Internet Marketing Digest #0474

gregor@eskimo.com ((gregor@eskimo.com))
Thu, 5 Oct 1995 13:52:07 -0700

I'm jumping out of lurker mode because I saw something interesting here.
Why the vehement attack against Netscape? They've done more more than
anyone to speed the enhancement of the HTML markup tags. They're spurring
competition. Their goal isn't to screw up standards, but obviously to make
their own markups defacto standards. This is good marketing to me. The
acceptable ones are made "standard" and the "bad" ones are ditched (like
the <CENTER> tag.)

<i>>it'll be just wonderful way of writing pages just for Netscape.</i>

A good editor is a good editor - you don't have to use any extensions you
don't want to. Furthermore, Netscape 1.1 uses the (so far) full HTML
3.0 standards. ALL of them to date are incorporated, including
<P ALIGN>, along with Netscape's other extensions, which are conceptually
pretty good and deserve some mulling over.

<i>>I have further found that WYSIWYG as far as HTML goes is a bad concept.</i>
<i>>In fact it goes against everything that HTML was built for.</i>

You've obviously never seen SGI's WYSIWYG builder then. If you want to
keep building pages without the latest tools then use vi or pico and
put the marks where you want them. I for one am eager to see what
the editor looks like and I'll certainly give it a try.

<i>>And what exactly is boring about not having something centered? Not having</i>
<i>>something blinking at you?</i>

The HTML 3.0 standard for centering is recognized by Netscape's browsers.
In fact most browsers now recognize Netscape's tag. <BLINK> has always
been a bad idea and more power to you if you don't use it.

<i>>Netscape extensions will be around for many years to come. They'll be</i>
<i>>mostly relegated to the Internet Hall of Shame,</i>

Probably true - if you don't pay attention to the changing standards then
you'll be left behind. If you're good, you'll stay on top of the changes
and implement them as you go along. But if your pages are plain text then
you may as well put up a gopher site. Consumers don't want that.

I hate to make this a line-by-line nitpick, but if authors don't see where
the market is going then they're sunk. Like it or not, Netscape is paving
the way. You don't have to use their non-standard markups. I sure don't
advise it. But their markups are being incorporated into browsers
everywhere, including on AOL and Microsoft's. As bandwidth grows, you'll
see the WWW get more and more graphical. Hey - it's what people want!
Make your pages backward-compatible all the way to LYNX but don't ignore
where the market is headed. Eventually a standard (HTML 10.0?) will evolve.
I think Netscape will have a lot to do with what it looks like.

<i>>Matt</i>
<i>>- --</i>
<i>>Matt Marnell Portia Communication & Internet Services</i>

Gregory Sumner Watchdog Media
Director, Internet Development 1306 Western Ave, Suite 405
email: watchdog@wdmedia.com Seattle, WA 98101
&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.wdmedia.com/watchdog/">http://www.wdmedia.com/watchdog/</a>"&gt;http://www.wdmedia.com/watchdog/&lt;/a&gt; (206) 621.8689

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