News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 10/6/97 | |
I'm raising the subject of Dreamweaver and Frontier on the dreamweaver newsgroup at Macromedia. But I'm getting stuck because you haven't released the Windows version of Frontier yet. I don't know enough about Frontier.
From: luke@tymowski.org (Luke Tymowski);
Sent at 10/6/97; 5:00:13 PM;
Dreamweaver and Frontier: need helpTheir developers are replying to my questions, some of them have looked at Frontier and others don't know much about it and are heading over to your site to find out more about Frontier.
Their news server can be found at news://forums.macromedia.com Look under the dreamweaver newsgroup. My message heading is Dreamweaver and Scripting Tools.
I need help please.
Regarding XML, here is the essential answer. SGML has long been recognized as a very powerful language for creating languages, like HTML. However, it has always been very hard to learn and author with, and has been expensive to implement. The goal of XML was to offer a scaled down version of SGML to make it easier for people to create new DTDs (Document Type Definitions, which define the language you are creating) and to edit existing ones. MS IE 4 already has some XML support, and future versions of both IE and Navigator will offer full XML support. In addition, XML has many applications that will make sites more useful for all users. For instance, you will be able to mark up specific text on your site, and things like search engines will be able to recognize it. For instance, you might markup a section of text on your site as
From: jhiggins@dn.net (Justin Higgins);
Sent at 10/6/97; 5:31:33 PM;
Re:"XML in Today's Scripting News"and a search engine would be able to interpret it to display that specific section when someone was searching for something like that. The main benefit of XML is that there will no longer be incompatbilities between different browsers and the tags they support. And people won't be limited to just HTML. They will be able to add their own tags to the HTML DTD, or create all new ones.
Let me know if you have any other questions, or would like to discuss XML further.
Justin Higgins
W3C XML Working GroupIn addition to its apparent meanings, the "Think Different" ad seemed to me to have a thinly-veiled subliminal message from Apple to everyone else. For months--or years--before it aired, the industry had been abuzz with analysis and innuendo that had Apple gasping on its deathbed. When Apple finally comes out with the opening salvo of a promised new campaign, what is said? "Think Different" could as easily mean "Guess Again!"
From: mmcavoy@ix.netcom.com (Michael McAvoy);
Sent at 10/6/97; 2:27:31 PM;
I Liked The AdHave you talked to the folks at GoLive? I've been using CyberStudio for pasteup then importing into Frontier to build the pages. It would be great if that process was streamlined. I know that CyberStudio is Mac only, but they are working on a Windows version.
From: billy_myers@www.klru.org (Billy Lee Myers, Jr.);
Sent at 10/6/97; 2:34:40 PM;
Frontier and CyberStudio?Billy Lee Myers, Jr., Web Admin. KLRU-TV
Austin City Limits http://www.klru.org/Privacy is a political issue. For PGP, it is also an economic issue, since they have to sell their software. They've consequently expanded a politics of individual liberty to include "corporate liberty."
From: mcg@halcyon.com (Michael C. Gilbert);
Sent at 10/6/97; 11:15:33 AM;
PGP on Message RecoveryBusinesses want the ability to snoop on their employees. Under current law, they also have an extensive right to do so.
It's easy to make government into the enemy, since often enough it is. Although I'm a vigorous opponent of government powers to snoop, in my day to day experience I have *far* more problems with private organizations invading my privacy.
My personal choice is never to work for a company that eavesdrops on my telephone calls or opens my mail. I complain when, as a consumer, my calls to sales or support people are recorded by supervisors.
Government intrusion is real, but we're fools if we ignore corporate intrusion as we discuss the political and technical solutions to the challenge of privacy.
In that regard, the PGP product may meet corporate needs, but it doesn't cut it as a genuine privacy tool, despite its polite warnings to users about the copying of messages to a central authority.
I couldn't agree more with the emailer. The Java implementation on the Mac is pitiful and there doesn't seem to be anyone who is that worried. As a member of the JavaLobby, I find it disheartening that we would "go" after MS for a faster VM, JDK1.1 code, and other goodies that will make the use of Java that much better, but yet we won't say anything about Sun's lack of follow-thru on a platform that could use Java and become that much more powerful.
From: jolucas@earthlink.net (Joshua Lucas);
Sent at 10/6/97; 10:59:58 AM;
Java View2 annotations to the email message you posted on your site:
From: hannes@infosys.tuwien.ac.at (Hannes Wallnoefer);
Sent at 10/6/97; 7:46:32 PM;
Re:A Unique View of Java1. Apple, not Sun, is doing the Mac version of JDK 1.1. (This goes back to an agreement between Apple and Sun based on the fact that Apple had better resources for delivering Java on Mac than Sun.) Beta versions have gone out to registered Apple developers, I think.
2. What we (talking as a member of the Java Lobby here) criticize is not that Microsoft is not shipping full JDK 1.1 support with IE4, but that they are _deliberately_ leaving out strategically important parts. Netscape and Apple have both committed to support the full 1.1 API and haven't lived up till now for clear technical reasons only.
I just tried out DreamWeaver. It looks quite feature-laden at first glance. However:
From: henri@binaryCompass.com (Henri Asseily);
Sent at 10/6/97; 10:49:39 AM;
DreamWeaver
- Why include a version of BBEdit to bloat the download? Give a choice
- Add Frontier hooks. However, this may be very hard. See below.
- DreamWeaver relies on Microsoft Object libraries quite extensively. Did you see all the damned libraries DreamWeaver puts in your extensions folder? This is crazy!
No, I think this is NOT the future of cross-platform development, whatever one may say. Unless Macromedia writes a full Mac app that uses the Mac toolbox instead of the Microsoft toolbox over the Mac toolbox, it will stay bloated. It already requires a minimum of 20 Megs of RAM. (Of course this is only a beta.)
A German company called Omega (http://www.omega.de) claims they have a fully functional MacOS 8 equivalent secure OS that they will start marketing on October 16 for less than $100. They claim that it works on all CPUs (including 030) and it runs in 4MB memory and requires only 12MB of disk space...
From: jaggi@pingnet.ch (Christoph Jaggi);
Sent at 10/6/97; 4:00:13 PM;
MacOS CloneRegarding the 'Think Different' campaign of Apple, I'm reminded of a George Burns movie, I think it was 'Oh, God' - these kids had to come up with a slogan to get people thinking about God when one of them said, 'Let's think God tomorrow' - and the phrase 'Think God' was born...
From: raster@execpc.com (rasterboy);
Sent at 10/6/97; 7:17:10 AM;
Re:"Apple's advertising grammar."'Think Different' makes perfect sense to me... Maybe it's another case of the 'get it's' versus the 'just don't get it's'
I just downloaded DreamWeaver and gave it a try. It's a pretty neat HTML editor and sure is up to date with the latest browser technology (too up to date?). Did I miss something or is Frontier scripting impossible with DreamWeaver? They put the BBEdit link but seem to have forgotten the Frontier one. I've tried quite a few editors but I always seem to come back to Frontier very quickly... you get use to the power of scripting for site and page creation. An editor that does hook up Frontier's power is really missing an easy way to reach for the stars.
From: benoit@timco.net (Benoit Cazenave);
Sent at 10/6/97; 2:16:11 PM;
DreamWeaverThe thing I liked about DreamWeaver is the library function. Small elements of HTML code that you can reuse in any page and modify for all pages easily. Frontier let's you do it too but you have to write a script for each part of the library. A library extension to the existing toolset would be nice. A sort of include that would work in templates too...