Marc Andreessen on Safari
<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,57661,00.html" target="_blank">Wired Article</a>
[quote] Andreeseen: I think it's so funny that Apple comes out with a new browser in 2003. Where were you guys six years ago? I wish them the best, but it's not as if you're about to see Safari go from 0 percent market share to 47 percent. <hr></blockquote>
I agree with Marc...and I don't think Apple expects to have 50% marketshare. But they need to control how their users browse the internet. With all due respect Marc's a one hit wonder who still gets interview because he's was in the right place at the right time. I've heard him called a genius but he's more luck than genius IMO.
[quote] Andreeseen: I think it's so funny that Apple comes out with a new browser in 2003. Where were you guys six years ago? I wish them the best, but it's not as if you're about to see Safari go from 0 percent market share to 47 percent. <hr></blockquote>
I agree with Marc...and I don't think Apple expects to have 50% marketshare. But they need to control how their users browse the internet. With all due respect Marc's a one hit wonder who still gets interview because he's was in the right place at the right time. I've heard him called a genius but he's more luck than genius IMO.
Comments
Berners-Lee had links set up so that you clicked once on them to select them for an operation, and double-clicked to open them to traverse.
Sound familiar? It should, he developed what became HTTP/HTML/etc on a NeXT.
Andreesen, a silly undergrad, decided that double-clicking was st00pid, and made it a single click... thereby locking us into having to right-click or ctrl-click on a link to do anything useful, and making it act *un*like anything else on most OSs.
Which led right into the "make everything a single-click" fiasco that Active Desktop was headed for.
Andreesen isn't a genius by any means. He's the Forrest Gump of web development history.
<strong>Almost seems like he doesn't get it. The browser is no longer a product to gain market share. It's just a tool that you need to function well on your computer. IE on OS X sucked so Apple rolled their own to make sure their computers had a good internet tool. Nothing more.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly.. who gives if Safari is only at 0.3% marketshare? Apple isn't trying to be Netscape. Marc obviously has some leftover emotional baggage..
In any case, I'm not sure what his point was. Seems a fatalistic in tone, so I suppose his point is why try? As Homer Simpson once said, "Trying is the first step to failure."
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>
<strong>Yeah, thank Andreesen for screwing up the web UI.
Berners-Lee had links set up so that you clicked once on them to select them for an operation, and double-clicked to open them to traverse.
Sound familiar? It should, he developed what became HTTP/HTML/etc on a NeXT.
Andreesen, a silly undergrad, decided that double-clicking was st00pid, and made it a single click... thereby locking us into having to right-click or ctrl-click on a link to do anything useful, and making it act *un*like anything else on most OSs.
Which led right into the "make everything a single-click" fiasco that Active Desktop was headed for.
Andreesen isn't a genius by any means. He's the Forrest Gump of web development history.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's certainly not the only thing about the Web that he screwed up. The idea of competing by extending HTML, and the insistance on using HTML to make things "look pretty" rather than to represent data can both be laid (mostly) at his feet.
The funny thing is, if I had a dime for every time I saw someone double-click on a link to follow it, I'd be able to retire. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>Andreesen isn't a genius by any means. He's the Forrest Gump of web development history.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> Comedy gold.
[ 02-15-2003: Message edited by: blabla ]</p>
<strong>
eah, thank Andreesen for screwing up the web UI.
Berners-Lee had links set up so that you clicked once on them to select them for an operation, and double-clicked to open them to traverse.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Uhm, so this seems like a webbrowser flaw/feature... not anything with html itself..
[quote]
<strong>
Sound familiar? It should, he developed what became HTTP/HTML/etc on a NeXT.
[QUOTE]
[QB]
Andreesen, a silly undergrad, decided that double-clicking was st00pid, and made it a single click... thereby locking us into having to right-click or ctrl-click on a link to do anything useful, and making it act *un*like anything else on most OSs.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
silly question: but how does Safary manage this? How did Cyberdog handle single clicking?
[quote]
<strong>
Which led right into the "make everything a single-click" fiasco that Active Desktop was headed for. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Correct me if Im wrong here, but I dont think he had anything to do with Active Desktop
[quote]
<strong>
Andreesen isn't a genius by any means. He's the Forrest Gump of web development history.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I dindnt laugh..
<strong>Yeah, thank Andreesen for screwing up the web UI.
Berners-Lee had links set up so that you clicked once on them to select them for an operation, and double-clicked to open them to traverse.</strong><hr></blockquote>
How is double-clicking to follow a link better than single-clicking? I mean yes I know it's not consistent with the OS UI but why does it need to be? I don't see the advantage. People single-click on links far more than they right-click.
<strong>silly question: but how does Safary manage this? How did Cyberdog handle single clicking?
...
Correct me if Im wrong here, but I dont think he had anything to do with Active Desktop
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Since Andreessen and others made single clicking normal in web browsers, Apple can't just requiere double clicking in Safari (and Cyberdog).
Regarding Active Desktop, I don't think the poster meant that Andreessen had anything to do with Active Desktop, but where do you think that Microsoft got the single clicking feature from? Web browsers!
<a href="http://kmirror.deskmod.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1554&highlight=safari#1554"; target="_blank">Safari accounts for over 40% of users at konfabulator.com</a>
Maybe the mods would like to post a similar study for browsers hitting the forums... Brad? Johnatan?
Btw, I haven't used Chimera or Exploder for almost a month now.
:cool:
<a href="http://step.sdsc.edu/s95/www/history.html"; target="_blank">A quick link.</a>
And JLL and BuonRutto nailed it... single-click to activate was a new behaviour that web browsers introduced after Mosaic screwed it up, and that Active Desktop tried to emulate and retro-extend to the general OS. Guess what, doesn't work well.
It's amazing how a stupid, silly mistake can have such far reaching consequences.
[ 02-17-2003: Message edited by: Kickaha ]</p>
<strong>I thought Mosaic was bought by MS and became IE. You mean Netscape and IE were developed from the same original code!?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes and no.
Andreessen & Co. developed Mosaic, but legally Mosaic belonged to the NCSA at the University of Illinois. So when they left Illinois and moved west to Silicon Valley in 1994, they could not take the Mosaic code with them. They built Netscape from the ground up. Obviously it was very similar to Mosaic, though; the browser was even called "Mosaic NetScape" in its early development. Netscape and the NCSA got into a legal scrap over it, and in the settlement Netscape paid the NCSA $3 million and agreed to stop using the name Mosaic.
Microsoft later used the Mosaic code (which Microsoft purchased under license from the NCSA) to create IE 1.0 in 1995.
[ 02-17-2003: Message edited by: CaseCom ]</p>
Lemon Bon Bon <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />
The problem with windows and the web is that while both have become two button worlds, neither are consistent with each other.
The problem for the mac is that moving to a two button paradigm would reproduce the same inconsistency, but staying in a one button idiom has it's own disconnect with the web experience as the vast majority of peope understand it.
For myself, I've never really thought about the single click, I find it natural enough, and having used a lot of windows, I never notice the inconsistency, I traverse quite naturally between the web and windows idioms, transparently even. However, I realize that this would drive a newbie nuts.
"Newbies" we're running out of those at an alarming rate.
I hate having to go through contortions to select the text of a link. It really should not be as hard as it is. Certainly, the idea of rolling out a Windows-style mouse to correct for Andressen's stupidity is fighting fire with fire.
I think of typing. When this whole computer thing began a whole class of people that mattered -- people with brains, with training, with specialized knowledge, professionals, students -- they didn't know how to type -- typing itself not nearly as ergonomic as it could be, but that's an aside. They couldn't type and computer guru's envisioned for them systems that might make it easier for these people not to type. Voice and handwriting recognition would eventually obviate the need for a keyboard. The genuine interest of an educated class (but basically computer illiterate) kept this quest for alternative input alive. But somewhere along the way we all learned how to type as a matter of course. Even a turbo hunt and peck like me manages some 50-60wpm despite never "learning to type" and that's the end of it. Futurists still dream of alternatives but nobody really wants them anymore.
Ergonomic consistency may be the same thing. It matters, but it mattered more when nobody spoke "computer." Today children grow up with a mouse in the hand, they discover the idiom without ever noticing its inconsistencies. Multiple idioms exist for them without difficulty.
Mac users have been spoiled by good design, but most of the world hasn't and anybody born in the last ten years just won't notice, won't have the trouble we might have had.
In any event, I'm going to put this out there, not that I completely agree with it, just something for consideration:
Might seperating the web and desktop idiom ultimately turn out to be a good thing? I've been saying that people don't notice the inconsistency, but in spite of the inherent contradiction in what I'm writing, the subtle cue that web space and desktop space are seperate and different might be good. Do we want them to be a seamless whole? I don't, not integrated like M$ is trying to do. But also, a functional difference, rooted in a mechanical interface, this keeps reminding us of the difference even when a generation of users may not be able to articulate it. iDunno, just a few thoughts about it.
Internet is now a big part of computing and working the standard in a different way may not be the wisest move. Perhaps the addition of a second button just becomes the simplest move after a time.
Again, we're running out of newbies.