>For instance, an analogy - macs pretty much suck as web servers. Whilst
>unix boxes are the most popular servers, macs indeed are an extremely
>popular second. There is no 'good technological' or even 'stylistic'
>reason for this. (Except maybe that admin costs are lower - that's the
>only rational reason.) The reason is that in the harsh world the web is an
>ever-increasingly highly commercial place. Ad agencies and designers and
>the like set up servers for their clients and so use a mac. There's a
>preponderance of weight there.
Macs are good as web servers for the same reason that they are good as
personal computers. They are bad for the exact same reasons. If you have
no UNIX (or NT ick) experiance, and need a computer to serve out a moderate
about of documents, with minimal amount of scripts needed (fill-out forms,
guestbooks, maybe a basic interface to a filemakerPro database) then grab
an old IIcx, or that damn 6100 pizza-box, take off all extentions but the
bare ncessity, and bamn! You're on the web. Works great for a small
internal server for your group, or maybe for your poetry center, or place
it on your desk at work and run your own server.
But if you expect it to generate any sort of serious traffic, or if you are
basing your business on 24hour uptime, or you need lots of flexibility in
scripting, or connection to some sort of serious database, then you had
better switch to a UNIX based system (or NT ick). Of course you will then
start to need the personel to handle it. But you can always start out
small and have it serve multiple purposes. You get yourself a pentium 90,
16 megs, a gig drive, and a tape backup unit. Run Linux or BSD (free or
shell out $500 for the fullon version) on it and you got a mail server, web
server, production machine, and DNS right there all in one. As your needs
grow you can split them all off onto different machines or roughly the same
type.
If your buisiness or main point is the web and internet I would be using a
UNIX machine. If the net is merely a hobby or a sideline then a mac is
cheaper from a maintenence standpoint. You aint gots to wrangle that
sucker as much (though that can be debated and I'll prolly agree with a
dissenting opinion.)
>In a sense you (Taylor) are talking from a 'high-end' approach. You
>personally are in fact virtually a web 'reseracher' at perhaps the
>trendiest, most cutting edge of all web sites! However consider your
>average joe who is running a web shop with 4 or 5 employees and is putting
>on 2 or 3 clients a week, building web sites for, um, American Business (
><; ) .. it's an ad agency paradigm with full-on ad agency type people.
Correct, so the needs are different. I don't know what you are using but
I'm assuming that you are using some sort of UNIX server, probably Apache
or Spinner since you are doing multiple businesses so I assume you are
doing multiple hosting. You talk about having a fiber connection to the
net. The only way that that fiber could be utilized properly is if you
have a server that can handle the about data that wide pipe can dish out.
That's what UNIX is for. LOTS of processes, LOTS of users, LOTS of load
without melting down.
>You were mentioning the difficulties of lingo .. Observe that one can,
>actually, put an ad in the paper and actually hire 'creative' people who
>can run lingo and director quite well. [When I say 'creative' I just mean
>someone who can actually do graphic design, cut a logo, scan properly, kern
>type, do a layout and so on, as well as living in a loft <:] In NY you
>could hire ten, maybe twenty 'creative' people who can run lingo and
>director quite well tomorrow.
But once you start doing non trivial projects with director you start
entering the realm of programming. It all depends on what you want to do.
If you merely want to make a funky GUI, then I would advise waiting a bit
before you plunk down $1,000 for director (also wait 'cuase director 5 is
comingout). There will soon be a multitude of tools out there for creating
simple buttons with mouseOn and OnMouseClick actions. Both as java
applications (for creating applets) and as web plugins. These will be
things that "creative" types who want to stay far away from programming
will want to use.
Yes. You can use director and shockwave to create little buttons and tiny
animations for your pages. But that is like using a tank to go get
groceries. SO director is a bit too much for making the little things,
especially if you factor in the cost of it. That is, if you didn't just
swipe it from kinkos. :-) But perhaps you want to use it for a BIG web
project. Create all your pages in it, all your content would be developed
with director and displayed in shockwave. Well you could technically do
that too. But since shockwave doesn't streem info, and since loading from
the cache takes so long the effect you get is not unlike going to a theatre
show that has lots of scenes and the director makes the unfortunate choice
of dimming the lights and making extensive scene changes during each one.
You quickly become frustrated and bored since the payoff of the scene never
maches the lean on your attention that the blackout takes.
Tools are in the works for tools for creative types. For instance, instead
of using shockwave or server pushes for animations, try out gif-builder
(http://iawww.epfl.ch/Staff/Yves.Piguet/clip2gif-home/GifBuilder.html) to
create animations that require no scripting, and no plugins for Netscape
2.0 and that appear as a normal image for browsers that don't support it.
In a few months there will be a multitude of plugins that do neat button
effects that won't require thoasand dollar programs to author.
>But now consider trying to find people who are actually 'creative' or
>'graphic designers' and who can, indeed, program in java. There's you,
>that's one! List the names of anyone else for me? I submit there are
>truly very few 'creative graphic arts' types who don't scream in terror
>when you mention java or c or the like. As a practical matter I've
>interviewed maybe, oh, 10 people who were hopefully 'java .. plus cool
>graphic artists' and they've to a man/woman been in fact 'java .. clueless
>about design' and not the sort of person one could share a studio with a
>serious sound system with <;
Ahh then maybe you should relocate out here where the tunes are phat and
the lead programmers of companies maintain rave webservers. :-)
I will maintain though that the type of people that are real lingo jockies
will be more like the graphically clueless programmers than they will be
like the graphic artists living in lofts. And the folx that can program
(lingo, java, C++, visualBasic) and have a graphic sense will always be in
extreamly high demand.
Again, there will tools for them that are build in java, to output java
applets that do a limited range of action, but are easy to configure.
>So you could be right .. the analogy here could be that, um, electric power
>is obviously just better than gas power in relation to lighting houses, so,
>in fullness of time all houses were lit using electric power.
Yes. This is about the point I'm making.
>On the other hand, I maintain that (possibly) the better analogy is, sure,
>midengine two seater cars are "much better" in the absolute, but the vast
>majority of personal transport is achieved by a four door Camry.
>
>In other words, java could be the cutting edge that will in fact become
>ubiquitous (just like 288 modems), or, perhaps, it is more a high end thing
>(like, um, 21 inch monitors). I don't know the answer. Incidentally there
>are a couple of fun shockwave games at macromedia.com (which are actually
>not good examples at all of what I'm talking about! <;)
Java, as Mike pointed out, is a specification for an imaginary machine for
all platforms to emulate. Code can be made that will be quicker and more
robust to run there. Plus you get the ability to transparently add
functionality to the browser. You write a shockwave like plugin in java,
and when the user reaches that content it downloads the player along with
the content. No barriers.
>Quark is making a nice shokwave-like plug in which will do most everything
>most people (correction, most of 'American Business'!) would want on a web
>site - it's pretty cool.
Ick. I can't think of anything worse than all the director cdrom content
shovelwared onto the web than all the Quark documents shovelwared onto the
web. The sites that do that will get little to no traffic because they will
not be designed with the medium in mind, and the barriers for entering will
be so amazingly hight. Do you have any idea how big a static text page in
quark can get???? For both file size and physical layout.
>With all these sort of web-specific, you-too-can-do
>-multimedia-looking/GUIish/stuff/even-if-youre -just-an-art-director things
>coming out .. well you can see what I mean.
Pagemill has such bad HTML output that it's rival BBedit actually includes
a "pagemeill cleaup" fuction. All these editors will limit you to the
programer's conception of what can be done with HTML. One of the reasons
that my girlfriend Anna was hired at Hotwired as a designer was that she
had an excellent understanding of HTML. So when she designs a page, she
actually knows what is possible, unlike so many of the designers coming
from print.
You would not hire a designer or production person to handel your print
that did not know their business. Aside for the fact that qualified web
designers, and HTML production folx are rather scarce right now (this will
change) there is no reason to hire electronic publishers who don't know
their business. Shovelwareing your quark documents onto the web just wont
cut it. Not if you seriously expect people to read it.
Bottom line is this is a new medium, people will have to adapt and learn
new tools. You don't see anyone doing much cut and paste (with real
scissors , razors and paste) for laying out documents in the business world
do you? We've adapted the way we do business now so that even the smallest
companies use desktop publishing to accomodate their needs. We'll adapt
again.
Well that was a long rambling post. Time to rotate those damn ads. I"ll
be seing you folx tomorrow.
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You need to lurk. L - U - R - K Lurk
---------------------------------------------the ouija to lauri anderson----
taylor@taylor.org