[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot

• To: "'danny666@v...'" <danny666@v...>, XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 14:21:01 -0500

My remote controls my TV, my VCR, my DVD player, 
and my son and daughter.  It is tricky to make a 
web interface do that, though not impossible.  But 
I really would fear to drive my van with it in 
rush hour traffic.

I like that article because it will provoke some 
serious and not so serious thought about subjects 
which if not XML-centric, will engage why XML is 
applied and the problems of doing that.  One should 
be clear that the idea of a browser is to browse, but 
a web browser is latched to the notion of content as 
interface.  Is that smart?

Why are 3D systems such miserable market failures?

len


From: Danny Ayers [mailto:danny666@v...]

> The best interface ever designed for the web is the google
> page:  one box, two buttons, and a human knowledge of terms.
> It doesn't care if it is in a thick client or a thin client
> because its brains aren't owned by either.  Success varies by
> the owner who is as effective as they are smart.

Yup, but Tim talks of :
[[
All computer applications fall into one of three baskets: information
retrieval, database interaction, and content creation. History shows that
the Web browser, or something like it, is the right way to do the first two.
]]

Google similarly only covers the first two.

But surely the 3-basket view is a very backwards-looking approach. Without
content creation intimately linked with IR and *processing* I don't think
we're going get anything like the full benefit of the web. All we have
without the fusion is broadcast media, with at best a load more community
channels. The browser is the best interface in the current environment in
the same way the remote control is the best TV interface.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot
    • From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@i...>

• Prev by Date: RE: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot
• Next by Date: Re: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot
• Previous by thread: RE: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot
• Next by thread: Re: [OT] Tim Bray on Slashdot
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread