bitsifter
friday, august 16

[rant] Part of my job revolves around the development of a web-based application. It is comprised of Oracle database backend, a JavaScript front-end, and a whole lot of Perl. It's a disparate toolset, but the end result still represents the primary reason that Netscape is worrying a lot more than it should.

When a co-worker asked for a demo of our product, one of the first questions out of her mouth was "Very nice, what platforms does it support?" Confused, I responded, "This is Netscape..."Puzzled, she continued, "Meaning?" Meaning if you have a computer that runs Netscape, this application will run fine and by my count the Netscape supported platforms hovers around sixteen compared to Microsoft's support of two, NT and Windows 95.

Sure, Microsoft murmurs that support for Macintosh is forthcoming and that they're considering out-sourcing Internet Explorer code to Unix shops, but I can guarantee you two things: 1) you'll never see ActiveX on the Macintosh desktop and 2) The day hardcore Unix_types embrance any Microsoft product is the same day that folks'll start calling Bob Dole a warm guy.

Internet Explorer certainly make strides in playing catch-up with Netscape and even breaks ground with some slick UI enhancements, but with each new feature I never think "Wow, how'd they think that up?", but rather, "Wow, who'd they steal that from?"

[sift this]  From the folks who brought you the first intelligent Java directory comes Gamelan Chat , one of the first useful applications of the Java programming language that I've seen. There isn't a whole lot new in the application itself, it's essentially a poor man's IRC, but, remember, it's written in Java so I can run the chat program on the Mac, on my WinNT machine,or the Sparc 20 down the hall.

Gamelan has done a brilliant job marketing the applet by allowing anyone to license the program from free (8000+ sites and counting) plus they'll give the site it's own chat room. Thats considerable bang for you buck considering you'll only need to type a few lines of code in your web page in order to access the applet. Downloading still takes an intolerable amount of time, but soon Gamelan will wisen up and realize Netscape supports downloadable classes so frequent users can forego network downloads and simply execute the applet locally.

Honorable Mention: The VooDoo Doll applet ranks far lower on usefulness, but makes up for it with sheer ingenuity.  Plus, it's way_useful for those high stress days at work.

[?]  The only way the web will ever be cool is if it replaces a trip to the DMV.