©
Eddie French
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Copyright E G French Continuing my theme on nostalgia I would like to hash up a couple of quick articles that I wrote back in 1996 for a local ISP magazine. I was surprised to see a couple of predictions here which I got absolutely right.
First Published in Talk-101 Ezine 1996
The End Product ? The final version of MSiex 3.0 was released at midnight on 13th July 1996 and at one minute past there was not a line to be had into the selected ftp's for download to the general public. Competitions,....... Special offers......Prizes galore,.......and don't forget the T-Shirt!. To claim your free T-Shirt you had to grab the browser within the first 12 hours of it being released. Whoever suggested the time restriction on the freebies has probably just got a whacking great pay-rise for saving the company oodles of dosh. Within the first week of the browser being available for download over 1 million Surfers logged on to grab the new product. A missed opportunity for the Rag trade but good news for MS as the browser war hots up. Even as MSiex 3.0 was being launched in a blaze of (Web) publicity, Microsoft's slick PR machine was already in action promoting the next step in their battle with Netscape Communications. So, having downloaded MSiex 3.0 and installed it, (well, it installed itself actually!) I looked eagerly about for the expected improvements..........and looked eagerly about for............ Well I did find one. They had integrated MS Mail and News into the tool bar at the top of the window. (The final release of MS Mail and News also has the same option to switch to browse mode in the file drop down menu.) Apart from that it was the same browser as the last Beta release. Now that should not be a surprise as most beta releases are usually just test releases of complete products. But this product had changed so drastically since beta one and yes, the slick PR machine had been at work, that the end result was a little disappointing. There, in a nutshell is why Netscape will eventually lose the war of the browsers. MS does nothing without giving it's PR department carte blanche to do as it sees fit and these people are very good at what they do. Netcape Navigator is still the Industry Standard and is feature for feature the better browser and will be for the next year or so. But people are running it on an MS operating System and although Win95 and Win 3.1 have only 25% of the global market for PC operating Systems it is still the largest single chunk. MSiex 3.0 and MS Mail and News still have some shortcomings. In particular, the lack of displayed event information in the browser and the fact that it's impossible for the non tech user to find the exe path to MS Mail for automation of mail collection. This can be done quite easily using Netscape Navigator by choosing Mail only in the general Properties (Appearances) and then pointing to Netscape. exe in the run options of your automation App. (such as Dunce) and timing the auto-connect for once a day at a preferred time. Try this with MSiex and you would still have to be at your machine to switch to MS Mail and collect your mail manually.
MSiex 4.0 4.0, we are told, will be the final release in the browser wars by MS and will integrate with planned future improvements to their OS. It is due for public release some time in 97 to correspond with the update to Win95 and take the combined products well into the turn of the century. (a doubtful scenario) For all this though, I for one will be using the MS products and I have no doubts that these problems will be sorted out in the near future. Oh.....and yes.....I did get a T-Shirt!! |