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Wow. I was a contractor on the Netcaster team summer of 1997. That's the offline web subscription thing, the UI of which runs along the right side column in tha

Wow. I was a contractor on the Netcaster team summer of 1997. That's the offline web subscription thing, the UI of which runs along the right side column in that Constellation screen shot. A small group built a simple desktop UI as a tech demo. They'd start the talk at that desktop, launch the "web browser" and demo some web page techniques, then close the "browser" and deliver the punchline: "Now we're back to the desktop. And we're still in the web browser." Front-end development in that era was called "web design", not programming. A big part of our job was to change that perception, to show that a web "site" could be an interactive experience. The front-line techs at companies committed to a web presence already knew this stuff, and it was an incredible privilege to be working with them. But those responsible for allocating web site budgets had some tough decisions to make, 25 years ago.

_fat_santa 4y ago
I was honestly quite confused reading the article and making comparisons from what Constellation was doing then and what we are doing now (for context I was 4 in 1999). They mentioned an "NUI" and called it a "Network User Interface", would the modern equivalent just be interactive websites that we are very used to today? Seems that what really killed this product was just faster internet speeds. It was a good idea to "eager load" (if you can even call it that) content when we had dial up but even with DSL it pretty much removed the need since an article would take only a few seconds to load on DSL (correct me if I'm wrong, I was like 6 or 7 when DSL was a thing). 90's web development is very fascinating to me because it was truly a time before my time. I swear if Stephen Hawking is one day proved wrong and we can take vacations back in time, I would go get a job at pets.com as a dev.
- watersb 4y ago
  Frankly, the offline feature was never a satisfactory experience. It was making the best of the reality of slow modem speeds, versus the clear increase in demand for interactive and multi media web services. Netscape was trying to address a situation that was simply not theirs to control; no amount of money was going to roll out universal broadband in 1997. Offline experience required content providers to associate a web manifest with their pages that they offered for offline. Even those who went to heroic lengths to re- structure their sites to work that way, were often defeated by the utterly unreliable nature of dial-up internet service. Did the resource fail to load because dependency tracking is NP-hard, or did it fail because someone picked up the phone at 10pm, or forgot to disable call waiting, or the ISP dropped the connection, or…? Not the hill to die on. Nevertheless, those very first moments of JavaScript and CSS were indeed very exciting, because however murky some essential details, the fact that web experiences were the future of UI for decades to come — that was crystal clear. It was a Singularity moment. Right there in the offices recently vacated by WebTV, across the street from the Shoreline Amphitheater, now part of the GooglePlex. I’m not sorry I was there. (I was offered a job at pets.com — if you picked up an AOL installer CD, a pets.com sock puppet would spontaneously materialize and hand you an offer letter — but there’s crazy fun and then there’s just crazy.)
- watersb 4y ago
  > They mentioned an "NUI" and called it a "Network User Interface", would the modern equivalent just be interactive websites that we are very used to today? Yes. I think that the lesson of “NUI” is basically ChromeOS, a ChromeBook experience. You need enough OS to boot the computer, set up the hardware, and start the web browser. That’s a platform sufficient to provide pretty much enough computer for most people. (I just wrote a bunch of paragraphs about trying to disrupt Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, but deleted it. Essentially, when Linux and open source boot-loaders had enough hardware support to deploy on real laptops, and web browser standard had enough features, and network was fast enough, mass-market “NUI” was obvious. That took about fifteen years, and thousands of developers. A tenfold reduction in RAM prices. But here we are. Closer to 1997, we could do “NUI” in controlled environments, in corporate networks. Thin clients. Turns out, that still needed things like “Office” software and printer drivers. But oh my goodness how we tried… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray )

_fat_santa 4y ago

I was honestly quite confused reading the article and making comparisons from what Constellation was doing then and what we are doing now (for context I was 4 in 1999). They mentioned an "NUI" and called it a "Network User Interface", would the modern equivalent just be interactive websites that we are very used to today? Seems that what really killed this product was just faster internet speeds. It was a good idea to "eager load" (if you can even call it that) content when we had dial up but even with DSL it pretty much removed the need since an article would take only a few seconds to load on DSL (correct me if I'm wrong, I was like 6 or 7 when DSL was a thing). 90's web development is very fascinating to me because it was truly a time before my time. I swear if Stephen Hawking is one day proved wrong and we can take vacations back in time, I would go get a job at pets.com as a dev.

watersb 4y ago
Frankly, the offline feature was never a satisfactory experience. It was making the best of the reality of slow modem speeds, versus the clear increase in demand for interactive and multi media web services. Netscape was trying to address a situation that was simply not theirs to control; no amount of money was going to roll out universal broadband in 1997. Offline experience required content providers to associate a web manifest with their pages that they offered for offline. Even those who went to heroic lengths to re- structure their sites to work that way, were often defeated by the utterly unreliable nature of dial-up internet service. Did the resource fail to load because dependency tracking is NP-hard, or did it fail because someone picked up the phone at 10pm, or forgot to disable call waiting, or the ISP dropped the connection, or…? Not the hill to die on. Nevertheless, those very first moments of JavaScript and CSS were indeed very exciting, because however murky some essential details, the fact that web experiences were the future of UI for decades to come — that was crystal clear. It was a Singularity moment. Right there in the offices recently vacated by WebTV, across the street from the Shoreline Amphitheater, now part of the GooglePlex. I’m not sorry I was there. (I was offered a job at pets.com — if you picked up an AOL installer CD, a pets.com sock puppet would spontaneously materialize and hand you an offer letter — but there’s crazy fun and then there’s just crazy.)
watersb 4y ago
> They mentioned an "NUI" and called it a "Network User Interface", would the modern equivalent just be interactive websites that we are very used to today? Yes. I think that the lesson of “NUI” is basically ChromeOS, a ChromeBook experience. You need enough OS to boot the computer, set up the hardware, and start the web browser. That’s a platform sufficient to provide pretty much enough computer for most people. (I just wrote a bunch of paragraphs about trying to disrupt Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, but deleted it. Essentially, when Linux and open source boot-loaders had enough hardware support to deploy on real laptops, and web browser standard had enough features, and network was fast enough, mass-market “NUI” was obvious. That took about fifteen years, and thousands of developers. A tenfold reduction in RAM prices. But here we are. Closer to 1997, we could do “NUI” in controlled environments, in corporate networks. Thin clients. Turns out, that still needed things like “Office” software and printer drivers. But oh my goodness how we tried… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray )