Silent Web, holey Web Analysis/Commentary Strangely, the browser that lost the browser wars (Netscape) plans to begin the reconstruction of the Web. In the early nineties, the coding of Web pages was simple. Later, with the development of the first advanced (commercial) browsers, things got messy. The coding went from simple to baroque, to somewhat nutty, so that what one browser rendered, the other couldn't. The problem stemmed from proprietary tags, code labels aimed at dividing up subject matter on a page. Obviously, if only one browser held the key to a segment of code, the other was just plain out of luck. Even today, with Web professionals marking content for both browsers, something sometimes goes wrong and a browser will pull up an empty page, or choke on a hole in the code. The solution, of course, as the World Wide Web Consortium has been stressing, lies in adopting standards -- like driving on one side of the street rather than another, or setting the electric voltage at a level that won't fry electical appliances. The W3C has long warned browser makers that they were headed for danger by making up code as they went along and creating kludgy patches. Better to use a single set of codes; better to let the code do the brainwork of organization, rather than sending out a crazy quilt of interwoven instructions. Today, with the approaching launch of Netscape 6, a return to sane standards seems possible. The only problem is that old code will often remain in place. By the same token, surfers who load up the new kind of browser may not be able to display pages created with ancient proprietary formats. They will have to wait and hope for responsible developers to update the old code or maintain both old and new browsers at the ready on their desktops. In the meantime, the W3C has been also been working on a new version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The new protocol insures that signals will maintain their initial route to a server rather than zigzag to and fro randomly. In addition, the new protocol will ensure that as much data gets sent at one time as possible, avoiding endless loops that slow down the display of images or otherwise delay the response of clients and hosts. Version HTTP 1.1, promises to upgrade Web performance, but network and server owners will need to upgrade their Web software. Will this happen? Who knows? Finally, e-commerce, in its headlong rush onto the Net, places demands on content that suggests "televisation" of the Web. For ever so long, nearly seven years now, the Web has been the silent world of Jacques Cousteau. With the improvement of average computer speed and increases in the capacity of network devices, media are getting increasingly richer, and friendlier to motion and sound. No longer the text-based literary world we have become accustomed to, the Web is getting image-oriented. Will the Web go the way of TV? Will it go the way of the movies, passing from silent art to simple-minded entertainment, but foregoing any era of creative, enlightened culture? June 21, 2000