This afternoon, Marc Andreessen, inventor of Mosaic and now
co-founder of Netscape, gave a lecture to a grad class at
Stanford. Attending the lecture was a literal who's who of
human-computer interface design.
What follows is an embellished version of my shorthand scrawl:
- Netscape estimates 6 million people use their browser; no
market percentage was claimed
- According to protocol analysis, the majority of IP packets
being sent over the Internet contain http, having surpassed email
a few weeks ago
- the majority of users access the Internet via the web
- Lots of old metaphors are now being used to display
information, those metaphors will break down very soon (malls,
newsstands, etc.)
- Major Netscape customers are looking to the Internet for
salvation because they really don't know what or where their
businesses are, anymore
- communications and telcos
- publishing
- financial
- computer/software
- Global Fortune 2000 companies
- Providers like Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, etc. are in big
trouble if they don't adopt an infrastructure that uses the
Internet model
- currently, their backbones can't handle the increased
level of traffic
- Some of Netscape's first large customers were Penthouse,
Playboy and Hustler
- Proxy servers are a key software technology
- without them, large companies won't hook up
- security
- content control
- traffic control
- Actual Internet/web business application software is the growth
market, not just browsers
- A change of the page metaphor is imminent
- HTML 3 will be the launchpad
- interactivity will be responsible for new metaphors
- interactivity will be the ultimate user control for
page layout
- interactive browsers will let users redefine the layout
of a site on the fly, at will
- indexing, navigational aides and content organization
will quickly supersede current layout and design issues
- VRML and Hot Java will support this change
- "Doom!" like interfaces will be the next model for
browsers
- current VRML does not support views of other people
using browsers on the same page, Java will change that
- 3D scenes will be "commonplace" by the end of the year
- Hot Java is actually about 6 years old
- ultimately, user will have complete control over how
content is viewed
- Have computers become "geek-free" or have we all become geeks?
- he suspects the latter, especially in light of the
average user trying to network Windows 3.1
- Privacy is still an issue, though not as big as before
- current, publicly available encryption technology will
require about 64 mips years of CPU time to crack a message
- Netscape is now accepting advertising on its site, but is not
leasing space on its server farm for other external content
- He foresees custom protocols being developed for interactive
sessions
- user connects to site, browser downloads protocol for
interactive session, after session is complete, browser
forgets protocol
- HTML and PDF are complimentary technologies
- soon there will be more browser improvements that will
have little to do with HTML or page manipulation, but will
facilitate data retrieval
- Emphasized use of push-pull facilities as the basis for crude
interactivity and background "multimedia" experience
- "Lost in hyperspace" is still a big problem and lots more
research needs to be done to solve this issue