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• 20 question Fact Sheet
• accessibility checklist
• full WAI guidelines

• 20 question Fact Sheet
• accessibility checklist
• full WAI guidelines

• 20 question Fact Sheet
• accessibility checklist
• full WAI guidelines

Rather than filing a lawsuit, I'd rather the ADA assisted the W3 define some extensions to HTML to help with the issue. Or perhaps, at minimum, an XML language to define accessible content, or for describing how to interpret a site... Something like this?

There are more issues than just blindness, which is a big one, but many sites use inordinately small text, or colors that are not distinguishable to those who are color blind. Anyone who makes a web site should really check out The W3.org Accessibility Site. They really are good rules to follow, and do mean that your site will function right in lynx, netscape, hotjava, and every other god forsaken browser.

The thing that you have to remember is that besides porn, most of the reason that people use the web is to get access to information that really is just text. The IBM Homepage Reader that I have tested my stuff with is really pretty cool. I spent a whole day with my monitor off browsign the web with very little trouble.

Having Stephen Hawkins read you slashdot is a really cool experience. :)

Alternatives don't just mean alt tags. It can mean presenting the information in an alternative form. Or it could mean the death of Flash, which wouldn't bother me none.

See:
W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
for more info about accessibility.

Interestingly, they recommend graphical alternatives to text as well, for those who can't read.

--
"You despise me, don't you?"

The problem with creating a single monolothic open source repository stuffed with functions and class libraries for everything under the sun is that people's needs are far too diverse. The current model, where tidbits of functionality for specific topics are maintained by various organizations considered "authoritative" in that field, has proved fairly effective. Some notable examples include netlib, libwww, ARPACK and of course CPAN.

I'm not sure what purpose would be served by bringing all of these various efforts under a single roof. They all have differing philosophies, goals, and styles. Some, such as ARPACK, are highly domain specific, and its maintainers are unlikely to care about "generic code repositories." The STL filled a very important niche, but having gotten the basic algorithms and data structures out of the way, creating a massive interdisciplinary code repository is an unachievable and perhaps undesirable feat.

Does PNG have anything to recommend it over UNcompressed GIFs?

• (good!) compression, of course
• truecolor or small palette, your choice
• alpha channel (translucence)
• display gamma (adjust to monitor brightness)
• W3C recommended for over three years

Nobody's "locked out" by lack of image support - that's what content negotiation and alternatives (including text descriptions) are for. Anyone who thinks the WWW is a WYSIWYG medium has really missed the point.

You're right, for now PNG isn't really a viable alternative, it simply isn't widely supported enough to be the one true format, but it IS good enough to replace GIFs in most situations.

It's supported (to some degree) in both NS and IE (Don't know about Opera), except not fully. There are some links at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ to test how well your browser supports it.

Netscape can't do translucencies (but it can do transparencies), and I'm pretty sure IE has some issues with it (It'll load PNGs embedded into a web page but not by themselves, it's odd). But both do have some degree of PNG support. However, I don't think they have MNG support, so it'll be difficult to replace animated GIFs (they should be elimated anyways)

Besides, the point of this isn't really to permanently replace all images on all pages, it's to get a message across about patents and gifs. There is definately enough support for that (Both in software and mindshare).

I've went off on a tangent here. I only meant to reply to say that IE does semi-support PNG. So I'll shut up now.

Ah, Modula-3; my favorite counterexample to the idea that hackers always choose tools because of technical merit. Modula-3's been around since about 1990, and in having garbage collection, integrated threading features, runtime checking, exception handling, and OO, it's an important precursor to Java, in addition to influencing Python's design. (The first time I read about Java, I thought "This is a lot like Modula-3, just using C syntax.") M3 came as a freely available compiler (a patched version of GCC) that compiled to native code; no one ever proposed a Modula-3 VM. People at DEC SRC experimented with GUIs and distributed computing using M3. You could have had most of the features of Java in the early 90s using free software, yet M3 never caught on, mostly because of the superficial syntactic issue of being a Pascal/Modula-derived language, not a C-like one. M3 also produced rather large binaries because of the supporting libraries, but Java VMs are even larger today, and much slower. Pity, really; I hope an M3 front-end finds its way into EGCS, giving this language another chance.

The 'domain' property of a cookie was actually well thought-out and designed so that what you describe couldn't normally happen. The domain setting must be at a minimum a 2nd-level domain (i.e. must contain a nested dot; e.g. ".co.uk" *would* be valid under this rule, while ".org" would not). IN ADDITION, the domain must not be *below* the hostname sending the cookie (i.e. the remainder of the hostname must not contain nested dots).

Valid hostnames and cookie domains:

• www.example.com .example.com
• www.sub.example.com .sub.example.com
• www.example.co.uk .example.co.uk

• www.example.com .com
• www.sub.example.com .example.com
• www.example.co.uk .co.uk

M-POST isn't just an MS thing. Check out the spec at the W3C. H. Frystyk Nielsen (W3C) is the lead author. Both he and Paul Leach (of MS) were on the HTTP 1.1 spec as well.

It might actually make sense to use SOAP as a new transport mechanism with CORBA. Coders would get to keep their language bindings and their existing code base, and CORBA would get a more or less standard way to travel over HTTP (which is the whole point of the SOAP excercise. HTTP means that every firewall will understand it)

Agreed. SOAP is intentionally simple and as nonobtrusive as possible. I'd like to be able to make SOAP calls to objects whose runtime is CORBA, Java, COM, Perl, etc., from any CORBA, Java, COM, Perl, etc. runtime. SOAP is so much simpler than DCOM, IIOP, JRMI, etc., and it really just codifies the existing practice of transmitting XML over HTTP, which lots of folks are already doing. If folks are going to ignore it just because some MS guys are on the spec, then I think that's rather sad.

As for M-POST, if you check out the spec I linked to above, you'll see that it provides a sane way for firewalls to filter based on HTTP headers. SOAP uses M-POST to be firewall friendly (it's easy to block all SOAP requests, or just certain ones depending on its endpoints or the logical type of the request; i.e., the interface or method name).

Considering what happened with style sheets:
Microsoft appears to hold a patent on them, and this was only found out after W3.org adopted them as a internet standard. (W3.org statement)

If you excuse the pun, I have a sinking feeling about the possibility of a submarine patent on any "open" standard Microsoft suggest.

--

I agree that it's a shame that HTTP is used in this way, but it speaks more about the fallacies and shortcomings of people's current security models than it does about anything else. This is actually pretty tame.

1) Their HTML rendering is quite lame. It doesn't render most simple HTML correctly, so things look 'weird' compared to Navigator/IE. If they can't even get that right, they've got no chance

Most cases of poor Opera rendering are due to malformed HTML on the Web page you're looking at. Netscape and Microsoft have created browsers that are extremely lax in enforcing HTML syntax, and as a result many lazy Web page developers like me don't make sure our pages are valid HTML.

Opera, on the other hand, is less forgiving of bad HTML. For this reason, it's a great browser to have around as you are developing and testing a Web site. (Another good tool: The W3C HTML Validator.)

I've been using Opera as my main Windows browser for several months, and the only poor rendering I would blame on Opera is how the browser displays numbered and unnumbered lists. The renderer puts a lot more vertical space between list items than any other browser, and I hope the developers will address this in a future release.

Not. I use HTML for writing technical documents, it being quite a few cuts above MS .doc format in terms of transportability, compactness, other considerations. I haven't got time to type "

" at the end of every paragraph. Etc.

Netscape composer is a solution made in heaven, as far as I'm concerned... sure, it has it flaws but it works well enough to get the job done and the HTML it produces works pretty well, and looks pretty reasonable in source form too.

To whoever clued me in about Amaya - thanks, it looks interesting.

re: RPMS
I've run into occasional RPM difficulties upgrading packages, but that is generally solved if you're running the current RedHat release (I'm not but that's a different story). As for a central repository for RPMS, you've obviously never heard of rufus (Also called RPMFIND. It's a computer with about 60GIG of RPMs for just about all RPM-based distributions. The webmaster has also written a program called rpmfind which will search rufus (or other rpmfind mirrors) for packages you specify. It will find the latest, suggest upgraded packages, even find source packages. It rocks.

re: General flakiness
You had flakeyness with RedHat 5.2? I find that odd. I had problems with all .0 releases, but the .2's have always been stable for me (I've been using RedHat since 3.0.3). But then again, I imagine if you've been having problems mixing RPM and non-RPM packages, it's conceivable.

Yes, RedHat 5.2 shipped with several buggy packages, but if you've ever been to their errata pages, you can download the latest packages to correct the problems. I still run RedHat 5.2 boxes. Now that RedHat 6.1 has come out, I may take another crack at it on my test systems.

re: RPMS
I've run into occasional RPM difficulties upgrading packages, but that is generally solved if you're running the current RedHat release (I'm not but that's a different story). As for a central repository for RPMS, you've obviously never heard of rufus (Also called RPMFIND. It's a computer with about 60GIG of RPMs for just about all RPM-based distributions. The webmaster has also written a program called rpmfind which will search rufus (or other rpmfind mirrors) for packages you specify. It will find the latest, suggest upgraded packages, even find source packages. It rocks.

re: General flakiness
You had flakeyness with RedHat 5.2? I find that odd. I had problems with all .0 releases, but the .2's have always been stable for me (I've been using RedHat since 3.0.3). But then again, I imagine if you've been having problems mixing RPM and non-RPM packages, it's conceivable.

Yes, RedHat 5.2 shipped with several buggy packages, but if you've ever been to their errata pages, you can download the latest packages to correct the problems. I still run RedHat 5.2 boxes. Now that RedHat 6.1 has come out, I may take another crack at it on my test systems.

> i would like to know if i should use
> linux-2.0glibc version as with 4.61
I believe so, in RedHat Rawhide (pre-6.1), the Netscape RPMs require compat-glibc/libs, which is the 2.0 series of glibc. Check the RPM changelog entry of Fri Aug 20 1999 on rpmfind.net! But this is valid for 4.61, perhaps 4.7 is built against a newer glibc - aaah dream on. ;-)

I actually run 4.61 without compat-glibc but rather with the standard glibc-2.1 (as delivered with RedHat 6.0), and I suppose all my crashes (locks) aren't glibc issues - but who knows.

As far as I know, HTML 4.0 is pretty precise. The page can be rendered only in one way correctly.

I have to disagree strenuously. The essential idea is that the elements describe the meaning of the content, to be presented as appropriate where possible, with no One True Rendering. Several elements are defined in such a way that the Right Thing (alternate content) is available if a user agent simply ignores such elements as unknown, and they've carefully isolated most of the recommended renderings into non-HTML specifications like CSS2.

You're on the right track if you're saying that this technology wouldn't even be needed if we could convince people to stick to standards. But you also need one other thing -- well-formedness.

You can stick to HTML 4.0, even the "Strict" dialect (which I encourage everyone to do!), and still have pages that completely blow up when pulled up outside one of the Big Two. On the website that I accidentally deleted some time ago, I had struggled for some time to not just reach for HTML 4.0 compliance but for well-formedness.

It meant using elements for what they were intended for. It meant never using a table for anything other than tabular data. It meant using when I wanted emphasis and it meant using when I wanted to mark up code fragments (mind you, I'm stuck using right now because /.'s HTML filter doesn't permit !) It took some fiddling.

But I turned out with a set of pages that were not only easier to maintain, but CSS applied very cleanly to them, making them pretty and consistent-looking, and they rendered perfectly on any hand-held or speech-synthesizing device you could throw at me. My information was useful to everyone, and that was the best high of all.

I strongly encourage everyone to pursue well-formedness. The more important stuff that is well-formed instead of hacked, the better browsers we'll get, too!

Damn, I had no idea that this level of integration was going on. It's makes sense, and ultimately cuts out the middle man forever except for maybe things like distribution. I particularly liked reading the XQL spec, which I like already.

One question: XML makes no provisions for security/certification. Will this remain a problem for a lower layer, or will a DTD for this also be designed? Can one nest XML within XML?

I dunno why, but when someone can't write a webpage without the assistance of a GUI I somehow feel their programming and general computer skills are somewhat below what is necessary to create a Linux distribution.

"If you don't use windows then what do you use?"
"FreeBSD."

And what about this, while we're being sticklers? :-)

----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.

Yeah, if you like completely broken and non-compliant HTML.

I mean, I love Google, but it is NOT hard to produce proper HTML, and it makes it less useful.

check it out ...

Well, you could try the internationalization page at the W3C website.

There are some draft proposals for internationalizing URLs and domain names... including iDNS.

Unfortunately, none of these proposals seem to have gotten very far. Too bad...

Well, you could try the internationalization page at the W3C website.

There are some draft proposals for internationalizing URLs and domain names... including iDNS.

Unfortunately, none of these proposals seem to have gotten very far. Too bad...

I haven't seen anything recently. The W3C never really said much either.

http://www.w3.org/Style/1999/02/Pa tent-Statement

I dunno about "href" tags but Anchor Tags that use HREF work just fine.

yep. Right Here

>> There is now one group of Linux supporters who
>> are invested in Redhat and another group, whose
>> contributions to Linux will incrase nothing but
>> their peer recognition.
>That is grossly untrue-- you think that nobody
>working on Linux made anything _until_ RedHat
>went public?

What kind of crack are you smoking?

>..there are probably very few things that you
>could do that would _only_ benefit Debian, after
>all :)

• Despite "standards compliant browser" reputation, it implements far less of current W3C technical recommendations than Netscape or IE.

Being a web developer that rigorously adheres to standards and closely monitors and occasionally participates in W3C activity, and being knowledgable of browsers in general, I thought I'd take some time to give you all the skinny on this.

Despite Opera's reputation as "the standards compliant browser", it implements far less of current W3C standards than Netscape or in particular IE. Specifically, CSS-positioning (part of CSS2) appears to be completely non-existant.

Since Opera only implements a fraction of the Netscape/IE functionality, and until recently was completely unportable (Windows only), it's not too surprising that it is much smaller and faster.

Anyways, I'll list some of the pros and cons of Opera and some features/misfeatures it shares with its competition (Netscape/IE).

[Oh, one last thing before the list. MDI and SDI have been mentioned. For those of you who don't know what they are, basically:

SDI -- Single document interface. A limitation applying to an application program that only shows a single window giving a view of one document at a time.

MDI -- Multiple document interface. The ability of an application program to show windows giving views of more than one document at a time.]

Some pros:

• Excellent support for keyboard navigation. No need to use lynx and give up graphics just because you hate the mouse. (Of course, the Open Source Mozilla will ultimately allow the same.)
• Fast and small. Despite its lack of features, for most of your browsing you will appreciate the speed.

That's really all of the pros. While only two items are listed, both of them are extremely important and make for a much different feel compared to the bigger fish. Anyways, the cons:

• Non-free. You must pay $30-$35 dollars to use this software after 30 days of evaluation. You may not obtain its source code either [neither with IE nor NS[1-4]].
• Right now, still pretty much Windows-only. IE also runs on Macs, Solaris and HP-UX. Netscape 4.x runs on almost everything under the sun. Mozilla runs under even more platforms.
• Despite "standards compliant browser" reputation, it implements far less of current W3C technical recommendations than Netscape or IE.
• Still has crashing bugs just like Netscape and IE. In particular, with JavaScript enabled there are plenty of sites that bring down the newest versions. (Not nearly as bad as NS4.61 on my Debian box though, which likes to crash 1/10th of the time I close a window. (Wasn't always this bad.))

Anyways, my current favorite browser is IE5 though I almost never get to use it because I'm stuck in Linux with WindowMaker so that I actually have a productive and stable environment. IE5 really does implement most of the current standards and is quite fast (being seemingly hooked into the lowest guts of Windows), though Mozilla will be the true 100% compliant browser and smaller and faster to boot. I hate most of Microsoft's products, but a few things like their browser and Powerpoint (which Linus admits liking) are really okay.

So,

• Use IE5 now if you can. Netscape 4.61 or Opera if you can't.
• Make a 100% switch to Mozilla the day it is released. The current M9 release is actually somewhat stable and usable, and it's really cool to watch the CSS on your pages come to life under that browser.
• Don't switch back to IE or Opera until they implement the standards as good as Mozilla.

That's enough writing for now,
Christopher

I've been using Opera as my main browser on Windows systems for a few months, and I paid the $30 or $35 registration fee to help support the effort.

Early versions of Opera were weak and very skimpy on features like JavaScript and plug-in support, but the current version is great. It is smaller than Navigator and Internet Explorer and much faster to load and render pages. It supports JavaScript, CSS 1 and Netscape plug-ins.

Another thing I like about Opera is that it holds closer to standard HTML than the other browsers. It is less forgiving of bad HTML, so it's useful to have around when you're trying to create standard HTML that would pass the W3C HTML Validator.

Opera also has a button on the browser you can click to render a page in "easy-to-read" format, which helps when the designer has gone nuts with graphical backgrounds and text.

There are a couple of rendering things I don't like about Opera, such as the way it displays lists. For the most part, though, it handles pages as well or better than the other browsers.

Most tech journalists still describe the browser war as being Microsoft vs. Netscape/AOL. Some sites like BrowserWatch are reporting that up to 10 percent of its visitors are using Opera, so we may be reaching a point where it should be taken more seriously as a competitor.

To download a 30-day version, visit Opera Software.

...for those who are listening...

This link will give a bit more info on this possible counterpart or even competitor to flash.

I think it would be a great alternative, being all into css/dom and w3 standards in general. SVG is coming together quite nicely, and already supports animation, scripting, filters, rotated text, as can be seen from the many (mostly java based) viewers around. The cool thing about it is that unlike flash, you don't need to use a proprietary point and click development tool to do stuff in SVG. Instead you just muck about in emacs like you're s'posed to.

Flash is really nice, don't want to put it down, but it's just not fiddly enough for me.

This flies in the face of the fact that MSIE 5 fails at more of the CSS1 tests than e.g. Opera does.

AOL/Netscape STILL can't do tables correctly and crashes or dies with a DOS on pages with spelling mistakes in the HTML. That's pitiful.

Netscape DOES do tables right if you DO them right. For example, most (all?) the table problems I've seen is when a tag is not closed. Are they depending on MSIE to 'correct' the error for them?

And, what do you mean with 'spelling mistakes in the HTML'? I've never seen that happen before. Groundless accusations are pitiful.

Netscape is, though, still behind on standards (CSS!), but that's what Mozilla is going/suppose to fix.

For what I've seen, read, and heard from industry professionals (such as members of WC3), Microsoft has done everything possible to follow public WC3 specs.

WC3? Oh, you mean W3C! Sure, all-knowledgeable one.

This is aimed at Intranets. Why? Because this is, in short, a way to connect web requests with a bunch of resources listed in a directory server such as an LDAP server, Novell Directory Server or Micro~1 Active Directory (coming soon to foolish corporations everywhere). "Common Name" or CN, is a standard part of X.400(?)/X.500(?) naming schema which are used in such directories. If you look at the contents of an X.509 certificate, you'll see it as part of a "Distinguished Name" or DN. Something's DN should uniquely identify it. For example, here are some DN's:

• CN="George Bush" OU="Texas Governor" CO="Republic of Texas"
• 
  CN="George Bush" OU="Ex-President" CO="United States of America"

The "Common Name" proposal also contains RDF schemas to describe and search for documents based on CN's and partial DN's. This might have some applicability to widely distributed, nonarchic systems such as the web. Of course, RDF is a cutting-edge application of XML which isn't even fully ratified, so don't hold your breath.

Ouch. I'm getting buzzword sickness. Anyone remember the first descriptions of Java? I think this beats it for buzzword density.

This, as far as I can tell, is a generalized description of things like RPC and CRL. Distributed computing is a cool idea, but (there's always a but) you still need to write your programs to be distributed. This thing seems to be basically about a distributable threading model ("tasks" == threads?). I'm pretty sure the day will never come when we can transparently run applications that are not designed to be distributed on many machines at once, but it'd be nifty if someone came up with a system that allows coders to not worry too much about distibuting their program, and still have it work well.
----------------------
"This moon-cheese will make me very rich! Very rich indeed!

Just to point a comparsion out, Slashdot doesn't pass that test either.

Neither do a lot of sites...

Oh my, how pathetic their HTML is. (See the checker results)
How can you trust a company to write clean reliable code, when they're not even able to put together a decent page of HTML?

You can't get RPM's for this yet, it's just been released! You'll be able to get them when someone makes them, and you'll surely be able to get them at the Rufus RPM Repository. In the mean time, you can try compiling it yourself from the released source. Even better, you can make your own RPM of it, go to RPM.org to learn how (Maximum RPM is a great book).

----

There's a standard to do exactly that, it's called PICS. You describe the content in your page (nudity, violence, etc), and then the web browser can be configured with various filters.

If you want to describe the content on your site easily, you can rate with RSAC, which gives you a standard baseline and spews out the appropriate PICS metadata for your web page, and you copy and paste it into your HTML document. Easy. And any loser on the internet can configure their IE or netscape browser (or anything else that's PICS compliant) to not let a user view content above certain levels without a password. Self-governance on both sides is the only way we're ever going to get anything reasonable around here, the filters have already proven to be extremely politically biased (some of them block the National Organization for Women, for christ's sake.

Adobe is actually putting money into the open source community for implementing XSL, which is a standard that will be helpful not just for Adobe, but for everyone who uses XML (read: the whole web community in the near-ish future). While they may be driving a standard that they will embrace, they certainly won't control it, and I'd say the overall effect for the online community will be positive.

Zax

• For those of us who are forced to use Windows in the workplace, Photoshop is just about the best tool there is for graphics, with pretty good tech support, and it's becoming more extensible and scriptable with each release. That's a good thing. GIMP may be great for those who have access to Linux, but the truth is not everyone does. Photoshop (and Illustrator) represent solid reliable tools for plenty of folks, and that should inspire some respect for Adobe.
  
  
• Adobe is actually putting money into the open source community for implementing XSL, which is a standard that will be helpful not just for Adobe, but for everyone who uses XML (read: the whole web community in the near-ish future). While they may be driving a standard that they will embrace, they certainly won't control it, and I'd say the overall effect for the online community will be positive.
  
  
• Adobe, while maybe unfamiliar with the open source culture, has put forth a lot of effort in developing open (and non-open) industry standards. Postscript is as good an example as any of such a standard -- and free tools like ghostscript are available for sharing information between folks. Check out the SVG (scalable vector graphics) specification at the W3C, you'll see that a couple of the authors of the document come from Adobe. Standards like SVG and Postscript are good for industry because they prevent people like Microsoft and Macromedia from sneaking in and making their own propriatary standards.
  

From ESR, I would add The Jargon File. The Cathedral And the Bazaar is more about Software than the Internet, but if that's there, than RMS's Why Software Should Be Free should also be there.

Another critically important RMS piece (and one more relevant to the internet) is The Right to Read.

Also there's The Declaration of Independence [of the USA], not as a document in its own right, but as the first entry into Project Gutenberg.

Getting more internetty, you've got RFC Number 1, the description of the tentative IMP protocol to be used between the four systems on the brand spanking new ARPA network.

Going to distant history (in computer terms) there is the 1945 paper by Vandemaar Bush, As We May Think, one of the inspirations for the ARPA project.

There's the 1989 whitepaper from CERN's Tim Berners-Lee, Information Management: A Proposal, the paper that started the WWW.

From ESR, I would add The Jargon File. The Cathedral And the Bazaar is more about Software than the Internet, but if that's there, than RMS's Why Software Should Be Free should also be there.

Another critically important RMS piece (and one more relevant to the internet) is The Right to Read.

Also there's The Declaration of Independence [of the USA], not as a document in its own right, but as the first entry into Project Gutenberg.

Getting more internetty, you've got RFC Number 1, the description of the tentative IMP protocol to be used between the four systems on the brand spanking new ARPA network.

Going to distant history (in computer terms) there is the 1945 paper by Vandemaar Bush, As We May Think, one of the inspirations for the ARPA project.

There's the 1989 whitepaper from CERN's Tim Berners-Lee, Information Management: A Proposal, the paper that started the WWW.

..."normal" (non-light) Slashdot still crashes Win98 solid with both IE and Netscape (using two different sets of Banshee drivers) and segfaults Netscape on Linux for me whenever I scroll. And I just reinstalled Win98, and it was a lot of praying to be able to login without having to scroll down. Rob, I've said this a thousand times... fix the HTML. Here's some help.

I use Slash too and it doesn't cause my stuff to die. It took me a whopping 2 hours to make my HTML about 90% 4.0 Transitional compliant. Come on, I can't possibly be the only one who has problems due to bad HTML, can I?

Oh well, back to working on Slash FAQ type stuff. *sigh*

Geez, if the government ever needed an example of why file-format patenting is bad, GIF is certainly it. I'm so sick of hearing about one thing or another going under because GIF is proprietary. As has been mentioned here, PNG is nice, and (most importantly) free.

Although I still have yet to see any large number of PNG graphics on the net, it does seem to be a better format than GIF, and netscrape and exploder (claim to) support it. It does everything GIF does, but it also allows more than 256 colours, full alpha, and a few other features. Here's the PNG homepage.

- Write and exchange general-purpose documents in IDL format

- Implement a desktop environment using XML and HTTP

I would not want to think about the first, but the second is a quite interesting proposition. If every object on your desktop has a URL then maybe you could get to your desktop from any machine on the internet.

Anyway, have you heard of WIDL? Take a look...Keep in mind that nearly every machine connected to the Internet has a web server.

...richie