Scripting News -- December 1997
Wednesday, December 31, 1997
An XML parser in JavaScript.PHP embeds SQL queries in web pages.
DynaPage embeds SQL queries in web pages.
People wonder why Microsoft takes a lickin and keeps on tickin. Here's what Apple is doing, and here's what Microsoft is doing.
Wired News: The Vaporware 1997 Awards.
GIFConverter 2.4 is scriptable and supports menu sharing.
More on Kool-Aid. Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters mixed it with LSD. There's even a German Kool-Aid page. It's funny!
News.com: Crushed by Microsoft. Yesterday I said Uh Oh! Some people want to know why. Uh oh is like Oooops. In flagrante delicto. Look it up!
From Navigators, 12/17/97: "It's time for Microsoft to navigate. I just had to do it. Everyone does it. Life forces change. Bill Gates is more than a competitor now. What's his vision for us? What's his vision for his company and for himself?"
Another quote, from High Roads & Big Pictures, 8/12/97: "As boys grow older and become men our view of the world changes. We learn that we are not the greatest primate in the jungle, that other people have greatness too. And if our youth was productive, we learn that we have a stake in the bigger picture. We learn to love the jungle, we want it to survive, we develop an appreciation for chaos."
More quotes on the Microsoft page.
Tuesday, December 30, 1997
DaveNet sound bites from 1997 on Apple, Java, Life, Microsoft, Push, Software. Tell your friends!A reader asks, what's Kool Aid? (There's a quote about 'Drinking the Kool Aid' on the Microsoft quotes page.) It's the cheap soft drink that members of the People's Temple liked so much. The first time I heard this expression in the software industry was from people I knew at General Magic. It goes like this: I Drank the Kool Aid. Kind of like Going Down With The Ship. Hopefully you get the idea.
MacWEEK: Integrating Mac-based sites with NT servers.
CNN reminds us that it pays to be paranoid. Or the opposite!
News.com: Crushed by Microsoft. Uh oh!
Wired News: A game designer's co-op. This is a great idea!
Monday, December 29, 1997
It's Monday! That means another great site in Thea's Galleria.The SJ Merc takes a close look at Salon.
Also in the Merc: Microsoft under siege from all sides.
The review of 1997 continues. My favorite quote so far: "I think it's ironic, being a Mac developer, that I'm going to meet up with my potential Unix brothers and sisters on Bill Gates's operating system." See Great Walls of FUD, 4/10/97.
I'm in May now. My favorite three pieces so far ar the ones I wrote on and after my birthday (May 2): Proof that you Exist, Do you have a head? and Programmers.
The best closing line in a 1997 DaveNet: Do Galaxies Dream? Be prepared to laugh!
Another great line: We live in sludge! (6/2/97)
We're still waiting for the next revolution in beautiful web content. (6/24/97)
Sunday, December 28, 1997
I'm re-reading all the pieces I wrote in 1997 and pulling quotes into several sections, Apple, Microsoft, Java, Push, Software and Life. There may be other categories. This is the first year that I've done this systematically. I've gotten thru March, as of 4PM Sunday. It goes realllly slow! Anyway, I was surprised to see that I wrote so much about push, and still had great hope for Apple. I can also see ways I was misled, or saw what I wanted to see instead of what was real. It's a big learning experience for me.Here's a piece I forgot about. Viewed in the context of the times, when I was pushing the Mac so heavily, it had a different meaning. But now, with our newly arrived Windows software, the concepts take on a new meaning. Here's a way to coexist with Microsoft on Windows. We work together. This truly would be revolutionary for the software industry. We have something deep to offer the Windows developer world. But we are Windows newbies. We need help. Let's pull together. You'll be amazed what we can accomplish.
SF Chronicle on Digital Storytelling.
Here's my report on the Digital Storytelling Festival. (9/22/97)
Here's a picture of me interviewing John Sculley at InternetWorld in March.
The Mooneyhams speculate about the next 600 years.
Saturday, December 27, 1997
DaveNet: Scripting News in XML.Inside Dynamic HTML article on XML Poetry. It's interactive!
Upside: Is John Doerr the Richard Simmons of high-tech?
I'm glad I asked about partying on the West Coast! Here's a free concert at Union Square in San Francisco tomorrow.
Thanks to ed@anuff.com, there's now a DTD file for Scripting News.
Scripting News is now an XML application. If you have some time over the holidays to play, why not crank up Visual Basic or Java or Bongo or Filemaker or whatever and write a new browser? XML is supposed to enable new kinds of browsers. Let's see if it does.
Tim Paustian's Frontier CGI Tutorial.
Friday, December 26, 1997
Teaser! A new Scripting News feature. Soooon, you'll be able to hook up to the news flow thru XML. I'll write this up in a little bit. Time for a walk!Phi Hood on statesmanship in technology companies.
A great message attributed to the poet e.e. cummings, especially for this time of year: "To be yourself, in a world that tries, night and day, to make you just like everybody else - is to fight the greatest battle there ever is to fight..."
Here are some screen shots of the next release of the Windows version of Frontier 5. If you're an experienced Windows user and see something obviously wrong, please send mail to doug@scripting.com. Thanks!
A ZDNet report on the Microsoft-Sun lawsuit quotes a confidential Microsoft presentation: "[Microsoft VP Paul] Maritz said that Netscape/Java was using the browser to create a 'virtual operating system that was no longer a browser, but an environment.' He said if unchecked, Java 'will redefine client/server computing. Windows will become devalued, eventually replaceable.'"
To people who parse all events in a negative-Microsoft light, this view was consistent with the hype coming from Netscape and Sun at the time.
A great overview: A News.com report from May 1996 discusses the Netscape threat to Microsoft, as viewed by Microsoft and by industry analysts, and a Netscape vice-president. "We will never do drivers," said Mike Homer, Netscape's senior vice president of marketing.
NY Times: The special problems of digital archives.
Through the Looking Glass with the SJ Merc's Dan Gillmor.
Thursday, December 25, 1997
John Perry Barlow: Christmas message.Bill Gates: Who Decides What Innovations Go Into Your PC?
Philippe Martin: odbExtractor.
NY Times: Microsoft's strategy has benefits for consumers.
SJ Merc: Microsoft vs US is American theater.
Wednesday, December 24, 1997
DaveNet: 1997 Christmas Special.A clear consensus says that the years between 2000 and 2009 will be called The Oughts.
Brent Simmons is the new editor of the Frontier 5 home page. Send him links to new utilities, add-ons and interesting Frontier websites. brent@scripting.com.
Biographies of four of The Marx Brothers.
We're gearing up for a new release around the first of the year. Lots of fixes and tweaks. As they say... Still diggin!
InfoWorld: Top stories of 1997.
NY Times: Microsoft digs in.
Maybe Bill Gates is singing this song? Sax and Violins by The Talking Heads. We are criminals who never broke no laws!
A history of the music of David Byrne.
Tuesday, December 23, 1997
DaveNet: New Glasses.Microsoft releases Java SDK for Windows CE. (Beta)
Pieces of Christmas past: 1996, 1995.
AOLServer is a powerful fast free Tcl-based web server.
John Gilmore has released the source code for powerful authentication software, in source code.
Brent Simmons put up a page summarizing the responses to his questions about Windows programming books.
Chris Gulker has a holiday greetings message board! It's pretty and nice. Happy holidays to Chris and his family.
CNN: Because of Gorbachev, Russians have many things to be thankful for!
Monday, December 22, 1997
DaveNet: A Message to Microsoft.Another great site on Thea's Galleria of Great Frontier Web sites.
Wired: Does it pay to be Sleepless in Seattle?
A Washington Post editorial on the Seattle Times website.
Jeff Veen in WebMonkey: Ten Ways to Make Browsers Better.
The NY Times profiles Joel Klein, the US Department of Justice's anti-trust chief.
Wow!
Sunday, December 21, 1997
Andy Grove of Intel is Time's Man of the Year.BusinessWeek advises Microsoft to back down in its battle with the US Department of Justice.
NY Times: Microsoft in Washington. "Microsoft completely understands how important public policy is to the software industry."
John Dvorak in PC Magazine on special-interest web browsers.
SunScript: Tcl is now available as a web browser plug-in.
Christmas cards! #1, #2. Thanks!
Brent Simmons has questions about writing C code on Windows.
Wednesday, December 17, 1997
DaveNet: Navigators.IETF: Distributed Authoring on the World Wide Web. This is interesting.
New! Thea's Galleria of Great Frontier Websites. Each week a great Frontier website will be showcased, with screenshots and comments from the developer describing the project. Hosted by Thea Partridge, artist, designer, art director, writer, computer graphics geek gal.
Dan Gillmor in the SJ Merc: Compliance with a raised middle finger.
Ten more pieces before I hit the road.
I'm taking a little break. Scripting News will resume on Sunday or Monday.
Tuesday, December 16, 1997
Philippe Martin has a web site to help people migrating from Frontier 4 to Frontier 5. Thanks Philippe!http://www.finetuning.com/ -- lots of XML stuff.
My friends at Venue Media are doing the SuperBowl site, and now Microsoft is excited about it.
SJ Merc: Today is the 50th anniversary of the transistor.
SJ Merc: Microsoft's plan to remove web browser from Windows.
Microsoft started a scripting website. I guess this one goes in my Favorites menu.
ARDI Executor claims to run Mac software on other operating systems. If it works with Frontier, this may get our software running on Linux, OS/2 and OpenStep. Please let me know if you try it and it works.
Paul Boutin's second Java piece provides a strong argument for the separation of Java from Sun. Someone's got to have a clean-room implementation that can take Java into all the nooks and crannies and different operating systems without Sun's kill-Microsoft baggage. Where is it?
WebReview piece on DataChannel's XML stuff. What do you think?
A great message about friendship from Louis Bookbinder in response to Empowerment, 12/7/97.
I published the source code to the Site Changes XML application. It's designed to run in the Frontier 5 environment, but it can be adapted to PERL, C, Tcl, Java, whatever. If you port it to another environment, put up a web page, send me a pointer.
I'm also going to publish the source code for my XML parser when it's ready. It's the fastest way to get it debugged and complete. Let's have fun!
The next step is to get Frontier to read siteChanges.xml into the object database on my Windows machine. The file is produced on my Mac! As MCI says, isn't this Internet thing great?
From InfoWorld, a sober story of evolution: "Forrester Research says that high-profile content sites that cost $893,000 annually to operate in December 1995 cost $3.1 million to operate today and will cost $6.3 million in 2000." They're right! It pays to get systematic about growth.
Monday, December 15, 1997
DaveNet: Real-World XML. Il fait practical!I got lots of feedback this morning, and made a bunch of changes to siteChanges.xml and the script that builds it. Thanks for all the interest!
InfoWorld: "Microsoft announced that Allaire, Pictorious, Sybase, and other third parties will deliver XML tools by March 1998. Microsoft officials also hinted that FrontPage and Visual Studio would be XML enabled soon thereafter." Hmmm. Add UserLand to the list. We'll ship before March 1998.
MSNBC: Who clicked in 97.
Phil Suh has a question for people with experience scripting Quark XPress and/or FrameMaker.
Sal Soghoian's site has a bunch of Quark scripting stuff.
Anita Rowland, a Frontier newbie, had a dream about Frontier!
USA Today: Anti-abortion groups are using the web. The most positive response is to establish sites for young people explaining how human reproduction works, and how to have sex without necessarily having children. There are already too many people on this planet for the health of the planet.
At the end of Chris Nolan's column in today's SJ Merc, is a note that Lori Fena is leaving as executive director of EFF.
And Dan Gillmor writes that there's money to be made in free software. I hope so!
And Ed Scannell reports in InfoWorld that people are getting more realistic about what Java is and isn't.
MacWorld Editor's Choice finalists list. Some of our favorite tools were nominated!
Saturday, December 13, 1997
Here's what's up with XML and Frontier. Il fait chaud!Outlines play a big role in Frontier. Scripts are outlines and so are menus. I've been using outliners for so long, they've become part of my basic vocabulary, it's easy to forget that for some people they are new and perhaps strange things.
Wesley Felter has been working on new verb docs for Frontier 5. The first group of docs are ready for review. Most of the verbs on the site are cross-platform. More coming soon! Keep diggin Wes!
All I Want for Christmas...
I'd pay $100 for a Windows utility that took a snapshot of the front window and saved it to a GIF file in one keystroke. Please don't send me mail about solutions that require more than one keystroke.
Thanks to Dino Morelli! HyperSnap-DX looks like it fits the bill!
I'd pay $150 if I could tell it to do that from a script (I could load the gif into the database and build a web page too). It would make the docs flow much more smoothly. That's important to me because...
I don't like writing docs. I especially don't like the drudgery of writing docs.
Another wish. It would be great to have a Frontier-compatible DLL that produces a Zip file. It would take the same parameters as Stuff.createArchive on the Mac. As far as I know, no one is working on this.
Friday, December 12, 1997
Voulez lire des nouvelles de Scripting en français? Il fait chaud!Henry Norr's last MacWEEK column. Great job Henry! A total class act.
InfoWorld: Industry reaction to the Microsoft decision.
The SF Examiner is looking for a webmaster.
Tim Draper's BizWorld was created to bring volunteers and parents into the classroom to encourage 3rd through 8th grade students to learn about business.
On HotWired, Paul Boutin reviews the advantages of Java from a programmer's point of view. Many of them are also advantages of scripting environments.
As I see it, the problem with Java is that you can't write Director XTRAs, Photoshop plug-ins, DLLs or other standalone code. It doesn't integrate with existing stuff. Java is still looking for its killer app.
The Wired News Vaporware Team call for submissions for Vaporware of the Year, 1997. Let's have fun!
Tune up your website for free. It's funny!
News.com: Bill Gates in Beijing.
Dan Gillmor in the SJ Merc on yesterday's Microsoft decision.
5 new pages linked into the Frontier 5 news page.
Frontier 5 is free. The expiration date of February 1, 1998 is there to be sure that everyone gets the final version. That's the only reason. This question is being debated on at least one mailing list. Hopefully this puts the question to rest.
Greg Pierce's Style macro suite works with Frontier 5.
WebExtras 1.5 also works with Frontier 5.
OSA Menu 1.1 is available on Leonard Rosenthol's website.
Thursday, December 11, 1997
CNN: Split decision for Microsoft. Can't force Windows 95 OEMs to bundle MSIE. No $1 million per day fine.The home page of the Frontier 5 site is becoming a news page in its own right. Today three articles were posted on that page, but not pointed to from Scripting News. There will be a lot of new information about Frontier 5 in the coming weeks. If you want to stay in touch, please bookmark the home page and check it once a day.
What's next? XML. Stay tuned!
Adrenaline Charts Pro is scriptable. Looks nice!
Power Computing goes out in style. They lost their license for speeding... Right on!
InfoWorld: Ellison Embraces PCs. I learned last week, at my dinner with Ed Iaccobucci, that Citrix will play a big role in helping Ellison's Java stations run Windows apps from a server.
An Italian friend pronounces Ed's last name Yacko--Booooo-Chee. Round the Boooo syllable with a subtle smile. I love the way she says his name!
The spirit of Cross-Platform Day continues!
You can open a Windows object database on the Mac and vice versa! See the Frontier 5 site for more info.
The scripting tutorial for Frontier 5 users; adapted by Brent Simmons from the Frontier 4 tutorial written by Matt Neuburg.
I love the way Matt writes: "An old saying, sometimes wrongly attributed to Thoreau, runs: 'Give a man a fish and he eats for day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.' In this tutorial we'll do both. Frontier scripting is our fish; we'll catch fish together, and then you'll know enough to be able to do all the fishing you want on your own."
Wednesday, December 10, 1997
Welcome to Cross-Platform Day on Scripting News!Public release of Frontier 5.0/Mac. Ye-hi!
Your choice -- Frontier 5.0a22 for Mac or Windows.
The new Frontier5-Mac List on the Mailing Lists page.
What does cross-platform really mean? Here are some interesting screen shots that show the differences in appearance of the Mac and Windows versions of Frontier 5.
If you do web work in Frontier 4, here are the most important changes in version 5. We'll update this page as we reorganize the Frontier 5 change notes and develop migration tools. Still more diggin to do!
Jim Roepcke is hosting a Frontier 5 feature requests site. Thanks!
Closing a loop: A September 1996 MacWEEK article talking about our then-planned port to Windows.
A DaveNet piece in the same period. IBM left the Mac business, the clones went away. It's still Apple Apple Apple. Oh well! Keep diggin guys and gals.
Elsewhere...
I wonder why MacWEEK has a story about Roaster closing as the top item on their site today, but no link to the release of Frontier 5.0a22/Mac? Are they a glass-half-empty pub???
Today in MacWEEK: Apple sales to slump in 1998. Let's do a bundle deal with Frontier and sell some Macs in 1998! There are still a lot of things Macs can do that Windows can't do. I haven't given up yet!
Upside blasts MacroMedia. "It chewed up and spit out a handful of presidents and about $25 million in venture capital before briefly flirting with profitability in the mid-1990s..."
In PC WEEK, Microsoft asks "Why would someone want to run a slower [Java VM] that doesn't integrate well with products already installed on their desktop?"
Tuesday, December 9, 1997
InfoWorld: Microsoft to support HTML and XML in the next version of Office. It's an interesting announcement. Word already does a great job of supporting HTML. I now understand why they want XML, for the ability to store more info to their docs than HTML can support. Makes sense. Further, it's a milestone because now all of Microsoft's app file formats will be open. This stopped lots of compatible development in the past. It used to be virtually impossible to write a spreadsheet that could read Excel files. It won't be after they support HTML and XML.Upside: McNealy is shooting blanks. "Scott still doesn't get it," says an executive with a Sun ally, who squirmed through McNealy's speech. "He's spending more time on toys than on mission-critical apps. He doesn't see that these guys want a better story from Sun than his 'Evil Empire' thing."
The Economist on computer industry branding.
Confused by how Frontier 5/Win implements the numeric keypad Enter key? Minor Docs Changes in 5.0a22/Win.
Monday, December 8, 1997
http://www.archive.org/ is archiving the web.Reason OnLine: The complicated truth behind the rise of Microsoft. "Apple acted--and continues to act--like a smug, self-righteous monopolist. Microsoft acted--and continues to act--like a scrambling, sometimes vicious competitor."
We've gotten a bunch of requests from people evaluating Frontier 5/Win wanting to know about multi-user features. This software hasn't been tested in Frontier 5 yet.
Milestone: The DaveNet site is now managed with Frontier 5.
Our ISP thinks that people who have had trouble downloading Frontier 5/Win may have better luck using FTP. Please let me know if this made a difference.
Wired News special report on Java.
You heard it here first. Java is a Brand, 6/30/97.
News.com: XML Close to a Standard.
How DLLs work in Frontier 5/Win. This page is important for people who want to immediately connect Frontier up to other Windows apps. We'll support other extension interfaces in the future. This interface is in there now.
Network Associates, the company that acquired PGP Inc, withdraws from the Key Recovery Alliance.
Chris Nolan on dogfights in the online publishing world.
Cameron Barrett raises questions about free speech and the workplace.
Sunday, December 7, 1997
DaveNet: Empowerment.Dino Morelli was the star newbie for the Windows software while we were testing it privately. He just got his Frontier-managed news site on the air. His success is our success
Dan Gillmor in today's SJ Merc on XML.
Big storm in Calif knocks out power at www.scripting.com for two hours. No amount of digging would help!
NY Times: The Self-Appointed Cops of the Information Age. Yeah! Let's not turn the web into a bland playground like Disneyland. Uck!
The Mac version of Frontier 5.0a22 is next. To the people who have sent rude, even obscene messages to me about this -- I wish there was some way to prevent you from ever using Frontier 5. Unfortunately there isn't. To everyone else, the Mac version is a bit more complicated than the Windows version. That's why it's taking longer.
Saturday, December 6, 1997
First public release of Frontier 5.0/Win. Ye-hi! The Frontier5-Win mailing list.
What is Frontier? Thanks for the feedback!
The web scripting tutorial for Frontier 5 users; adapted by Brent Simmons from the Frontier 4 tutorial written by Matt Neuburg.
And many many thanks to the people who helped!
Friday, December 5, 1997
Bandwidth Test Results. Thanks for all the mail!E&P: Many news websites are gone. Yes! Let's do an archive of the web and trasmit it to the nearest solar system. Check out All I Want for Christmas, 12/2/96, for more ideas.
InfoWorld: DRAM prices continue freefalll. This is good news for script writers.
TechWeb: Iacocca rumors not true, says Apple board member.
Microsoft: Changing Source Code Editor in Internet Explorer.
Hey! The Alpha text editor has coool new connections to Frontier. Thanks to Will Enestvedt for putting up this page summarizing how Alpha and Frontier work together. Alpha is a Tcl-based editor for Macs.
Thursday, December 4, 1997
I use MSIE 4.0 on Windows. I want to use Frontier's outliner to View Source. Is the View Source app hard-wired to Notepad?Let's do a bandwidth test. If you have a fast net connection, please download this file. Send me email if you got more than 10K per second throughput.
Here's an interesting idea. News.com is offering two versions of each story. One version is formatted for viewing on a screen, and another is 'printer-friendly'. I want this feature!
A new protocol, proposed by Microsoft, helps net users find each other.
Chris Nolan in the SJ Merc: Uncle Sam feared more than Bill.
Jakob Nielsen: How Users Read on the Web. Interesting! This piece explains how news sites like this one work. Quick in, quick out. Is there something here for me? I can tell right away.
Wednesday, December 3, 1997
According to Fortune, Lee Iacocca flunked retirement.In June 1996 I wrote a DaveNet for Lee Iacocca.
CMP interviews Sun's Jakob Nielsen.
Here is a draft of the What is Frontier page for the first xplatform public alpha release of Frontier 5. We're getting close! You can help by reading this page, and if you have questions, send them to me. dave@scripting.com.
A common theme in the feedback... Is it really true that Frontier can flow stuff into the object database from multiple sources? Yes, it's true.
Wired News: Phil Zimmerman's new job puts him in a perhaps uncomfortable position re key recovery.
Tuesday, December 2, 1997
Developer.com: Habanero from NCSA. It's groupware!This thing looks interesting!
According to Web Review, ThingMaker is a multimedia development tool and runtime, like Director.
Dan Gillmor wants Barbie to be a Deadhead.
Does Bill Gates ever make you angry? Watch out... He fights back! Requires Shockwave.
Monday, December 1, 1997
Upside's top 100 elite people. Oh cooool. I made the B-List,. For the record, I'm no friggin Apple groupie. Upside should get a life!InfoWorld: XML announcements due next week.
Jeff Veen on WebMonkey on XML.
Tristan Louis's new Unofficial InternetWorld Party List. Next week in New York.
Apple's new QuickTime site.
You can drive a Mars buggy with Frontier.
Back issues...
Check out Scripting News -- November 1997.
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