Re: Musings...

[smentzer@ecom.net (Steven W. Mentzer)]

>
>Well, someone has to suggest it...
>
>We have Marinetti, which gives the IIgs a SLIP connection.
>We have the ability to write and compile C code.  Okay, *I* don't have
>that ability, but the capability now exists on the IIgs.
>
>I just heard on the radio today that Netscape is not only going to give
>away their browser, they are also releasing the source code.
>
>Well, a port is probably out of the question simply because of hardware
>limitations.  But it seems to me that the combination of released source
>code for a graphic browser and the availability of network connections for
>the IIgs would make the development of a graphic browser (probably without
>the automatic JPG/GIF decoding) just an itty bitty bit simpler, would it not?
>
>No, I don't expect to see it anytime soon.  But I'm willing to bet
>*someone* is going to sit down with the Mozilla source and start thinking
>about the ][...  8-)
>


Incredibly unlikely. Remember that later versions of Netscrape Navigator are 
pigs. Someone would be better off looking at the source code for lynx or the 
early versions of mosaic.

When you really think about it, a web browser is actually fairly easy to 
write. The logic to handle the various HTML2 tags is fairly simple. It is the 
newer "enhanced" HTML (if you can even call it that these days) tags are a 
little more complicated.

The upshot of this is that the hard part about writing a web browser is 
interaction with the underlying GUI. The IP connectivity and HTML 
interpretation is easy. GUI is a pain in the ass. Remember that HTML was 
designed to be platform independant. 

(FWIW - I happen to know a little about web browsers, as I was involved with 
the development of one of the 1st web browsers for OS/2 3.0 several years 
ago... although the project got lost/canned due to a lack of development 
effort)

smentzer@ecom.net