> Um, because WWW is easy and fun to use? So much so that it makes the rest
> of the net's interface technologies look as antique and creaky as cuneiform
> tablets? And, Goddess on high --- if it gives *me* this reaction (me, a
> case-hardened hacker with Internet experience going back to 1976) what do
> you suppose the difference looks like to the eager newbies on CompuServe
> and AOL?
This can be attributed to the startling lack of progress in newsreader
user interface development over the last few years. Threading, ratings,
etc, have become a fine art. But the user interface still sucks on most
systems. The GUI newsreaders that do exist have yet to catch up with the
threading and filtering functionality of the curses newsreaders, which has
hampered their deployment. Now that GUI systems have matured and the
processing power is there, it is merely a matter of me finding the time
to write the darn thing. :-) (FYI, I'm the author of Helldiver which
was mentioned earlier in the thread).
> No, it's going to happen in the other direction; Web browsers will swallow
> newsreaders, just as they're swallowing FTP and Gopher access now.
Maybe. Although there are some things that maybe should be done in a
separate tool by a more highly focused design and development team. The
problem with monolithic tools is that one tends to focus on improving the
gestalt rather than improving parts of it. FTP and Gopher were similar
enough to HTTP that the integration was easy.
Maybe I should shut up because this is getting way off the reason for this
mailing list, and is heading into religious territory ...
Cheers,
Rhys.
-- Rhys Weatherley, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. E-mail: rhys@fit.qut.edu.au "net.maturity is knowing when NOT to followup"
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