclose the technical details.

Check this out! CNN documents the workflow process on their website. What an interesting site!

Netscape posts the spec for their answer to CDF; our old friend, MCF! What a long twisty road. (Yes, Guha works at Netscape now.)

Thad McIlroy on the Seybold site: The Terror of Technology. (Excellent response to Where did the Okies go?)

Jon Wiederspan on the MacWEEK site: Toolboxes of Mac Webmasters. See the related stories for case histories of several famous Mac webmasters including Steve Noreyko and Matthew Dornquast.

Thursday, June 12, 1997

Mail Starting 6/12/97.

An animated gif for Frontier 5 from Jay Goldman, jay@circledream.com.

11/2/95: New Cave Needs Curtain.

The Boston Computer Museum is looking for a Director of Exhibits.

Jerrold Maddox: Scripting News redesign.

Wednesday, June 11, 1997

WebFree removes ads from web pages by carefully hooking into TCP streams. (Mac only.)

DaveNet: Style and Technology and I Make the Cover of Wired!

Mail Starting 6/11/97.

A friend of mine, Karen Bentley, is doing a concert in Palo Alto on June 22.

Netscape responds to CDF, endorsing MCF.

WebMonkey tells you how to cook your own Netcaster channel.

André Radke: Claris Emailer & Frontier. André has also implemented support for the Mail Agent Protocol for Claris Emailer.

Searchable AppleScript archive.

Michaela Baldwin: Scripting News redesign.

NetscapeWorld's DevConDaily. (Is it all advertising?)

Steve Jobs in early 1996: If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth--and get busy on the next great thing.

Dave Winer in early 1996: What a silly demise!

Tuesday, June 10, 1997

ZDNet's Steve Hamm on what's at stake for Netscape in tools.

The Be browser looks good right out of the box.

WebWeek checks out Nombus scripting.

Another postscript to Dinner With A Designer: you can also configure the buttons on Microsoft's Mac browser.

Lots of comments on Mail Starting 6/9/97.

Monday, June 9, 1997

DaveNet: Dinner With A Designer.

It's going to be a two-DaveNet day. Hi-ho! For background, check out It's HTML, Dummy!, 12/5/96.

DaveNet: Macromedia Flash.

Mail Starting 6/9/97.

Paul Allen's website. It's much more interesting if you have Flash installed.

Macromedia's Shockwave Flash download page.

I wrote about Flash in Charlie Has a Dream Too, 1/5/96; 542 days ago.

PC WEEK: A survey in March of about 20 million Web pages showed that about 30,000 pages use Java, while fewer than 1,000 use ActiveX.

Netscape: Dynamic HTML.

Microsoft invests $1 billion in Comcast, a cable company.

Possible Power Outage.

WebMonkey's Jeff Veen may be too busy for Microsoft's 4.0 push features.

Chuck Shotton's HitTunes plug-in makes your WebSTAR-compatible server sing!

Sunday, June 8, 1997

Red Herring: Top 20 Entrepreneurs of 1997. (A teaser, the list will be filled in tomorrow, according to the page.)

Philip Suh: Use command-E to edit images with external editors.

Profiles of two Silicon Valley CEOs, Eric Benhamou of 3Com and Gil Amelio of Apple; in the SJ Mercury.

Saturday, June 7, 1997

Friday, June 6, 1997

Maggy Donea: Scripting News redesign. (It will evolve over the weekend.)

JavaSoft ships a Java-based web server. US$295. According to InfoWorld, "Java Web Server is available for Sun Solaris, Windows 95, and Windows NT, and Sun claims that it can be easily ported to other platforms."

Mail Starting 6/6/97. (Includes a first look at the Java web server.)

I wish Erik Sherman of MacWEEK had told his readers about the connection between Frontier and BBEdit.

Whitford Middle School uses Frontier for its website.

Fascinating! Preston's Amazing Puzzle.

Funny! Euro Language.

InfoWorld: Apple will port AppleScript to Rhapsody.

The DaveNet view of the Mac-only ODB Engine from September 1996.

AskSam does database publishing on the Internet.

What is Drumbeat?

ObjectStore PSE, persistent storage for Java, C++ and ActiveX.

PageSpinner 2.0.

Thursday, June 5, 1997

DaveNet: Where the Okies Went.

Mail Starting 6/5/97.

Microsoft takes the high road as we suggested in Saving Netscape's Pride.

June 19: Apple CEO Gil Amelio at the Stanford CEO Forum.

June 26: Apple founder Steve Wozniak will keynote MacHack 97.

Another news page, this one is not done with NewsPage, but it's still cooool.

Atlantic Monthly: Whatever happened to multimedia?

Wednesday, June 4, 1997

Quark Publishing System -- is this the prototype for a web publishing system implemented in Frontier? Please send email to webmaster@scripting.com if you have experience with QPS. Thanks!

CPAN is to PERL what the LTODBS is to Frontier.

Jesse Berst: Controversy Clouds Java's Future.

Three DaveNet pieces from April: Hail Mary!, Hail This! and Bill Gates on Java. (I guess Java inspires football analogies.)

New Frontier sites: Calvary Presbyterian Church, Barreau du Québec, The Pixel Pen.

It seems like I'm pointing to HotWired's Packet channel every day. Today's piece by Simson Garfinkel is an invaluble explanation of how MAE West works. Our ISP, Conxion, is linked into MAE West, which means that DaveNet and Scripting News come thru the MAE system (I think...).

ZipIt is a Macintosh program that zips and unzips archives in a format fully compatible with PKZip for the IBM and zip implementations on other systems. It's vastly easier to use than the Windows equivalent program, WinZip, which is a dauntingly complex maze of wizards and vacuous help files.

ZipMagic -- use zip files without unzipping them. (Windows)

Tuesday, June 3, 1997

Unsolicited endorsement: It's been a long time since I've enjoyed learning a new product as much as I've enjoyed TypeStyler. It's a type-creator, with infinite options, elegant user interface, and it always surprises me with the great output it produces. If you use PhotoShop to do your type styling, check this one out. It's a real score!

Beautiful writing! Dethe Elza on Gardens.

Scripting News redesigns: Jeb Bateman, Chris Gorski, Adam Rice.

Netscape-WebMonkey: Dynamic HTML contest. Win Netscape's respect (and lunch with Marc Andreessen). Get busy -- the closing date is tomorrow! Brooke Shelby Biggs on HotWired: "Marimba, PointCast, and BackWeb are groovy technologies, but they're more trouble than they're worth. Email's the better, more democratic choice for push, and it's already here." More...

SJ Mercury: Microsoft finds that the ISP business is no picnic.

PC WEEK: Implementing a push solution from scratch. Cost: $540,500.

Monday, June 2, 1997

Apple opens a massive 75-page Mac advantage website. Except for one page, it's overwhelmingly about Apple products. There's a page for AppleScript, it mentions scripting of Windows apps. It's as if the Mac platform had no developers.

www.amazon.com: Atlas Shrugged, The Grapes of Wrath.

www.starmax.net: A Frontier site. We dig them clones!

Lyrics: I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.

CNN: McVeigh verdict in -- guilty.

DaveNet: Where did the Okies go?

Mail Starting 6/2/97.

The ScriptWeb-announce list.

Brian Daly: Scripting News redesign.

Elise Palos: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, banned in Kern County, in 1939. Nathaniel Branden: The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, in 1984.

Sheila Erickson: Scripting News redesign.

Sunday, June 1, 1997

A beautiful NewsPage site: Internet scripting and life in Japan.

Henry Norr in MacWEEK: Little progress in Apple's negotiations with Mac cloners.

Chris Schweitzer: Redesign of the Scripting News page.

Popsite does some of what the BBEdit/Frontier combo does.

A web-based Java applet that loads (almost) fast enough, but leaves me wanting more. See Mail Starting 5/29/97 for more info.

Wesley Felter: Generating Pointcast PCC files. Pointcast 2.0 is expected next week. This script makes it easy to turn a Frontier-managed website into a Pointcast channel.

Back issues...

Check out Scripting News -- May 1997.

See the directory site for a list of important pages on this server This page was last built on Mon, Jun 30, 1997 at 12:20:04 AM, with Frontier. Internet service provided by Conxion. Mail to: webmaster@scripting.com. © copyright 1997 UserLand Software.