Client side : an economic perspective was: Re:...

I would like to make a point in favor of client side "things"
in general as opposed to server side.

In the early days of the Web there was an identity between 
the "website" and the server. It is no longer the case as 
many small and medium websites are hosted as user accounts on
 larger servers.

Server side "things" require unnecessary coordination between the 
authors of the websites and server manager. For example I have some hard 
time to find a working mechanism that will allow professors in my department to
run CGI scripts on a joint server (e,g,, for interactive tutorials). 

I think this point is more of *an economic* issue. Running a server has 
some considerable set up cost while running a website
doesn't have these costs. Although the cost of running a server may go down
in the future, I suspect it will take some time.

Anything that can be shifted from server to client has this advantage.
Starting from image maps, through CGI versus applets and the latest proposal
of O'Connor that allows client side includes.

Regards,
Nir Dagan.

Received on Saturday, 21 March 1998 12:55:20 UTC