SAN MATEO (05-30-95) - HotJava. Isn't that a great name? And Sunscreen ain't bad, either! These are two products introduced by Sun Microsystems Inc. last week -- an interactive browser and a private security system for the Internet, respectively. Perhaps learning how to apply cool names to products will turn Sun into a marketing company. (Sun has clearly noticed that Silicon Graphics Inc. learned some marketing from its exposure to Hollywood, and it wants to be just as cool.)
What's behind the HotJava announcement, though, is a battle brewing for the hard-core hearts and minds of the growing cadre of Webmasters on the Internet. When I mentioned HotJava several weeks ago, in a column that also talked about Silicon Graphics' WebSpace, I characterized it as Sun's attempt to develop a competitive Web browser based on the ability to use animations.
This is true, but not very interesting. What is interesting is the idea of converting the fast-growing network of Web servers, which now number in the hundreds of thousands, from a passive network into an active, intelligent body of programming -- a nest of intelligent agents. That's the idea behind HotJava. And it's the first product to express the idea in an interesting way for the Internet, although it will certainly be followed by others.
HotJava started life as a project to develop an operating system for what was first a personal digital assistant (PDA) and then a set- top box for interactive television. HotJava is the player for programs written in Java, a programming language designed to create small executables that can be downloaded over a low-bandwidth wire and run in a small amount of memory. Sun decided a while ago that it really didn't belong in the PDA or set-top box businesses, so it canceled the original project. But another group at the company decided that they could apply the same basic idea to the architecture of the Internet, and they adopted the technology that had been created by the original group.
Right now, on the World Wide Web, you really have two options in creating a document. You can stick with the predefined functions of Hypertext Markup Language, which allows you to create static pages with some predefined forms and buttons. Or you can learn to use a programming language called Perl to create your own magic. The latter is dicey, because different browsers react differently to Perl scripts. Most Webmasters get around this uncertainty by assuming that you are using Netscape and ignoring Mosaic and the other 101 browsers in existence, leading to Netscape's seeming dominance in a market where no one pays for its software.
Sun wants to turn Java into a much more functional version of Perl that will allow you to create intelligent, interactive Web sites, ones that don't just post documents with cute tricks but can actually download programs to your computer. These programs can display animations but can also perform other tasks and cooperate with other programs on the Web. That's interesting.
Sun doesn't have a great record for establishing standards, however, despite long-running attempts at doing precisely that with several of its technologies. In fact, it seems as if Sun is more likely to establish a standard when it doesn't try -- as in the case of Network File System -- than when it does try, as in the case of Solaris. And it will face competition as other vendors begin to understand the opportunity involved.
The first such vendor will probably be General Magic Inc., with its Telescript programming system for developing intelligent agents. Telescript is a comprehensive system for developing not just the agents themselves, but the server software that will handle the agents and all the infrastructure in between. The company managed to get AT&T to believe in its religion and create an entirely new service called PersonaLink (currently matched with the Magic Cap system incorporated in the Sony Magic Link and Motorola Envoy devices). But AT&T has been an unreliable partner, given its insistence on spreading its bets over five or six different electronic services (Easylink, Imagination Network, NetWare Connect Services, Notes Network, and most recently, Interchange). So General Magic is getting ready to apply Telescript to the Internet and the World Wide Web, although it is not clear how it will be able to do so.
It seems certain other vendors will see the same opportunity. I'd be amazed if Microware Systems Corp., vendor of the David system for set-top boxes, weren't planning something. The biggest irony is that the one vendor that is least likely to take a shot at making the Web intelligent is Microsoft. It does not have the experience with making a system for PDAs and set-top boxes because it has been unable to create a Windows-based system for any other low-end processor than Intel's, and Intel itself has not been able to make a device for those markets. Microsoft also has invested heavily in its own network and document sharing software rather than the World Wide Web and the Internet.
Mac Culpa
Last week I expressed a desire for Apple to allow use of a key combination (Windows uses Alt-Tab) to rotate through open applications. I forgot to mention that Microsoft has already made this possible with Microsoft Office on the Macintosh. Several readers also noted that there are one or more shareware extensions that let you do this without Microsoft Office.
Editor in Chief Stewart Alsop welcomes comments and may be reached on the Internet at stewart_alsop@infoworld.com.
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