News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 6/9/97 | |
The implementation by Ms. Morris is no better for many people than the one we have, it's just as limited as the standard browsers are bloated. Any design which isn't configurable is bound to be wrong for somebody.
From: shortstop@apple.com (tim holmes);
Sent at 6/10/97; 3:35:35 PM;
Browser designThe real key is not to provide the "perfect browser" by one person's definition, but to allow anyone to customize the browser to suit them, whoever they may be.
What I suggest is a radical investigation into what it means to browse and the tools we currently use.
The most disappointing thing about all the browsers on the market today is the complete and utter lack of innovation on a grander scale. One includes type-ahead, another integrates with other tools, but none introduces real change in the environment. The only thing which compels me to use one over the other is which one is LEAST painful on a regular basis, or which one crashes less.
Back, reload, home... yuck.
I don't like browsers. They are poorly made tools which make me work just to use them. Their RAM and HD space requirements are absurd and what they provide in bookmark management, navigation tools, etc. is simple in the worst possible way. Rearranging buttons is childs-play, reinventing the tools with which we navigate the web is much more worthy of the space this column took up on my hard drive.
Where's Spreadsheet 2000 for browsers, where's Lotus 123, where's the step beyond the VCR interface we've been stuck with for 20 years?
The web is not a linear medium and yet the tools pushed out the doors of these software companies are. Why invest in 3D animation when the difficult part is finding the site where's it's located?
The Okies are still here. They run software companies, wash your car, publish your newspapers, and paint for museum walls. You don't notice their presence because they are all of us.
From: mjward@Adobe.COM (Michael J. Ward);
Sent at 6/9/97; 9:10:59 AM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?A few meta-comments on what people will be suggesting for the revised browser window:
From: phoffman@proper.com (Paul Hoffman);
Sent at 6/10/97; 2:56:05 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerThe buttons should be selectable by the user, as in Word, Excel, and so on. For example, I would not want a Search or "print" button, and would rather have blank space if I couldn't think of another button I would like. I would like a "Preferences" button, but only for the first month of my use of a new version of the browser while I keep tweeking the preferences.
Drop-down buttons, as are being introduced in Netscape 4, are great, but very hard for novices to understand.
Don't forget the button hints/names/help/whatever you want to call a text description that comes up after the cursor has been over the button for a second. If you have picture buttons, these are essential.
The button bar should *not* be scriptable. Allowing scripting could possibly allow a malicious Web site to make your buttons do things you wouldn't expect. Rescripting Web interfaces will be the next big source of trojan horses on the Internet, particularly after people have handed their desktops over to Netscape and IE 4. A slow-acting trojan horse will be able to cause more damage than most viruses today do.
--Paul Hoffman, author of "Netscape For Dummies"
I agree with you 100% on the browser interface issue. I hope that people at Netscape are reading the items you've put up, it's important that they hear these things. You are *totally* right about this being an area that Netscape can and must compete effectively with Microsoft.
From: alderete@be.com (Michael A. Alderete);
Sent at 6/10/97; 2:53:38 PM;
BeOS browser interfaceHowever, on the redesign, I'd go further than just revising the browser window control area (I'd definitely start there, though). Are all those menu choices really necessary in a browser? I don't think so. I'd really like to see Netscape come out with a slimmed down browser, keep calling it Netscape Navigator if they want, to go with the Netscape Communicator product/suite.
The slimmed down version would include a simplified interface, and strip out stuff that costs simplicity, RAM, or processor cycles.
This would include those extra buttons (I'd strip out the Print button, by the way. It's in the File menu of every application, no need to be in the window; that's for browser-specific controls only, IMHO.), Java, mail and news, most of the preferences dialogs (get it into one screen, of a few simple options), some of the other items in the Options menu, the History screen/menu choice, the entire Directory menu, much of the Windows menu, and a couple other things.
This version ought to run in 4 megs of RAM or less, and a lot of that (1-2 megs) should be in-RAM screen caches, so that returning to a cached page loads almost instantly, ala Internet Explorer/Mac. It should feel *sleek*. In fact, "sleek" might be the whole of my engineering requirements specification...
Just for comparison purposes, enclosed is a small screen shot of the browser controls for the BeOS browser, NetPositive, that will be featured in the BeOS Preview Release. This is the *default* (and only) configuration, no extra steps required to get that simplicity. The debug menu will probably go away when we release the customer version.
We don't do frames, SSL, or a couple of other things that are probably necessary even in a slimmed down browser, and we need a way to edit our bookmarks list, but we get pretty close to my ideal. Maybe other people would think so, too.
The Paul Allen Site is not good design. No focus. No direction. No idea; no point-of-view. Ghastly steaming-slime-emerging-from-the-black-ooze graphics.
From: Gregory.Burbridge@kp.org (Burbridge, Gregory);
Sent at 6/10/97; 12:12:31 PM;
Paul Allen siteAmen! I've felt a great deal more centered since I shifted out of strictly commercial ventures (Corp. Webmaster, freelance writing...) and enrolled in SDSU's Educational Technology master program. My cutting edge Web. developer friends thought I was crazy to drop out of the race during this sprint phase, but I believe in the long run I'll be glad I did. I'll have a skill and be able to teach later if I want. I'm just starting the program and already the pace has slowed from overdrive to cruising, the concentration shifted from other's desires to thinking and exploring, and a point has emerged, (wow, a point!) one of helping people learn. I also get to pursue my desire to humanize technology. Sure I'm 9 months behind the tech. curve, but I'm learning design, process and theory that is not dependent on the tech. It's not for everyone, but it's for me. Good stuff, positive vibes, I'm diggin' it,
From: calebjc@well.com (Caleb);
Sent at 6/10/97; 10:47:27 AM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerI really like Marney's design, with one minor addition and a couple of functional alterations:
From: booky@stanford.edu (Louis Bookbinder);
Sent at 6/10/97; 10:11:30 AM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerReplace the STOP button with a two-function button. While loading, it is a STOP button with the usual STOP sign. As soon as the page is loaded, it becomes a RELOAD button. As far as I can tell, you NEVER have both available at the same time, and STOP/RELOAD is logically very obvious. Between this two-function button and the PRINT button, put in an image button for folx who normally browse with auto-image off.
Secondly, combine the location window function with the navigation list usually found under the GO menu. This window shows the URL unless the user clicks on it, when it becomes the GO list, showing, not URLs, but location titles. Then the user can navigate up or down directly. As soon as the user releases on a new location, its URL appears in the window. Simple and clean.
This could really clean up the menus, too. Force the toolbar to remain and you really don't need the GO menu at all. Or you could make it optional, but only add the GO button if the toolbar is turned off.
Under Bookmarks add Edit Bookmarks. Make this menu become Addresses when Netscape is in MAIL mode, and Newsgroups when in NEWS mode. Get rid of the Directory menu - include all those addresses either under the Netscape Icon, or pre-loaded in the Bookmarks. This leaves Window with only one function - switching between Web, Mail, and News. I, personally, would put this switching as a toggle in one of the other menus, probably the View menu. Your mileage may vary.
The new "improved" netscape user interface looks ok. We do need a way to get help, view the history, select bookmarks, and configure the browser. How would this be done? Perhaps a right mouse click brings up a popup menu? Perhaps the menu bar remains? Personnally I like the right click method.
From: dgadams@sandia.gov (Douglas G. Adams);
Sent at 6/10/97; 10:00:30 AM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerYou may want to check the PowerComputing website at:
From: tmk@iocom.be (Tattoo Mabonzo K.);
Sent at 6/10/97; 12:43:04 PM;
PowerComputing website. Was: Macromedia FlashThey have a great (and small-download-time) flash intro with specialFX.
Their Digital Consultant is cool too.
A couple of things:
From: jaggi@server.pingnet.ch (Christoph Jaggi);
Sent at 6/10/97; 2:36:10 PM;
MiscPhilosophy. When looking at philosophy my favorite writer is Immanuel Kant. His criticisms and theories are still valid. When I gave a speak about international product development a couple of years back I actually used some of his findings to show that product development and philosophy go hand in hand. I do not know how hard Kant is to read in English and the quality of the English translation (I read the whole stuff in German).
Microsoft's strategy. WebTV and the Comcast deal show that Microsoft is learning. They were never in a good situation to compete with traditional broadcasters and the broadcast infrastructure. So: if you can't beat them, buy them. The Comcast deal is actually a lot smarter than the WebTV deal, as it gets them the access to the communication pipelines.
One notable fact though: Microsoft's dominance on the computer side is worldwide, WebTV and Comcast are more US based and most of the patents cover just 60 Hz TV (NTSC). Most of the world's market is 50 Hz and uses PAL or SECAM. As the broadcast industry is a lot more fragmented than the computer industry, Microsoft will probably not be the global power in broadcast a lot of people think it will be.
I like the idea for the simplified browser, using one row of icons along the top instead of two or three. A thought struck me as I was reading about the design though. What about using a vertical icon bar, along the edge of the screen, leaving nothing along the top but the menu bar, if possible putting the URL box on the menu bar as well. Or maybe a floating tool box like Visual Basic uses. Or better yet keyboard commands for navigating, or is that too "old tech," or... Oops, I'm rambling. Sorry, you caught me between exams and my brain is a cranked up to uber creative mode.
From: kw5449@devrycols.edu (Kevin Workman);
Sent at 6/10/97; 8:18:08 AM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerKevin Workman
PS Have you heard the Mighty Mighty Bosstones? Big band ska, check em out.
One other thing: other hot sites you should check out are:
From: colligan@macromedia.com;
Sent at 6/10/97; 1:12:56 PM;
Re:Macromedia FlashDisneyblast.com (Disney's new online service)--it's really the best example of an entire entertainment site designed and implemented in Flash and Director.
MSN (whole UI is in Flash)
BTW, I understand your comment about Director but I disagree with your conclusion. Director is different than Flash in that it can develop much more immersive and program driven applications. With the recent inclusion of streaming multimedia, better compression, NetLingo, ActiveX, URLs everywhere (as file names etc.), Director is an awesome web animation and multimedia tool. Of course it's bitmapped, so the files are bigger, but really neat scriptable stuff can be done in the sub 100K range. Check out our Shockzone on macromedia.com.
And folks that do entertainment (Paramount, Disney, MTV, etc.) use Director and Shockwave extensively because it drives traffic (games are fun), it keeps people on pages 5 - 10x longer than with static HTML, and drives results (in terms of sales, promotion, marketing messages, etc.).
AND, when you have autodownload with ActiveX or the new Netscape 4 version of that, people can get the plug-ins easily and quickly. And watch out, because when you are on a connection like @home (which I can't get yet but one of our web engineers in Fremont has), IT FLIES. Bandwidth is our friend. And although I think we will be designing for the 28.8-56.6 world for the next several years, corporate intranets (on fast ethernet) and high speed home connections are going to be really cool for Flash and Director.
I followed the various pieces about (web)design on scripting.com with great interest. I want you to point you to a web site that was developed by a guy (Erik van Blokland) who is a designer AND a programmer.
From: mego@url.de (Andreas Pieper);
Sent at 6/10/97; 1:09:21 PM;
designThe site is based on a filemaker database and some routines in smalltalk/mac(!) to generate the font images (and animations) and all the pages. He calles his system SiteRipper.
One thing he mentioned to me: The gif animations on the title page are generated with some random factor thrown in. After each page generation there are different fonts and letters in the anims. You never know which ones. pretty cool!
You may want to note that in Internet Explorer 3.01 for Mac, the little slider-bumps (the "raised" bumps on the button bars at top) allow you to set up a single bar similar to the one your friend Marney designed.
From: kortbein@dwx.com;
Sent at 6/10/97; 1:15:36 AM;
Dinner with a DesignerI've put a picture of this at http://www.dwx.com/~kortbein/design.html
Footnote: People almost never use the forward button. I'm talking average web user, not programmer or designer.
From: amd@cs.brown.edu (Adam Doppelt);
Sent at 6/10/97; 3:44:33 AM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerThanks for the column. Would be interested to hear if you get feedback. Couple of design nits for you. The home icon is from Netscape itself. The browser icon is there for branding, but even more important-to show users when things are downloading or to clue the user into the fact that the line is dead. I love that feature in Netscape.
From: marney@animatrix.com (Marney Morris);
Sent at 6/9/97; 11:13:00 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerGREAT article with Marney... she happens to be one of my favorite designers... thanks.
From: les@net500.com (les booth);
Sent at 6/10/97; 12:00:01 AM;
NETSCAPE Browser-bar re-designI really do like the 're-design' she did of the NETSCAPE browser-bar. Like you said, very simple and to-the-point.
I just hope you are hinting with a "heavy hand" to Steve the real sanity behind functional design verses just more plug-ins and looking like MSIE.
Thanks for a great couple of weeks worth of email. Really have enjoyed your recent pieces. Seems like your 'catching a wave' again... like you were on during February-March '96 ... Keep it going!
The design does look simpler but looking at it from a user's point of view, how effective is it? My guess is that if you did some user testing on this revised browser UI, a lot of users would comment that the buttons are too small and take a real effort in placing the arrow/mouse in the right location. This can be especially difficult for young kids or older people suffering from arthritis.
From: lhsieh@sfo.com (Lee Hsieh);
Sent at 6/9/97; 9:40:07 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerI think that soon we will see browsers and applications giving users more control in determining the placement/sizing of UI elements. That being said, in the best of all worlds, you would just tell your computer what to do and it would do it :)
Dave, today's piece was a bit of deja vu... Marney's design for the ideal web browser toolbar looks almost identical to how I have Internet Explorer 3.0 on Win95 setup. Attached is a GIF captured of my browser viewing the DaveNet page, cropped to just show the menu/toolbar.
From: combee@techwood.org (Benjamin L. Combee);
Sent at 6/9/97; 11:24:40 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerAs an aside, in Netscape on my Unix box, I usually run with the toolbar completely off. If I need to go back or forward, its only a right-click away. Toolbars can be useful, but I'm very sold on context menus.
Umm... On a 1024x768 screen, Dave, I've pretty much had that interface ever since IE 3.0 for Win95 came out.
From: argyll@earthlink.net (Hal O'Brien);
Sent at 6/9/97; 8:59:58 PM;
Dinner with MarneyAdmittedly, it has all the buttons on the left, and the Address space on the right -- but other than that, that's my interface.
It's one of the main reasons I don't use Navigator -- IE 3 will let me drag the Address space onto the top row, making one clean bar. Navigator won't.
(Another main reason is Navigator's abysmal management of bookmarks. By IE's making them all individual URL files, it's *very* easy to synchronize my bookmarks between the multiple machines I use. And I can manipulate my bookmark structure just by using Explorer to access the C:WindowsFavorites directory, and using common Win95/Explorer keyboard shortcuts. Piece'o'cake.)
Nice piece, but old news. At least for some of us.
I liked the simplified Netscape frame too. I have always like the simpler, less intrusive browser frames like those in MacWeb and Cyberdog. Her Netscape frame has the additional advantage that it is pretty. It is interesting to me too because I easily recognize some symbols, but others just confuse me. I usually just use text in Netscape because I can understand them all and the buttons take up less room. She has mixed text buttons and symbols in a particularly intuitive and attractive way.
From: wincros@leonardo.net (Winsor Crosby);
Sent at 6/9/97; 8:38:29 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerYou are probably going to get a zillion comments saying this, but here is it anyway:
From: harald@windholm.com (Harald Striepe);
Sent at 6/9/97; 8:37:51 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerTake Internet Explorer Version 3.0x. Under the Views Menu disable Favorites. Leave the Button and Address bars enabled. You may want to disable the Status bar for a cleaner look.
Click on the handle of the Address bar and drag it to the preferred position of the Button bar covering up unneeded buttons.
Presto, you're pretty close to your design! I've been using it like that for a while - so you see, we are quite in agreement...
Actually, I was looking at the picture before I read the explanation. And I made a leap I think is kinda cool... what if the text entry box was general purpose? Could one program it so that if you type a word in it, then hit Search, you'll search for that word?
From: jra@corp.webtv.net (Jeff Allen);
Sent at 6/9/97; 8:33:58 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerThat's a rhetorical question of course... we I finally get around to writing _my_ web browser, that's how it'll work. :)
I have been hot on increasing vertical RE for a long time. So much so, that the first thing I do with a new browser ver. is reduce the icons to text only, and removing the directory buttons. that adds a line or two extra.
From: priviet@sirius.com (Steven Gilman);
Sent at 6/9/97; 8:26:45 PM;
Re:Dinner With A DesignerI like Marny's design, with a couple of comments. I use the view source tab, file save/as and bookmarks a lot. Where are they?
I'm amazed no-one else has commented more vocally on the lack of screen space v. UI design. This seems to me the little acknowledged f.o.l of most apps.. as they increase options and utility, the info-windo shrinks considerably.
There ought to be a betta way...
I first started using Flash almost about a year ago (It was still called FutureSplash then). At the time I was tasked with building the Search 'channel' of a certain very large, very ambitious Internet Site, which shall remain unnamed (why will soon beco me obvious).
From: jackbell@ricochet.net (Jack Bell);
Sent at 6/9/97; 3:30:57 PM;
Re:Macromedia FlashYou see I had a problem. The site was designed by artists with little or no background in Internet Development. Heck, some of them came from print media and had never designed for computers at all. And Web hype was at an all-time-high; everyone (includ ing even some of us actually doing the work) bought into the meme that you could do anything with HTML, a little scripting and perhaps a Plug-in/ActiveX control or two (however we did have the luxury of targeting only one browser).
Back to my problem - the designers came up with something that I knew was going to be as slow as hell. Unusable, in fact, on anything less than a 28.8 connection. And they would neither change it nor design an alternative 'text-only' version that users with slower connections could link to. I had to make it work or else (our management came from Hollywood and had as little experience with the medium as the designers).
Then I stumbled on FutureSplash. OK, I didn't stumble on anything. I went looking for a product that would solve my problems and a few carefully constructed searches later I found it. As it turned out, a couple of the other techies working on other par ts of the same site had proposed FutureSplash earlier, but had not convinced the powers that be and had given up. But me? I knew this was the only way I could make my portion of the site work, short of a major re-design which wasn't going to happen. So I downloaded a free beta and proto-typed my search pages with FutureSplash anyway, only using animation and some of the scripting goodies because I knew the designers would love that (P.T. Barnum would have been proud).
It worked. With the designers behind us the technical staff managed to convince management to the point that FutureSplash was used on pretty near every page of the site. Oh, we had lots of implementation problems of course. Actually, because I had to u se frames on a search site I had some real doozys. But it worked out pretty well and FutureWave's staff was very helpful. The site as a whole was still slow as molasses in winter, but my search pages worked OK on 14.4 connections and could be lived wit h at 9600.
Then, last winter, I consulted with another group at the same company developing an ambitious gaming site. Because of my good experience before I recommended FutureSplash again. I don't know if it was because I didn't do the HTML/Scripting myself this t ime or what, but it didn't work out. We had incompatibilities with other ActiveX Controls, palette problems, scripting problems, you name it. And when Macromedia bought out FutureWave our support suddenly dried up. After fighting with it for several mo nths the Scripter working on the pages recommended that we drop FutureSplash and write our own ActiveX control. So this time I became the goat instead of the hero.
Moral of the story? I guess it is 'Internet Development is still more of an art than a science'. Or perhaps 'Support is the name of the game'. Of course there is a somewhat different moral for me, one having to do with office politics, but we don't nee d to get into that. I might add that I have moved on to do a project outside that company for now.
One of my requirements for accepting this new contract was final architectural and design sign-off. I need to be able to say 'This won't work, lets try something different', and make it stick. Funny thing is, this time I have designers who actually unde rstand Internet Usability. Oh, and I feel like I am being listened to as well...
irreverence goes over big with me -- thanks for being irreverent. reason for my email:
From: innovate@bway.net;
Sent at 6/9/97; 6:22:36 PM;
shock doodleworkscheck out www.mistermatt.com -- find "shock doodleworks" and go there... it's wild.
the whole site is an amazing implementation of shockwave and flash, even if the art isn't to your liking (hey, no accounting for taste, eh? ;-) i know this guy, and he told me about flash a year ago - said it was going to be the biggest thing to hit the web since shockwave, "if they could only get it to deliver sound." well, they've done it, and i do see it as the biggest thing to hit the web since shockwave.....
Check out:
From: cynsa@construct.net (cynsa beans);
Sent at 6/9/97; 2:55:17 PM;
Re:Macromedia Flashhttp://www.construct.net/who/cynsa/personal/
doesn't display all the cool things you can do (yet) but it gives you a basic idea. I have some great ideas for incorporating animated gifs that are also moved about the page via the script...
each layer is has its own document object. that means you can do whatever you would do to a normal web page, but just to that particular layer.
there are object methods for tons of other cool stuff, too, this is just a simple example. it's a personal homepage template using dynamic layers that my co-worker annette designed and I javascripted. click on 'etc' to do the slideshow, 'svery cool.
btw: you need communicator 4.0 to see this,
download at http://home.netscape.com/comprod/mirror/client_download.html
I am totally in love with layers. I've been waiting for something like this for ages. I think I won't be alone in that love, and it might be a good idea for marc to hedge bets by offering a javascript translator.
Paul Allen's site requires a fixed browser window that is larger than my 17" monitor! This is not a gorgeous design. It loads like sludge, and uses strange non-standard scroll bars.
From: cohill@bev.net (Andrew Michael Cohill);
Sent at 6/9/97; 5:39:42 PM;
Paul Allen--NOT!Director is awfully piggy, extremely complicated, and not for the faint of heart. It's hardly a tool for the masses, either in price or in usability.
You seem to be confused all of a sudden. The beauty of www.scripting.com is in the information, and the promise that anyone could run a site like that. Who could compete with Allen's site? Who could afford to hire the graphics artists and programmers? Who would want to? Why would I bother?
Here's an idea -- in addition to holding the contest, why not see if you can abstract the design away from the content to the point where it's up to the individual what "flavor" of Scripting News they want to see. Save their choice in a cookie, and let them see the site their way from then on.
From: mark_gardner@merck.com (Gardner, Mark J.);
Sent at 6/9/97; 5:11:12 PM;
Scripting news redesign ideaFurther on down, you could provide a facility that lets people select not only the flavor, but color schemes, pictures, font choices, etc. Maybe even insert bits of arbitrary HTML code. That way, anyone can redesign Scripting News, any time they want to.
I happen to live in one of the two areas where Comcast is testing cable modems. Recently they called and asked me if I wanted to sign-up. The service was only $39.95/month.
From: bfrankel@ix.netcom.com (Barry Frankel);
Sent at 6/9/97; 5:10:56 PM;
Microsoft and ComcastI thought about it. The price is fair. But I opted not to go for the service and stick to my 28.8 modem and my $19.95 per month vendor.
Why did I turn down the future? Because I could not think of anything I really wanted to do that needed the bandwidth.
My assistant's husband independently decided to subscribe to the offer. She came in to the office today telling a horror story of the installer stapling a coax cable to the wall of her condo to get a connection from the main cable connection to their PC. And then there were a number of stories about the unprofessional behavior of the installation team.
If Microsoft is not careful the sequel to the movie "Cable Man" might be "Cable Modem Man".
I hope Microsoft knows what they are getting into with this new venture.
dave: I think you really need to check out some layers demos using Communicator 4.0. it's all done with some simple javascript. I suppose if Director could write javascript I would be psyched for other folks, but the truth is I've been writing happy flying text and floating layers for over a month now, just with a text editor. weeee!
From: cynsa@construct.net (cynsa beans);
Sent at 6/9/97; 1:43:42 PM;
Re:Macromedia FlashHow about all Java web pages from an all Java design environment: Check out http://www.randomnoise.com/. Very interesting concept... no more HTML, just Java objects.
From: sbove@ravenswood.com (stephen bove);
Sent at 6/9/97; 2:49:37 PM;
Re:"Macromedia Flash - RandomNoise..."I'm still really curious about why no-one seems to be talking more about the OS-9/Java VM on a chip combo that seems to be emerging as an alternative "platform".
From: sbove@ravenswood.com (stephen bove);
Sent at 6/9/97; 2:45:07 PM;
OS-9 againCorel and IBM have released, or announced designs for, Network Computers based on this dynamic duo. Are there more in the works?
I'd be very curious to hear substantive discourse in the "Scripting" community about this subject.
Some Questions:
What does the Oracle NC run on? Is it OS-9?
How difficult would it be to "clone" OS-9? Are embedded, micro-kernel OS's a dime a dozen? Or does MicroWare have something that's extremely hard to replicate? Will there be many such OS's running anonymously under embedded JVMs in NCs?
I have no experience in OS development and have no idea how difficult it would be to make an OS-9 from scratch (some competitors appear to be Metroworks and maybe even WindowsCE). I can only figure it would be a lot easier to develop an OS-9 clone than it would be to develop Windows95 or the MacOS from scratch.
For a nice use of Flash, check out the www.mungopark.com website. If you go to the Legends section and look down the left hand table cell you should see "STS-81: Live from Space." Click that... Inside the STS-81 section the "NASA Timeline" is a nice example of Flash.
From: michael@theobvious.com (michael sippey);
Sent at 6/9/97; 1:25:17 PM;
Re:Macromedia FlashYou can get Director and ShockWave to talk CGI apps, browser supported scripting languages, and Databases *today*. Dynamically generated content is possible.
From: enzo@micron.net (Ron Bearry);
Sent at 6/9/97; 2:32:31 PM;
Re:Macromedia FlashNot many people seem to be working with these tools in this way, but there is much that is possible and it's nice to show that there are other things going on besides Java. There are many possibilities here.
I've heard that it's also possible to get a Shockwave app and a Flash app on the same web page to talk to each other. This could be great for internet/intranet CBT stuff. I'll give this a try when my copy of Director 6 arrives.
The Web being what it is, no effect is predictable.
From: markman@batnet.com (Markman);
Sent at 6/9/97; 1:13:00 PM;
Re:"Macromedia Flash/Didn't see nothin'"I'm using ie 3.0.1 and have the shockwave flash plug-in. I saw nothin but a static site.