The only thing that concerns me, is our friends over at Microsoft. While
they were moving towards DOM compliance (around the time they ported IE5 to
the Macintosh) they took a hard left with IE5.5 when they decided that war
with the Java/Unix camp was inevitable.
I have a lot of concerns with the pending Whistler/IE6 combination, because
I am pretty sure it's going be a major paradigm shift for them/us (think
zero support for client side Java). M$ is moving to align all their
products OS/Software around the .net strategy while at the same time pushing
the "disturbance factor" in other alternative platforms (hmmmm, this seems
to run like shit on my PC compared to 100% M$ products) as much as they can
without flagging the Justice Department "to much".
Additionally, the long awaited arrival of NS6 came and went without so much
as a ripple of real impact. I think that good old Netscape finally found
out how to align the bullet-filled cylinder of business blunders with their
head. NS6 is a dead alternative in the eyes of Joe Consumer. I can't even
imagine AOL wrapping there consumer online service around this browser
instead of IE (that they use now), unless they want to hand MSN
marketshare.
In no way am I supporting an IE concentric approach. We just need to be
aware that "shit is gonna hit the developer fan" in 3-7 months when they
release Whistler. They have spent a billion dollars developing this release
with two goals in mind. Stunt the growth of Java and kill Linux as a viable
"consumer OS" alternative. By consumer OS I mean our average home PC user.
A scary fact is that M$ has said they don't plan on releasing IE6 as a
public beta. It's gonna release inside the Whistler OS update. Get
Whistler, get IE6. This means one thing. IE6 and Whistler are being
developed in tandem to create strategic havoc for the Java/Unix camps.
Javascript (the DynAPI foundation) will likely survive as a cross-platform
language; it's to entrenched and strategically means little to M$'s end
goals. We can :O) a bit here.
This is why I don't want to spend a lot of time developing a Java Applet
Client/Side I/O device for DynAPI2 Michael. I'm not even sure it will be
supported with the new IE6. I think Java is going to be a server-side tool
for awhile.
In the end, basic DOM support with the DynAPI is probably the best path.
But lets be smart (as we can be with limited knowledge) about how we enhance
that API with input/output shunts to the dynamic server/side world.
Laters,
Ray
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