[sift
this] This week’s first column was supposed to be some of the inanities
of Netscape Secure Mail implementation, but my dog seriously sidetracked
me. To the best of my knowledge, Baxter is part bulldog, but mostly
mutt. His cartoonish eyes are much too big for his dark brown head,
but that is part of his charm. He’s only two days old, but he eats
like a horse and has already mastered balancing a red ball on his nose.
Also, he lives in my computer.
Baxter
is a virtual dog. His home is on my less used computer where he gallivants
around his playpen eating far too much and also barking quite a bit.
When I fail to pay attention to him, he whines. When I grab his toy
tennis shoe, we play tug-o-war. Right now he’s sleeping.
This is truly pathetic.
I’m getting emotional about virtually petting my dog with a mouse.
Actually, this isn’t pathetic, it's frightening.
Baxter is part of the Dogz software package
from San Francisco based PF Magic. They’ve gone to great lengths
to make the product as simple to use as possible. They focus
more on the idea that you are a potential pet owner rather than software
owner. In order to get your own pet, you go through a basic adoption
process where you’re presented with a variety of dogs to choose from.
Once a pet is selected, you give him/her a name and they’re put in a playpen
on your screen. There are no rules about care and feeding,
no recommendations about training, the new owner is completely on their
own when figuring out how to take care of the new pet.
The single biggest problem I have with software programs that are simulations
of natural processes is that they lack spontaneity. After minor usage,
you find yourself seeing the algorithms rather than the objects they represent.
After 48 hours of use, Baxter is still coming up with new tricks.
For instance, he just had the hiccups. More perplexing is the fact
that the behaviors that are repetitious often have subtle nuances to make
them unique.
There remains the fact that getting emotionally attached to a program
is pathetic. I already have a cat at home who is responsible for
eating my sofa. Still, whatever therapy that real cat brings to my
home, my virtual dog can bring to my desktop.
[sift this] Frequent among
the Bitsifter rants is the rather obvious point that "Java is too damn
slow." With an incredible high buzzword per feature ratio, Java has
much promise, but little hope of reaching the mainstream until most desktops
are in the 200Mhz range. What are we going to use for cross platform
application interfaces in the meantime?
Tucked away among the many new features of Netscape
Communicator is a rather simple dialog that goes a long way to prove
HTML can act as an application. Click on the security button in the
browser and you'll be presented with Netscape security dialog. Kinda
pretty, isn't it? The interface allows the user configure certificates
as well as a variety of other security preferences.
The HTML savvy will immediately notice that this "dialog" is nothing
of the sort. It's a Netscape framed browser window sans menus and
toolbars with the added property of being modal - meaning you can't get
back to the browser until you hit OK. So, it's basically a dialog,
but remember, this is HTML… this dialog will pretty much run exactly the
same on Windows, UNIX, or the MAC. It's cross platform dialog.
HTML was never designed to replace good 'ole object oriented programming.
Consider for a moment designing any kind of graphic application for the
web… even with layers… and you'll shortly be running for Shockwave or,
maybe in a year or so, the Java
Foundation Classes. For now, we'll wring every last drop out
usefulness out of HTML until the next generation of application tools grows
out of their buzzwords and into their promises.