[WEB4LIB] Re: Little of GNU/Linux in Libraries (was: The beginning of the end for the

[Rhyno Art]

> All of those products are available over the web through the browser
> and OS of your choice.  It sounds like you're running them off of
> CDROM.  Regardless of OS issues, you'll be much happier to get them on
> CDROM, and may find the costs are lower, particularly if you include
> the cost of however you're serving them now.  Best of all, they'll be
> easy to authenticate to off campus users.
> 
I am not sure where the "Little of GNU/Linux in Libraries" and "The
beginning of the end for Netscape" threads intersect but one possibility
that may help both Linux and Mozilla is the use of web interfaces for
mainstream applications in addition to databases like PsychLit. You can see
some of this promise at Blox.com < http://www.blox.com/ >, offering
calculators and spreadsheets built completely out of web technologies. Blox
doesn't really leverage the "content" of the web, for example there isn't a
word processor at Blox that allows you to use the web version of the OED
seamlessly for your dictionary, but the web is continually fostering better
toolkits for building applications and the distinctions between the desktop
and the browser are blurring. Mozilla has an advantage here because it
already has one technology, XUL (XML-based User Interface Language), which
greatly enhances the type of rich user interface that can be presented in a
browser. This also helps Linux because if the browser becomes the focal
point of the desktop, the debate may become much more focused on the
stability of the underlying systems than it is now.

My hope is that Mozilla survives any Netscape shakeups, there is Mozilla
content at this year's O'Reilly Open Source convention and the Komodo IDE,
which is based on using Mozilla as a cross-platform component framework,
seems to be getting a lot of good reviews. Mozilla has been a long time
coming, and it isn't completely there yet, but it may yet fulfill the
original Mosaic notion of a "universal client" where you can create content
and seamlessly draw on network resources regardless of native protocols,
access mechanisms, or security/application-layer-that-currently-drives-
you-crazy-hamstringing-into-the-web of your choice.

art
---
Art Rhyno, Systems Librarian
Leddy Library, University of Windsor
Internet: arhyno at uwindsor.ca
Tel: (519) 253-4232, EXT. 3163
FAX: (519) 973-7076
WWW: <http://www.uwindsor.ca/library/leddy/people/art.html>