Stay Tuned/No Java Domain Games Web Matters

[22 February 2007:] Ah, what dates so rapidly and so poorly as writing about web technology? And yet, and yet ... although some of the references in this are laughably obsolete now, some of the underlying points are, I think, still worth making. I present the whole thing as an artifact; I shall update with latter-day thoughts at the end.

The web was conceived as a medium for sharing information; scientific papers, originally, although that probably lasted about five minutes. Originally HTML was quite simple; just enough to do a little emphasis work on a primarily linear text document.

Now HTML is bristling with unofficial additions in several non-compatible directions. Is this bad? Only if it's an addition that Microsoft supports and Netscape doesn't. (OK, that was uncalled for; sorry.) Seriously, I approve of some HTML extensions. I use tables obsessively, because I do a lot of layout and layout is about impossible without them. There is even a proper way to use frames (and many, many improper ways). In general, these things make it easier for people to lay out documents, and therefore I approve, because I believe that's what the web was designed for.

I'm also not opposed to a browser that handles all sorts of non-HTML file types, such as sounds, movies, and weird graphics formats, especially if the browser is structured so that you can arrange to provide external viewers for those content types you look at a lot, and ignore the rest. (The key word in this sentence is "external." Such a thing is not the province of HTML, nor should it be.)

What the web was not designed for is as a medium for running executable software.

Advertisers - commercial sites in general - frequently have a demo program of some kind they want to foist on you: something too sophisticated to do with HTML and CGI responses, something that requires a separate executable, however small. But they dislike having to direct people to an ftp site. They think that ftp is hard to use and that no one will get the program. They don't think ftp is sexy enough. So Java is their great white hope; it allows them to automatically download a temporary copy of the "applet" onto your computer and run it seamlessly ... and the average user thinks it's all just part of the standard browser service.

Why is this a bad thing? Well, it starts to become a bad thing when you see pages where the entire body of the page is one big Java applet block, with no wrapper text or other content at all. It's bad when Java becomes the main purpose; when browsers are perceived as merely being delivery mechanisms for Java. And if you think that's paranoid of me, you need to surf more often.

I believe in having a separate tool for each job; yes, the tools should all get along with each other, but that doesn't mean you should roll them all up into one mega-tool. I believe that the web is primarily for static information, and that there are other ways to make that information sexy besides embedding an applet in your page.

I don't dislike Java per se. The concept of a program that runs in a virtual memory space in a platform-independent manner is a great idea ... so long as you don't intertwine it with the browser. For example, if I could set up a Java virtual machine on my computer, ftp some applets and run them on my computer ... separately, without needing to be online or needing a browser ... that could be worthwhile. (Assuming some content came along. Most Java I've seen so far has been vapid.)

I don't want the web to be dull - perish forbid! - quite the contrary. I want the people who make sites to start having something to say, instead of thinking that they can put a Java applet up and not have to expend any further mental effort. I want web sites to return to being the content of people who have the attention span to read ten paragraphs in a row without being bored.

If that means I have to be anti-Java to pursue my crusade, so be it. For the time being, the two certainly seem to be mutually exclusive.

You may have read about the domain name crisis and all that jazz - how we badly need new domain names, we're running out, the current system doesn't really suit the way it's being used, InterNIC is bad, InterNIC is good, et cetera et cetera.

Personally, I like having one central clearinghouse for U.S. domains ... it's hard enough to register a domain with InterNIC as it is; you need a degree in metaphysics to be able to fill out the submission form ... that'd be even worse if people didn't know where to apply.

The biggest objection I have to InterNIC is that it's Americentric. Web sites are worldwide; we ugly Americans tend to forget that. Yet only America gets "categorical" rather than geographical top-level domains. The system is oddly inconsistent. (Yes, I realize this is a result of history. You may sit down now.)

Another objection is that adding new domain names is that it's really only a temporary solution. Add seven new domains and they'll be full up in no time. Why? Because of people obtaining five or six or twenty-seven domain names for themselves. Because of the rapidly growing "speculation" market in domain names - a truly odious development where you invest a few hundred in trademarked domains and hope that Procter & Gamble is prepared to buy you out for big bucks.

I have a modest proposal, a la Swift (the author, not the meat company), which should do wonders toward alleviating the crisis ... with or without the new domains. It's very simple:

Restrict everyone to one registered domain name per company. Heck, I'll be generous and allow one domain name per business unit.

OK, OK, that doesn't solve problems with trademarks. Personally, I think that using mcdonalds.com as your URL is not a trademark violation (whereas falsely claiming to represent McDonald's on the pages themselves would be, and fraud to boot). You drive a hard bargain. All right. The corporations can have one extra domain name for each of their registered trademarks. (They still have to pay for each one though!)

Even that would be a big improvement. For example, Pfizer would be limited to about five names from this list of domains they've paid for. Almost all these sites are either unused at present or map directly to pfizer.com, the main site, anyway. The extra $2200 in yearly domain registration fees could be donated to charity by Pfizer as a meaningless goodwill gesture, people might begin to realize that Zoloft is overprescribed, and some of these domains would be freed up for people with genuine information to provide.

You probably think I'm being bitter, don't you?

cardura.com
rhythms-info.com
atrial-fibrillation.com
ventricular-arrhythmia.com
atrial-flutter.com
dofetilide.com
heart-beat.com
xelide.com
heart-rhythm.com
enlarged-prostate.com
bph-info.com
prostate-info.com
feeling-depressed.com
bt-steps.com
depression-info.com
feeling-sad.com
feeling-blue.com
feeling-down.com
alzheimers-info.com
zyrtec.com
smile-zoloft.com
zoloft-smile.com
pfzrfsg.com
pfizer.com
vanpuppy.com
procardia.com
norvasc.com
heart-risk.com
healthy-heart.com
take-charge.com
heart-at-work.com
cardiohealth.com
cardiorisk.com
zoloft.com
healthy-kid.com
kidhealth.com
pediatrichealth.com
childrens-health.com
pediatric-health.com
childrenhealth.com
foryourhealth.com
keeping-people-well.com
keepingpeoplewell.com
pfizer-health.com
pfizerhealth.com
ams-pfizer.com
veternarian.net
pfizerfirstconnect.com
cattledrive.com
for-your-health.com

That's just the list registered to Pfizer. Some domains are registered under different business units, like puresilk.com. Not being intimate with Pfizer's Byzantine corporate structure (thank heavens), I can't really say how many more there are. Most of their consumer products have registered domains, e.g. barbasol.com. But they all link to the same Pfizer "Consumer Health Care" page. [Or did. See comments at end.]

This is typical. Of the large food and drug conglomerates on my hitlist, only a couple don't play the buy-up-all-the-names game. Most have fifty or more domains registered, few of which are being used at all.

This would, unfortunately, eliminate Procter & Gamble's unworldly reservation of crotch-rot.com (no, they're not actually using it anywhere, but I keep hoping) and CPC International's amusingly self-deprecating i-hate-marmite.com ... but you have to take the bad with the good.

This plan, of course, will never sell in a million years, since money talks everywhere, even on the net. But one can always hope.

As for speculation in domain names, it should be made illegal. I favor punishment by death.

But, hey, what did you expect? I'm may have a .com, but I'm not in it for the money.

[22 February 2007:] Originally this was two side articles; I spliced the two together because they were both web-related, and they're relatively short. I shall address each of the two separately.

Of course the Java portion was written back before Mozilla, Firefox, CSS, and Flash. Some things have not changed. Even with CSS, HTML is really not a practical layout language, and I stubbornly insist that it was never designed to be and people shouldn't try, but I realize I am a lone voice in the wilderness on this one.

Internet Explorer is still a pimple on the backside of mankind; in general, all browsers render things to the same standard except IE, making web designers insane as they try to figure out how to generate content that looks good in all browsers. You will never convince me that this breakage is not a deliberate Microsoft ploy; they are hoping that people will get so invested in doing it IE's broken way that they stop caring about the other browsers. I'm happy to report that, to some extent, the trend has gone in the opposite direction.

As early as 1998, I had appended this comment to the article:

"In the months since, Java has become something of a washout for internet sites - the advertisers still use it, but they seem to prefer Shockwave, a faster technology which is better suited to their purposes anyway. Java's speed is what's killing it in the minds of the users; you wait thirty years for an applet to launch (and then it crashes your browser).

"However, in corporate intranets it is catching on as a lingua franca for office record-keeping applications, such as personnel forms - the combination of a familiar web front end and the "write code once" virtual machine is a lovely selling point for managers, who, after all, aren't usually concerned for the needs of the peons. Why should they care that the secretaries have to wait five minutes for their input to respond, or that they routinely have to reboot after using the Java applet for half an hour?"

For "Shockwave" read "Flash." Unfortunately the key point stands: While I do not see very many sites these days which have no content on a page except a big embedded Java applet, I see a whole lot of sites which have no content save a big embedded Flash file. Flash is a better tool for the job in a lot of ways, but this is still Not Right for many reasons, including accessibility.

In terms of sites which are trying to sell you something, I don't think a snazzy Flash file is a substitute for real content, but it is often used as one - it's a distraction, a misdirection, a shiny object to keep you from noticing that there's not much else behind it. And unfortunately it seems to work, which really annoys me and shakes my faith in the intelligence of the consumer.

Also, I continue to maintain that content such as Flash, movie files, etc is not what the web is about or should be about. That's content for you to download and play separately and you don't need HTTP for that. HTTP is for words and still pictures. When I see a cute Flash game (and there are many good ones), my initial reaction is always, "That's nice - how can I save it so I'm not forced to play it in the browser?" But I am aware that, again, I'm a lone voice and that I have lost this one as well.

In terms of domain names, this matter is of some recent sensitivity to me, since I looked into owning staytuned.com for these pages a few days ago. A speculator wants twenty-seven thousand dollars for it. Domain name speculation is still an odious practice and I still think the people who do it need to be locked up or shot. The end.

If you are a younger reader you don't get the InterNIC reference because they have since become Network Solutions. And yes, despite their many hassles, I still keep all my domains with them; I find that I trust them more than some of these fly-by-night registries, and I still think (despite their faults), that a single centralized registrar is a better idea, that domain registration is one of the places where you want a monopoly. (Most of my friends in the tech industry, let it be said, disagree.)

The domain crisis comes and goes, and every so often you hear about it but then nothing much happens. One silver lining of the serious shortage in good .com domains is that corporations have finally started to get a little sense about using subdomains and subdirectories. That is, I still say it makes more sense to train users to go to frostedflakes.kelloggs.com or www.kelloggs.com/frostedflakes/ than it does to use up www.frostedflakes.com. Kellogg's would probably respond that their target audience - which is to say, susceptible children who don't know any better - don't have a clue who owns Frosted Flakes. To that I have two rejoinders; pick the one you like:
  1. Then you're not doing a good enough job with your corporate branding.
  2. Then it's way past time that they learned who's pulling what strings.

On 22 June 1997 I added the following comment to the domains portion:

"Unfortunately Advertising Age's online organ reports that crotch-rot.com is a practical joke, and the evidence they cite is pretty conclusive. Too bad. Oh, well, it was fun to think about while it lasted."

The link to CPC International, maker of Marmite among other things, has been removed. In 1998 they changed names to Bestfoods Corp (after their Best Foods mayonnaise, AKA Hellmann's). Other brands involved in this included Mazola and Knorr. A few years later Best Foods was in turn bought by familiar behemoth Unilever. The sad thing is that, although the "I Love Marmite" and "I Hate Marmite" twin-pages approach is still being used as of this writing, the domains i-love-marmite.com and i-hate-marmite.com are not. A tragic waste!

Pfizer, perhaps following the lead of companies like Bristol-Meyers Squibb, has sold off its OTC and non-drug holdings. The largest sale was to Johnson & Johnson in June of 2006 - this moved the Listerine, Nicorette, Visine, Sudafed, Neosporin and Purell brands among others. Barbasol and Pure Silk were sold before that, in 2001, to a company called Perio which I can't find much about, but they sure do have an interesting mission statement:

In conclusion, Perio expects to receive a healthy profit as long as it adheres to these major objectives. We believe that we are merely temporary stewards and that the resources of the company belong to God. As such, our main vision is to support charitable organizations and specifically, those focused upon children.

Good luck achieving that with sales of a shaving cream which has become an increasingly obscure product from the past.

Oh, yes, and I didn't bother to recheck the list of Pfizer domains, but I will note that the list clearly was obtained before the advent of Viagra.

and now back to our program

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