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Chris's Rant- by Chris Wenham
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Convert, then Cannibalize

(Note: As part of a little experiment we're conducting here at the OS/2 e-Zine!, you'll be able to respond to this column directly through the link to a special Hypernews forum at the bottom of this article. Post with your own name or anonymously (if you want to call me a jerk), argue with others who have posted, or just chime in with your own ideas.)

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who didn't immediately think "OS/2 Port!" when the news of Netscape's imminent source-code release was made known. While a grass roots ported version of Communicator for OS/2 would be fantastic, an example of the OS/2 community manifesting its own destiny rather than waiting for IBM to do it, I also think it's only a baby step compared to what we can do later with the resulting native code - and that's to cannibalize it and use chunks in other programs, eventually coming to the stage where both simple and complex new applications for OS/2 can be assembled from a hybrid of Dynamic HTML and Java.

I started thinking about this when I saw the latest version of QuickBooks, a business accounting package for Windows, and noticed that much of its navigational structure could be mimicked easily with a few GIF files and mouse rollovers in a web page, while the remaining sections could be made up of Java applets or Javascript-driven forms.

The first step to get there would be to build a "plug-in component" out of the HTML rendering engine, giving us an up-to-date, frames- and Dynamic HTML-capable version of what we've already had for a while in the WebExplorer API. If you've used programs like HTML-Ed and Internet Adventurer, you'll know they both take advantage of the WebEx API to plug a rudimentary web browser into their respective frames. HTML-Ed, which is nothing much more than a text editor with a few keyboard macros, weighs in at just under 100K, yet features a full preview mode based on this Web Explorer engine. Not surprisingly it's still my favorite editor for precisely this reason.

Microsoft has already done this with Internet Explorer, and the result has been used in programs like Quicken, where a web browser was integrated into the program itself -- rather than launching the full IE browser in a separate window. The same thing can be provided for OS/2 programmers, based on Netscape's Dynamic HTML 'engine'.

And with my limited imagination I can already think of a dozen possible uses for the ported code other than browserlettes and "Mozilla babies". Here's a few:

The greatest opportunities come from making the browser as invisible as possible, and handing over all of the interface design power to the web page designer instead. This isn't much more than simply providing the ability to switch off the button bars and the shooting-stars animation and perhaps augmenting the Javascript API with a few more hooks to the underlying operating system (something that could be based upon an ad-hoc standard maintained with other grass roots coders writing for Linux, Be, Rhapsody etc.)

With this frame, thousands of developers with no knowledge of C or the OS/2 API, but a good grounding in basic scripting and web design, could design and release applications like Tax software, the children's books, map and navigational aids like the ones talked about in Nick Petreley's recent Infoworld column. These kind of applications are blissfully easy to put together and the technology is available to the average user in the form of the dozens of web page editors already available for OS/2, such as Homepage Publisher, and the plug-ins that let them embed movies and sounds equal to those you see bundled with Quicken today.

So far, The OS/2 Netlabs are the first to volunteer for the job of porting the full Communicator to OS/2, but I suspect there may be other private efforts going on as programmers try to port only the chunks of the code they want. We may see the results of this bone-picking in the months after Netscape's March 31st source-code release.

I saw many people call on IBM to follow the trend set by Netscape, id software and Parallax (yes, the source code for DOOM and Descent is now available too) and release the source code for OS/2. The chances of this happening are nil, but the Netscape source could be the next best thing, because it's almost an operating system in itself. With it we might be able to really manifest our own destiny, and possibly ring in a new Renaissance for OS/2.

Gimme a piece of your mind, and talk back through our Hypernews forum.

* * *

Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.


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