Subject: Deep background: Wow! Colors! From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 09:48:00 -0500

Mark Gibbs expostulated:

> Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. You of all people taking the 
> "it-should-not-be-used-for-presentation-it-is-for-format-only" line is 

Before this discussion gets taken somewhere more appropriate like
internet-marketing, htmarcom, or comp.infosystems.www.*:

I didn't say "not be used for presentation." HTML is a markup language;
"presentation" is also dependent on one's browser, system, and how they're
configured.  E.g., you can 
 or  or  all you want, to no
avail if someone's viewing via Lynx.  (Kinda like only getting the articles
in those exciting nekkid-pic mags -- remember the brouhaha over the 
audiotape-for-the-blind versions re gummint money supposedly helping promote
adult stuff.)

...  (well meant mistaken opinions re my cyber-success deleted)...

> Moreover, "HTML et c. is not a publishing tool" is quite wrong. The Web (as I
Let's you and me debate this at some conference.  I'll bring Robert Raisch
(The Internet Company) as my second.  

..
> physicists. If HTML and the Web doesn't evolve to meet the requirements of 
> the marketplace its use will die out and it will be replaced with something 
> even more wildly improbable.

My comment of record is that the only people who care about the Web, per
se, are Webware vendors, and people with an installed base of HTMLed 
documents.  The Web, distributed client-server information, and the Internet,
are a TERRIBLE way to run a prime-time-real-time information business
such as "news"...or we'd all be going to the store each morning for
our newspaper instead of having it delivered before we woke up.  And
the Web is an abysmal publishing tool, in terms of presentation, IMHBCO
(In My Humble But Correct Opinion); the only thing it's got going for
it is that it's less worse than the other stuff available.

Rather than segue into my "Web limits" comedy monologue, I'll stop here.
All I know is, when I open the Boston Globe, it never tells me
"Editorials not found" or "Sorry, too many people reading Doonesbury,
try later," and the big color ads for  appear as fast as
I turn the page.  Can your beer do that?


Daniel Dern (ddern@world.std.com) Internet analyst, writer, pundit & curmudgeon
Columnist in NetGuide, Communications News, and Internet (a UK mag)
(617) 969-7947 FAX: (617) 969-7949  Snail: PO Box 309 Newton Centre MA 02159
* I'm now on Web (finally!), at http://www.dern.com * (I enjoy being an URL!) *
* DoppleGanger Internet Appliances Now Available - Ask about our combination 
  scanner/waffle-iron, and our multimedia microwave oven (it's HOT HOT HOT!)

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