What the Internet that could have been.. and what the Internet that is today..

Someone told me today that they felt with IE 9 that Microsoft was using a lot of “Google Chrome’s features”. I found that rather amusing today as the person I was talking to was born in 1987-88. Of course he couldn’t really know Microsoft’s long history with the web, or the fact that Microsoft innovated a lot of these concepts themselves at the height of the PC revolution..  So I decided to look back at when this guy was one or two years old and look at exactly what Internet Explorer and the Windows Desktop looked like back in the days of Internet Explorer 4..

At the time the Mac Desktop looked like this and had no web integration outside of the browser period (Mac OS 7.5.3)…

A long time ago, before most of us had broadband and cable modems when web was new, Microsoft saw the potential for integration of the web browser and the desktop. This was before Google was a large company.  For many today the browser has become the operating system. Many today in the world do not go outside of the Web Browser…

Let’s take a look at Internet Explorer 4 which integrated with the Desktop.. Later the government forced removal of many of these capabilities due to anti-trust action.. Was IE 4 too good or ahead of it’s time?  Let take a look back at some features and see..

Remember this was Windows 95.. So when you hear Apple, or Google or one of these other companies saying “we invented” this concept.. Maybe from historic perspective not so much..

Windows 95 with Active  Desktop Installed. (or should I say Web Desktop).

The web was so integrated that “everything was a link, that you could click on..  This might look foreign to you today, but back in the day this was very cutting edge. At that time Netscape (which became the basis for Firefox today) was a program, and it wasn’t left out notice the Netscape navigator icon in the start bar next to the Internet Explorer icon, it could be launched etc.  However because with IE integration Windows Explorer built all of these web capabilities into the desktop explorer as well .

Desktop Background-  This could be a web page or multiple webpages could be used in place of the standard background graphics wall paper.

CLICKING INSTEAD OF DOUBLE CLICKING- Everything was a link.. The reality of this is that instead of having to double-click on the desktop icons you could click once and everything was a link navigable just like hyperlinks were on the web pages.. The exciting part of this was that it had a consistent web feel every where you went.. Even further if you clicked on an office document that same document opened in that same window as Microsoft word..

Channel Guide- notice the widgets on the desktop called channel guide ? it was a place where all of your internet content feeds could be aggregated into one place.. Ten years later today we call these RSS feeds and “Apps”.. Was RSS feeds an original idea ? NO

Microsoft came up with the idea of content feeds via XML and called it “Channels” at the time.. Here’s a look at a sample of the code behind CDF (Channel Definition format) that you would subscribe to…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<CHANNEL HREF="http://domain/folder/pageOne.extension"
  BASE="http://domain/folder/"
  LASTMOD="1998-11-05T22:12"
  PRECACHE="YES"
  LEVEL="0">
    <TITLE>Title of your Channel</TITLE>
    <ABSTRACT>Synopsis of your channel's contents.</ABSTRACT>
    <SCHEDULE>
      <INTERVALTIME DAY="14"/>
    </SCHEDULE>
    <LOGO HREF="wideChannelLogo.gif" STYLE="IMAGE-WIDE"/>
    <LOGO HREF="imageChannelLogo.gif" STYLE="IMAGE"/>
    <LOGO HREF="iconChannelLogo.gif" STYLE="ICON"/>
    <ITEM HREF="pageTwo.extension"
      LASTMOD="1998-11-05T22:12"
      PRECACHE="YES"
      LEVEL="1">
        <TITLE>Page Two's Title</TITLE>
        <ABSTRACT>Page Two contents.</ABSTRACT>
        <LOGO HREF="pageTwoLogo.gif" STYLE="IMAGE"/>
        <LOGO HREF="pageTwoLogo.gif" STYLE="ICON"/>
    </ITEM>
</CHANNEL>

compare this with RSS Feeds of today (remember this is 1998 versus today):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>RSS Title</title>
    <description>This is an example of an RSS feed</description>
    <link>http://www.someexamplerssdomain.com/main.html</link>
    <lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000 </lastBuildDate>
    <pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate>
 
    <item>
        <title>Example entry</title>
        <description>Here is some text containing an interesting description of the thing to be described.</description>
        <link>http://www.wikipedia.org/</link>
        <guid>unique string per item</guid>
        <pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate>
    </item>
 
</channel>
</rss>

See anything similar…

Of course folks will tell you about Netscape RDF format (which came out in 1999 not 1998, who’s really copying who folks.. RDF became the basis for RSS today..

<rdf:RDF
  xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn">
        <dc:title>Tony Benn</dc:title>
        <dc:publisher>Wikipedia</dc:publisher>
    </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

At the time this functionality and web integration was still unheard of and Netscape was still confined to it’s programming Window and couldn’t do this level of integration.. This is probably why they felt that they couldn’t compete with a truly web enabled desktop. I’d love to have these features in Windows today…

Here’s a look at the new IE 9 today (and while the UI looks sleeker, where are we at with all of this today.. It makes you think… We could have been a lot farther along with the web today had Microsoft been allowed to keep these features together in Windows..