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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jay who wrote (21714)	11/24/1998 1:56:00 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Jay - I think the browser has proved to be the ultimate user-interface The browser was certainly the next step beyond windowing interfaces. But ultimate - not hardly, it's just a step on the way to an integrated, linked environment. I suspect that's what you really meant. My point is that browsers as applications to access an external thing like the internet (or even intranets as a proxy for the web metaphor) are the beginning, not the end. The notion of a separate external net, an internal one, and a separate world which exists inside the computer is rapidly changing. The service domains are moving across those boundaries even as we speak. And when that happens, an application like a browser which rides on an OS environment and collects things from that service domain will be as useless to end users as a machine level debugger. I believe Microsoft realized that the browser was a better interface than Windows and that's why they've tried to integrate the browser with the OS. At some point in the future the browser will become the interface to the OS Almost right. What seems to be happening is that both the browser and the OS that it rides on are becoming unimportant, and the policy and administration agents, and access to information, are becoming virtualized in network entities which don't necessarily live anywhere. Novell's NDS is an example of an environment for such entities. The browser as a user interface is as doomed as the GUIs which came before it. It will be replaced by a new interface appropriate to the environment which is evolving, and we don't yet know what that is. This is not way in the future stuff, that battle is being fought right now. MSFT is far from a clear winner in that fight, although they do have some good cards. I'm sure you've heard this argument many times. Do you think its going to come about? Absolutely, and a lot quicker than many people believe. Not next year though...