>Netscape is the greatest thing since sliced bread! And it it s open to
>anyone, and ANYONE can use the Netscape browser for noncommercial purposes.
>For noncommerical purposes it is BY FAR THE BEST, the easiest, the most fun
>to use. Sure HotJava might turn out to be better, but it's still in the
>Alpha stage. Not even beta testing it yet. On Netscape you can EASILY and
>painlessly do audio of all kinds, video, animation, and create sharp, clear
>pages easily. Netscape is a leader and RULE BY COMMITTEE which the damned
>"open" standards for HTML 3.0 has turned out to be, simply doesn't care
>about the vast majority who want to use these tools TODAY!
Let's separate what you can do through the Netscape Navigator, and how
Netscape Communications Corporation is going about the developing the web.
As anyone who visits my page (http://www.best.com/~taylor/) will attest to,
I use a heck of a lot of Netscape tags and features. They allow me to do
what I envision in my mind's eye and to bring in elements into electronic
publishing that are never found in print (inline animations). Love them,
use them, bring home the bacon with them.
However lets dispell some myths here. Netscape Navigator is NOT free.
Everyone is merely evaluating it on a trial basis and has yet to send in
their fee. Weather or not Netscape realistically expects ANYONE to send in
their fees is beside the point. I doubt that the current crew in charge
will try to make anyone pay. But what about a few years down the line?
What happens when all those eager investors who bought stock at $75 start
demanding to see netscape show a profit? What happens when all the
original crew frow NCSA leaves for something a little less industry
standard and the legal eagles are the big-wigs in the company. Be prepared
to suddenly have to start buying liscences for the software. Be prepared
for your software to start snooping on your system.
Also "free and open" does not mean that you don't pay for the software, and
that anyone can publish content for it. It means that the software
includes source and that anyone can modify it to suit their own needs. I'd
like to see anyone (outside of SGI) take a look at the source for Netscape
Navigator, much less Netsite. You have an idea that you'd like to add to
extendit? Sorry. Or god forbid you what to get in thier and fix one of the
MANY bugs that exist in Navigator. Tough, call customer service, IF you
paid, we'll fix it, WE know best.
>Acrobat, the Adobe product, is also free. It lets you use PageMaker or other
>page layout programs to create really high quality stuff EASILY,
>unfortunately, those programs to do the creation ARE NOT CHEAP, even the the
>viewer/browser is free.
Acrobat is another closed propritary standard that is the sole property of
teh Adobe corporation and unless you are in Mountain View CA, chances are
you can't do anything to change what it does.
>A year ago, as any bookstore shelf will attest, Mosiac was the best. A year
>from now, it will be HotJava, some unnamed Adobe product, or still Netscape.
>You never know. Now that Netscape is a REAL CORPORATION with investors like
>you and me, and not a startup struggling for capital, I think it will be
>hard to compete.
I wish it wasn't such a real corporation. I wish it was still a bunch of
hackers in Champaign-Urbanna doing it for love of the medium. Don't get me
wrong, I'm really glad that they are makeing a living doing what they
love. But it seems that now the bankers have taken over, and they have set
their sights on world domination, and things that made their group so
attractive and distinctive (their Mozilla mascot) now seem buried under a
stock, slick, venture capital image designed to appease bankers. The
software will soon follow incorporating proprietary standards such as
Macromedia, Acrobat, and Java. Now again, I'll take full advantage of
these new standards since they will allow me to do what I want.
But it aint fee, and it aint open.
. . . . .. . . ... .._..._...__..___._.___.______________taylor@taylor.org