June 25, 2001– Newsletter #136

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

The latest issue of Yahoo Internet Life (YIL) has a neat
little piece where the author gives people heck for doing
local product research and then buying the item online to
save a few bucks. She talked about how the local sales
person and business loses cash. Do you do this? I read it
differently than how the author intended because I’m
totally backward to that thinking. I research online and
buy locally. It’s not that I’m local minded either. I want
instant gratification. The only time I buy online is if I
want the item delivered to another person or I simply
cannot get it within an hour’s drive and I can get most
anything in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. I wonder if
people aren’t more like me than the YIL column. The
glitter of buying online for the sake of buying online has
worn off for me at least. Buying locally means I enjoy it
tonight rather than next Wednesday.

Did you hear…

Remember the Macintosh slogan “Think Different”? It
would adorn an image of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or
Albert Einstein in order to advertise the computer. Well,
the Church of Satan decided it was a good idea and took
it for their Web site. The site used to have an image of
the church’s founder Anton Szandor LaVey with the
slogan placed as it often was in the Macintosh print ads.
As you might think, Apple was not pleased and after a
lengthy series of discussions between lawyers, the slogan
was taken down.

One of my favorite sites, joecartoon.com (I especially
like “Spontaneous Man”) has won a cybersquatting case.
A Pennsylvania man named John Zuccarini registered
five names including joecarton.com and cartoonjoe.com.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals said that Zuccarini
violated the 1999 Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer
Protection Act taking the names in “bad faith”. Go Joe.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has launched a web
site titled Tolerance.org. Jim Carrier, the director of
Tolerance.org, will promote the site through banner ads.
What’s interesting about the story is where the banner ads
will pop up. Yahoo has donated three million U.S.D. in
ad space over the next three years. The banners will pop
up in chat rooms and online clubs run by white
extremists. Furthermore, the banner ads will pop up
when Yahoo is searched for keywords such as “Nazi”,
“hate”, or “diversity”.

Now onto today’s topic…

No, Netscape will most likely not be getting out of the
browser wars any time soon.
There’s been a rumor going around the Web that
Netscape’s browser version 6.0 was such a disaster that
the company was thinking about packing it in.

The rumor most likely started because of a Reuters report
that quoted Netscape president Jim Bankoff saying, “six
months from now, you won’t consider Netscape to be a
browser company.”

Furthermore, Netscape 6.1 will be out most likely
towards the end of the summer. The new version claims
to have faster loading pages (what version hasn’t claimed
that?) and a new loading procedure whereas the page all
comes in at once rather than loading in pieces. Pull-down
menus should work much better in the new version.
Also, AOL’s Instant Messenger will be fully integrated as
one might have expected.

Are those upgrades you want in a browser? They’re not
really for me. No one has ever asked me what I want in a
browser. If anyone ever did, I’d probably say something
like this:

I want the BACK, FORWARD, STOP, etc., buttons
moveable. I want them on the right side actually. It
would be better if they weren’t there at all yet would pop
up when I called for them. Yes, I know that I can get
somewhat the same effect by right clicking, but I would
like the buttons to be a little control panel so I can move
it where I want – or have it appear when I want.

I feel the same way about the location bar. Give me the
ability to lose it and pop it up when I want it.

I want the text of the page to come in right away no
matter if the author has used the HEIGHT and WIDTH
attributes or not.

I want the main window to be seen as a main window.
All pop-up windows should pop behind the parent
window. I don’t want to see them either. Don’t show me
a quick outline and then put the window around the back
– just do it.

In addition, don’t put a second window tab in the taskbar
unless I drag and drop it down there. After an hour of
surfing, I don’t want fifty tiny tabs at the bottom of my
screen.

I would like to be able to see a running tab of the cookies
as they are delivered. I think I should be able to open a
little window that will show the header from the cookies
being placed. I should also be able to erase the cookies
quickly and easily. I should also be able to stop
individual or all cookies quickly and easily. It’s a darn
fight to find the options now.

I would like a button that, with one click, I can erase
absolutely every trace of where I’ve been or what pages
I’ve visited. Also – when I erase a cookie, erase it.
Don’t keep a second copy in a “Temporary Internet Files”
folder.

I would like an option to set the entire screen to black and
white before I print it.

Speaking of printing, I would like a button that loses all
of the images straight away so I can get a quick text-only
printable page.

I would really like it if browsers were allowed to
“borrow” from another. I am so sick of one browser
doing something that another won’t. If I have both
browser on the computer, let them talk to one another so
that if my Netscape can’t run something but my Internet
Explorer can, then let it happen. Something as simple as
a rollover should work in all browsers. This will never
happen of course but hey…this is my wish list.

I should be able to “dumb-down” the browser to a text-
only browser with one easy click.

I should be able to turn off all error messages with one
click. The system should be set up so that if an error
occurs, the browser ignores the code and simply displays
the page.

I should be able to say no to all download requests before
they come up. One “no” should stop all of them.
Furthermore, if requests do occur, then I should be able to
see a listing of those requests made in a file kept by the
browser. I can see the file now, one Comet Cursor install
request after another after another.

I would like my favorites list and “home” selection
locked up tight. They should never be able to be altered
by any page or site. Period.

I would like a file to be set up so that, with the click of a
button, I can fill out basic, name, address, and phone
forms.

I would like to be able to turn off that “click” every time
a page changes or a choice is made without having to turn
off my speakers.

I want the browser to be able to resize elements so that
the page “fits” into whatever format I set for the browser
width. Furthermore, I would like to be able to go from a
landscape to a portrait format and not have any horizontal
scrollbars. That way I could see more of fairly long
pages without scrolling. It’s the resizing thing though.
The page should be seen as a single image that is all
scaled down as one item to fit the parameters.

How about that? I’ve not heard any new browsers
proclaim any of these suggestions. Yes, I know I can get
some of them right now, but not as easily as I would like
to.

I’m sure you personally have even more suggestions for a
new browser. Has anyone ever asked what you want?
I’m sure that Netscape and Microsoft perform some kind
of research before putting out a new browser product, but
I wonder if it’s enough. After all the browser are for
users not for programmers. How many “normal” surfers
are consulted before putting together the structure of a
new browser? I don’t know.

I look upon new browsers much like I do the People’s
Choice Awards.

No one ever asked me what I thought yet the little
statuettes were handed out anyway.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. Thanks for reading this day’s rant.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And remember: The sound “ee” is apparently familiar to
a cat. Research has shown that naming a cat something
that ends in the “ee” sound will help the cat to more
quickly learn the name. No doubt a big government grant
went to funding that research. I have two cats, Mardi,
and Chloe. Both names end in “ee” and both the cats
respond to their names. Of course they also respond to
my shaking the cat treat box but I didn’t see any research
done one that.