Now that you know everything you need to know about putting your Web server on the Internet, the question that arises is what can you look forward to on the Web?
Nothing we can say about the Internet, and the Web in particular, could be more true than to say that change is a given; it is constant and rapid. In fact, during the time that we have been writing this book and its companion, Web Site
Construction Kit for Windows NT, we have witnessed a barrage of news events and announcements that are certain to have massive impact on the future of the Web. Here are just a few of the things that have come about (officially or unofficially) during
the Fall and Winter of 1995: Internet business alliances, Web servers, Web browsers, Web programming languages and systems, Web applications, Internet applications, ISDN/modem products, headline-grabbing security setbacks, security advancements, a litany
of ongoing improvements in network transmission technologies (from modems to ATM), and of course, hundreds of new Web pages from mega-corporations all the way down to the person on the street.
The only way to keep up is to read books (like this one and others mentioned in the Bibliography) and check out the online resources in Appendix D for the most timely information.
It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that Windows 95 is already an immensely successful product. It sold 20 million copies by the end of 1995—just four months since its inception! And that still leaves another 40 million users who are taking a
wait and see attitude before deciding to upgrade. With all this momentum, the future looks bright.
On Microsoft's other 32-bit track, some independent sources say that Windows NT gained 8 percent of the network operating system market during the first two years. We've even seen speculative reports that estimate Windows NT will own 81 percent of the
network operating system market by the year 1999. This seems like a high figure, but there is no doubt that NT's market share is growing at an exponential rate. The reason we tell you this about Windows NT is that, in some ways, NT is leading the path for
Windows 95 and eventually, the two will merge.
One of the things always crucial to the success of an operating system is the amount of new software applications that are developed for it. With the advent of Windows 95, which is both a 16-bit and a 32-bit Windows operating system, software developers
now have an even wider market (tens of millions of potential new customers) for which to develop Win32 applications. In most cases, the software can be written to run identically on both Windows 95 and Windows NT. In fact, one of the requirements to obtain
the coveted "Windows 95 compatible" logo for software packaging is that the application must run on Windows NT as well.
Meanwhile, Windows NT isn't going to sit still. The next major version is due out during the first half of 1996. Among the many enhancements, it is expected to include the new Windows 95 GUI, support for TAPI (Telephony API), and possibly a version of
network OLE. The new version of NT, combined with a new Web server and probably a new release of SQL Server, will help Microsoft distinguish its Back Office suite as a dominant force in the industry.
The indications from Microsoft are that the future of Windows for desktops users is a gradual shift from Windows 95 to Windows NT. In our opinion, many people are reading way more into this than is really there. After all, the two operating systems
already share the same 32-bit application programming interface, and it is perfectly reasonable to expect future versions of Windows 95 to deliver some of the high-end features that are available now in Windows NT. Whether the next major upgrade of Windows
95 will be called Windows 97 or NT Workstation 5.0 or Desktop NT or whatever, the name is irrelevant from a technical perspective. The point is that it will inherit so many of the power features found in NT today, that it may in fact become a version of
NT. From a software engineering viewpoint, this would seem to be a practical thing for Microsoft to do. And we don't see any logical way this can be construed to mean that Windows 95 is a dead end. Quite the contrary—its evolution is certain!
It seems that there is a new development in HTML every day. A good place to monitor the direction of the Web is the World Wide Web Consortium. The W3 Consortium, as it's called, exists to develop common standards for the evolution of the World Wide Web.
It is an industry consortium run by the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Europe, MIT collaborates with CERN, the originators of the Web, and INRIA, the European W3C center.
W3C provides a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users. Specifications about the Web, reference code implementations, and various sample applications can all be found on the W3C Web site.
For more information on W3C see http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Consortium/.
HTML 2.0 is widely implemented and should be standard by the time you read this. HTML 3.0 is still in the very early stages of being implemented and debated. In particular, no decision has been made about which system for stylesheets will find its way
into the final specification.
Because so many HTML extensions have been developed by Netscape, you might also want to make regular visits to their home page just to see if anything new is cooking: http://home.netscape.com/.
There are several recent enhancements found in some servers that might become standard. It all depends on whether the Web community as a whole decides that these are useful techniques. Some of these are only supported in certain browsers and servers.
Your best source for further information is the documentation that comes with your Web server.
One recent development is server-side includes. This is a way of generating dynamic HTML without using CGI. The way it works is that you designate a particular file type, such as .shtml, to represent files that the server will parse before
sending the document to the client. When the server parses the file, it looks for comments within the HTML code, which include the text #include. Upon finding such a string, the server replaces that line of the document with the entire text from the file
that is referenced.
This gives you a way to develop standard HTML page headers and footers that can be easily maintained. However, it is slightly less efficient for the server to parse the HTML before sending it to the client.
Server-Push and Client-Pull can be used to accomplish similar things. Both are supported by Netscape. They are frequently mentioned in the context of graphic animation, such as creating a dynamic corporate logo, on the Web.
One difference between the two is that Server-Push is implemented through CGI on the server, whereas Client-Pull can be accomplished simply through HTML with a compatible browser.
Client-Pull uses a feature in HTML 3.0 to specify that a document should be retrieved by the browser automatically after a certain time interval, whether the user clicks a link or not. Server-Push relies on a CGI application that maintains a timer and
knows when to transmit the next document to the client.
HotJava is a new Web browser, currently in alpha release, that brings multimedia to the World Wide Web. Imagine opening your Web browser to http://java.sun.com, and as the page is loading, you see the animated character
Duke, the HotJava mascot on your screen waving at you.
Java is a programming language that many are already predicting will become the standard for interactive Web application programming. Sun designed Java as a derivative of C++ with modifications to simplify Web application development. They also wanted
it to include security so that a user can be confident a Web application doesn't include a virus.
Netscape has licensed Sun's Java programming language, and it is currently implemented in Version 2.0 of Netscape Navigator.
For more information on Java, see Chapter 24, "Interactive Web Programming with Java," or any of these URLs.
VRML stands for Virtual Reality Modeling Language. Still in its early development stages, it is a draft specification for adding three-dimensional data to the Web. WebSpace is a freely distributed, VRML-enabled Web browser from Silicon Graphics Computer
Systems. Microsoft now includes ActiveVRML in Internet Explorer 2.0, and will be enhancing that language as they integrate it with Internet Studion and Visual Basic Script.
To find out more about VRML and the Silicon Graphics Software, go to http://www.sgi.com/Products/WebFORCE/WebSpace/.
This is a new Web programming system that was code-named Blackbird until recently. Microsoft didn't want to give up everything to Java, so it invented what it thinks is an even better way to let programmers build Web programs.
Basically, it consists of a new derivative of HTML called Blackbird MarkUp Language (BML) and a method by which developers can embed OLE custom controls (OCXs) into Web pages using another language called Visual Basic Script, which
is a subset of Visual Basic for Applications found in Excel. This strategy leverages on the idea that OCXs are going to be everywhere fairly soon (if Microsoft has its way), now that Windows 95 and Visual Basic 4.0 are on the street.
For awhile, Microsoft seemed as if they were trying to ignore Java by proposing Blackbird instead. Now they have reached a licensing arrangement, and it appears that the strategy is to produce OCXs that expose the features of Java (which is a relatively
low-level language) to Visual Basic Script programmers. This would make sense because not everyone who wants to build Web programs is going to want to learn a language similar to C++.
We shall eagerly await the fruits of the Java and Visual Basic Script development efforts. Sun, Netscape, and Microsoft are all promising to change the Web as we know it.
Just when Netscape might have thought it was going to run away with the business of setting all trends on the Internet, Microsoft kicked into some kind of newly discovered Web-strategy mode. Microsoft and Netscape have emerged as the rivalry to watch in
1996. It looks as if they will be competing in all of these major areas:
At this point, Netscape has the clear advantage in the browser battle because of the wide popularity and cross-platform support of Navigator. As if defining HTML 3.0 wasn't enough, Navigator 2.0 also sets a new standard for Web browsers by including
integrated e-mail, a newsreader, and FTP support. Estimates are that more than 80 percent of the Web browsers in use today are built by Netscape. And it looks like Navigator 2.0 packs enough new features that it will be very hard for Netscape's competitors
to bite into that market share. But once again, don't count Microsoft out because they are giving away Internet Explorer for free on Windows 95, Windows NT, and even the Macintosh.
When many people think of the World Wide Web, they think of a global network of hypertext document servers providing text and graphics pages to everyone on the Internet. What some people forget is that companies with Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide
Area Networks (WANs) need to distribute documents and information too, even if they are not connected to the Internet.
The phrase Intranet has been coined to describe these company's LANs and WANs. A Web server is a perfect information server for the Intranet. For example, what better way for a company to distribute Human Resources information such as policy
manuals and company news letters? The applications for a Web server in an Intranet environment are virtually limitless. We have seen a college Web server that provides a Web-based form for the campus sandwich shop. Students just fill out the order form,
and once the data is posted, a CGI application transfers the order to a fax server that faxes it to the shop. The sandwich is ready by the time the student gets there.
Wider deployment of the Web in Intranet environments promises to further fuel the pace of new software and hardware products for networks.
Everyday, more people use the Internet to do more things than ever before. This leads to a need for ever increasing data throughput rates—if we hope not to find ourselves going slower and slower. Fortunately, it seems that network engineers never
run out of tricks to speed up the wires and the algorithms and the routers through which our data travels (naturally, there is an enormous profit motive to deliver speed improvements to the large body of customers the Internet represents).
One area of intense interest these days is ATM. It seems that every week the trade journals contain news about advances in this technology or the formation of key partnerships in this industry. As we mentioned in Chapter 1, this is a subject on which
entire books are written, and many more will follow, but it is beyond the scope of this book. However, let us briefly mention a couple of other bandwidth-acceleration improvements.
What about performance gains for the little guy? ATM, and even ISDN (although this too is changing fast), are still out of reach financially for most home users. As it turns out, two companies, AT&T and U.S. Robotics, are currently selling modems
that boast a DTE rate of 33.6 Kbps. U.S. Robotics is arguably the market leader when it comes to modems. Ask about their Courier V.Everything modem if you're shopping for a speed demon. But keep in mind that the prices for low-end ISDN cards are beginning
to overlap with the prices for high-end modems.
Not too long ago if you wanted an ISDN connection to the Internet, you were talking about a fairly high-end piece of equipment and not very many manufacturers. With bandwidth needs increasing, ISDN has become a favored choice. This has created a boom in
ISDN products.
Today you can find many ISDN boards compatible with your ISA or EISA bus. One of the newer trends for home use is a dual-purpose ISDN box that not only supports ISDN connections, but also includes a 28.8 Kbps analog modem. One such product is the
Pipeline 25 from Ascend Communications. Actually, it doesn't include the modem, but it gives the user two analog phone ports so that a standard phone and fax/modem can be connected using one B channel, in addition to ISDN running on the other B channel.
And the amazing thing is that you can do all of this simultaneously! Ascend Communications makes an entire line of ISDN products.
Hopefully, this book has helped you, and you have had as much fun building your Web site and learning about the World Wide Web as we have had setting up ours and writing this book. You have chosen a very exciting time to be involved with the Internet and with Microsoft Windows 95.