RE: Netscape the Big Win(dows)

[rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)]

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At 12:32 PM 7/21/95, Timothy C.  May wrote:
>
>No, I don't use any of the "-works" apps, and I think the success of the
>Web speaks for itself... This is not a view I have just come to, as my
>recent message shows.

Agreed.  My posting seemed to get stuck in the response queue to the
original post, and came out a little "dated", I guess...

>
>And I'm not wedded to "Netscape" per se, though that particular environment
>has the current momentum.  I've also used Mosaic and MacWeb to do much the
>same things, but find Netscape smoother.

I agree.  By far the best web-browser out there is Netscape.  They don't
call it Mozilla for nothing.

>
>Out of curiosity, the phrase "grown out of Netscape," aside from the
>implied barb, means what?  Just what am I missing and what do I need to
>"grow out of"?

No.  That seems to be my unintentional verbal style on the net, a little
prickly around the edges.  My actual barbs are so over the top that you'll
never misunderstand them for their subtlety.

What I mean is, that after you've used Netscape, a web client, to read news
for a while, you'll start to think about more specialized applications like
Newswatcher, for instance.

The reason that Netscape has either built-in news reading or mail reading
functions is feature creep.  My hypothesis is that feature creep is brought
about by some combination of venture capitalists, securities analysts, and
"real marketing people", all of which Andreasson at Netscape has in spades,
now, all with their chins on his shoulder saying, "That's nice, what else
will it do?".  In-line gifs or jpegs (or mpegs or whatever) are integral to
the function of seeing what's on the web.  So are in-line FTC, Gopher, etc.
I think.  My opinion about e-mail and news are that they're pretty
orthogonal to the functionality of a web-browser.  Kind of like building
wheels on a boat.

>If, perchance, this is just what of those throwaway barbs, implying I move
>from fad to fad (as Fraering's post implied), you should know that I stuck
>with tin/elm/emacs/Eudora for more than 3 years, as nothing obviously
>better--and worth the learning curve to switch to--had come along.  (In the
>Mac domain I used other programs, none of them "-works" packages.)

No, Tim, your mother does *not* wear army boots.  ;-).  I just have several
friends who recently moved to a TCP net feed and thought they only needed
Netscape.  That is, until they used Eudora, and/or Newswatcher (preferably
in it's "value added" editions), and switched to them instead for their
respective purposes.

>But, I'll tell you what, I *will* tell you about it in 6 months, whether or
>not I've grown out of Netscape!

Of that we can rest assured.  :-).

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

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-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131
USA (617) 323-7923
"Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell
>>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf@clark.net  http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<