[MUD-Dev] Clients based on Netscape 5?

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

Vadim Tkachenko wrote:

> >From my standpoint, I'd rather avoid any Misrosoft solutions in any form just
> because they're tied too strongly to Win32,

Pfft. ASP in a nutshell:

<% JavaScript stuff that the server runs before sending the page to the user %>

There it is. Similar to SSI, except you can put a script in it. Proprietary? Let's see
them defend it. You can't copyright <% %>. Or if you're worried, how about <& &>? There
ya go. Yeah, ASP has some other features and built-in functions. Most of them duplicate
existing CGI variables and such. Hell, you could use HTMLScript, probably HeiTML, all
kinds of server-side scripting solutions exist. Use what you want.

> NSAPI because it's just another
> proprietary technology (Netscape's in this case),

Use whatever API you want. I don't care.

> and you can use servlets (which
> all decent HTTP servers support at the moment),

So you don't consider Java just as proprietary as NSAPI and ASP, even though Sun has
repeatedly lied and cheated in its presentation of the technology? And what exactly do
you mean, all *decent* servers? Please.

> which gives you even more platform
> independency than the solutions you've mentioned.

Well, considering I was trying to come up with solutions that would be more feasible
with the release of the Netscape source, I don't think platform-independence had any
place in the list.

> > This is all off the top of my head, of course, and while a lot of people might
> > wonder what the hell I'm thinking by saying that we could actually use
> > JavaScript as a MUD scripting language,
>
> Don't you think it's too unstable for a complicated solutions? Every Javascript app
> I've seen so far is way too flaky...

Most of the flakiness around JavaScript seems due to the vagaries of the HTTP protocol.
JavaScript tries to run immediately, without waiting for the rest of the page to
load... which spells disaster a lot of the time. I think that was a BAD decision; at
the very least, it should wait for the rest of the current document to load. I don't
think it's as noticable if you're sitting on a leased line, which of course is
something which plagues development... the developers go 'works fine over here!', and
neglect to realise that maybe perhaps that dual-processor PPro 200 with 128 megs of RAM
and a TSU on his desktop might make a difference.

Not to mention a lot of JavaScript I've seen is done by non-programmers, and it shows.
Were your first dozen or so C programs any better? ;)

JavaScript is not designed to do heavy-duty programming. Neither were most MUD
programming languages. The advantage I see here are that people already know it, it has
value outside the MUD, and the developer can worry about other things instead of
building a language to work in. Of course, people will complain that it isn't properly
compiled or even tokenised and how can you take any interpreted language seriously,
anyway?

True enough. In which case, write a C compiler. Any decent CompSci graduate,
incidentally, already has. ;>

(Note: highlight to end of line and delete killed Netscape quote on this line, which of
course sucks. Wish my Eudora was working. Wish their tech support would respond.)

> > > it could simply mark the

> > > death of Netscape as a company (with the original sources out there, the
> > > browser itself should survive for a long time).
>
> One of my co-workers gave it 4-5 years just a couple of months ago :-))

In net years, that's a DAMN long time. ;)

> > Netscape has always realised its greatest revenue from sales of its server, so I
> > don't think it's going to suffer overly. Reports are showing that their revenue
> > from client sales are pretty minimal at present, as well... so I don't think
> > this is going to hurt them much. What it WILL do, however, is get millions of
> > people to say 'Netscape is cool' and talk about them more.
>
> Sure it will :-)

Note that unlike marketing types, I don't claim that millions of people saying 'this is
cool' necessarily means any sort of business advantage. ;)

> PS: This is a first message I'm writing from Netscape 4.04 for Win95, and the
> quoting style looks weird - can someone drop me a note if it looks weird for you
> too?

It looks weird, works wrong, and pisses me off. Feel better? ;)

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