Subject: Re: One browser or many From: docdon@pinn.net (Don Taylor) Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 20:43:09 -0500

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At 11:33 PM 7/7/95 EST, Curt A. Monash wrote:
>I think I shall write a short essay on when it is advantageous to make
>SOFTWARE platform-specific and when it is advantageous to make it portable,
>and see if we have any analogies for the browser situation.
>
>First of all, supporting slight variants of the same platform is usually
>right.  Windows, DOS, UNIX, IBM 360 and plug-compatibles -- in each case,
>there was little incremental effort in supporting multiple platforms, and
>hence it was to vendors' advantage to put in the effort and broaden their
>market.  This is self-perpetuating -- the platforms you need to support are
>the ones users TREAT as interchangeable, while that support is what makes
>them interchangeable.  Right now, for instance, there are half a dozen
>flavors of UNIX that need to be supported for business data processing (none
>of which are LINUX -- sorry); those half dozen (Sun, HP, IBM, maybe SCO, and
>a couple of others at the high end) represent the vast majority of the
>market, while providing plenty of openness/flexibility for the users.
>
>I DON'T know how similar Netscape is to other Mosaic-derived browsers, so I
>don't know if the analogy applies here.
>
>How about fundamentally different platforms?  If you start on the dominant
>platform (IBM mainframes in their era, Windows today), it is rarely worth
>the trouble to move to lesser platforms.  The software development expense
>is a significant fraction of the cost of the root product (typically an
>aggregate of at least double); in some cases, building in portability
>creates significant problems in terms of time-to-market, etc., cratering
>your whole development operation.  
>
>Does the analogy hold in online publishing?  When we're talking about
>formatting content for presentation, probably.  If presentation is most of
>your expense, pick Netscape to present on and the hell with everything else.
>What if the content development costs far exceed the formatting costs?  Then
>you might as well present your content on every platform you can.
>
>Of course, there's a big exception.  If you start out focused on an
>important niche platform (maybe because it was the best/only option
>technically at the time), you later should port to the (often newly)
>dominant platform.  The RDBMS industry started on VAXen before porting to
>UNIX; several the leading Windows application software vendors (including
>Microsoft!) introduced their products on the Macintosh.
>
>The analogy in our world is that if you don't work well w/ Netscape, you
>better get there fast.

I believe there has always been a point in marketing of identifying or
defining your customer and target market. There is also the old business
maxim of you can't be all things to all people. I realize the Net is
probably the most cooperative organism (?) on the planet, but these issues
start to become quite complex. 

For example, it probably would not make any sense to develop a site that was
not Netscape-compatible, if there is such a thing. (What do you mean by
"work well with"?) But it will take longer to develop a site that is
compatible with more than Netscape. It will also limit your options because
you won't be able to use some of the bells and whistles that you might feel
aid your presentation.

If we had better demographics we could ask who the intended market is, then
design according to their capability and justify it to management/the
client. TV and similar standards are compatible throughout a country because
they are a broadcast medium. But look at the availability of
Hispanic-speaking stations, just as an example, on cable. These are not
always available, even in neighboring communities of significant MSAs. (I
think of that information or content as a better analogy than software.)

But then, people are still developing off-net bulletin boards to deliver
content for commercial purposes?!

Don

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