Subject: Re: If you don't use NetScape... :-( From: Ivan Pope Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 15:58:22 -0500

>Daniel P Dern (ddern@world.std.com) wrote:
>
>: Call me Ishmael@luddite.com.  I'm using a shell account via a terminal
>: emulator for most of my net activity, though I do have a SLIP account
>: and fire up NetScape there, and sometimes use SLIPknot on my shell account.
>
>: In the past few weeks,
>
>: o I've seen home pages that start with the equivalent of
>:   "If you're not using NetScape with   the 1.1 extensions, this page
>:    will look weird or just plain butt-ugly"

Within a couple of months, nearly all browsers (excpet for Lynx and  those making commercial browsers who are either incompetent or underfunded such that they can't innovate) will support HTML 3.0.  Mosaic and Netscape currently do.  There is an enormous amount which can be done with HTML 3.0, and even without 'killing' the end-user with huge graphics, etc.

I have seen no truly compelling reason (outside of benevolence or altruism) for publishers NOT to alienate that increasingly small portion of the Web browsing audience by using standard HTML 3.0.  The most important consideration should be how one's service looks on the major browsers; that's it.  If the cost of developing a service for terminal based or low-bandwidth users is too high, forget it.  Also, services will increasingly use forms and other types of user-driven input (including external client-side applications), which terminal systems are simply unable to deal with.  That's just too bad for terminal users, IMHO.

Jeremy Allaire


From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Mon May  1 13:08:48 1995
Received: from marketplace.com by cnj.digex.net with SMTP id AA00275
  (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 1 May 1995 13:08:44 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id IAA06770 for online-news-outgoing; Mon, 1 May 1995 08:18:05 -0600
Received: from relay1.UU.NET (relay1.UU.NET [192.48.96.5]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id IAA06765 for ; Mon, 1 May 1995 08:18:02 -0600
Received: from newhouse.com by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP 
	id QQynvt17696; Mon, 1 May 1995 10:20:11 -0400
Received: from API_GARCON/SpoolDir by newhouse.com (Mercury 1.13);
    Mon, 1 May 95 10:27:12 +500
Received: from SpoolDir by API_GARCON (Mercury 1.13); Mon, 1 May 95 10:26:18 +500
Received: from [199.172.179.22] by newhouse.com (Mercury 1.13);
    Mon, 1 May 95 10:26:13 +500
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: "'Online'"