Re: complexity

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 olafBuddenhagen@web.de wrote:
>>
>> Yes; as I mentioned in another e-mail on this thread, this is the same
>> as for other application plaforms, such as desktop GUIs (Win32, Gnome,
>> MacOSX), macro-enabled office suites (OpenOffice, WordPerfect),
>> database systems (DBase, Paradox), etc.
>>
>> This is not really that surprising. It also takes hundreds of people
>> to make a good video game these days. Or a high quality feature film.
>>
>> Why is this particularly a problem?
>
> Because one of the core features of the WWW has been the low entry cost
> -- which in turn is the only possiblilty to ensure real plattform
> independence.

Not for the past half-decade at least. In fact probably not for the past 8
years (two thirds of the lifetime of the Web, about the entirety of the
lifetime of the W3C).


> MSIE supports one plattform, Opera four plus one or so, Mozilla a few
> more, but what about all the others?

What others? As far as I know, there isn't a single platform that doesn't
run either Opera or Mozilla (and I'm including platforms such as Symbian
or Windows CE).


> What about text mode browsers or acoustic browsers?

Someone wishing to make a test mode browser at this point should probably
write a text mode GFX engine for Mozilla. That could be done by one
person, and would rsult in a text mode browser that had all the capability
and standards compliance of the regular Mozilla browser.


> What about those who want to create *innovative* clients?

Are you saying Opera, Mozilla, and Safari are not innovating?


>> especially given a technology like XBL or HTCs, which any browser
>> aiming to be an application platform really has to implement anyway.
>
> Not every browser aims to be an "application plattform".

Any browser that doesn't aim to be an application platform would find
itself severely locked out of large parts of the Web.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
U+1047E                                         /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 20:33:42 UTC