The Year in Review

The Web in 1997

by Bob Schmitt and Chuck Toporek
December 26, 1997

The Internet in 1997 saw a surge of popularity like never before. From brokers to bankers, designers to draftsmen, hobbyists to homemakers, people literally poured onto the Web. And no matter their occupation they were all after one thing: to express themselves to as wide an audience as possible. Be it with products or poetry, recipes or real estate, the 'Net was the place to be.

Those of us who've been on the Web for awhile now know just how dramatically and quickly things change on the Web. Never has this been more true than in 1997. With the emergence of Cascading Style Sheets, XML, Dynamic HTML, the Document Object Model, and a dizzying array of other technologies, it's getting harder and harder just to keep up (much less catch up if you're new to the 'Net). Our mission at Web Review is to give developers an edge in keeping current by providing clear, concise coverage of the important and emerging technologies related to the design and development of Web sites.

As a retrospective of the year, we've put together a sampling of what we thought were our most important and interesting stories of 1997. And we're giving you the chance to vote on your favorites. If you don't see your favorite story here, be sure to write it in the space provided at the end. And, if there's something you thought was important in 1997 that we didn't cover, send us that too, and we just might cover it in '98.

Insight

Is There Still Hope For Apple?
by Simson Garfinkel
In the computing story of the year, Apple Computer plunked down half a billion bucks for the NeXT OS, brought back Steve Jobs as CEO, and wiped clean its Board of Directors. As a result, later in the year, they distributed the first Developer Release of the new Rhapsody OS. Will this new OS keep Apple afloat in '98, or be the final anchor to drag them down?

The Web is Ruined and I Ruined It
by David Siegel
In his classic, not so humble style, David Siegel shares his perspective of the state of design on the Web, and why he believes — somewhat facetiously (we hope) — that he ruined it.

InActiveX
by Andrew Schulman
Sure ActiveX sounds good, but is anyone really using it? This article looks at who's really using it as opposed to what Microsoft would have you believe.

Fielding a Winning Design Team
by Susan Kuchinskas
Putting together a great Web design team is like trying to field a winning sports team. You need players with complementary skills, who can also pinch-hit for each other. Susan delves into a Manhattan-based Web design company to give suggestions on how to scout for that winning team.

Web Tools

GIFmation Makes GIF Animations Easier
by Bob Schmitt
I remember the olden days when there were only two tools available for GIF animation: Gif Construction Set for Windows and GIF Builder for Mac. Well, 1997 was a great year for GIF animation tools, and GIFmation is one of the best. Learn what makes this program such a good one to add to your toolbox.

Streaming Animation with RealFlash
by Wes Thomas
The announcement in 1997 of the deal between Macromedia and Real Networks to incorporate Flash into the popular Real Audio Player was "real" unexpected but very interesting. Wes takes a look at this welcome melding of two very hot technologies.

Diving into Dreamweaver
by Wes Thomas
Speaking of hot technologies and Macromedia, the release of Dreamweaver in the later part of '97 looks sure to be a big hit. The ability to add dynamic HTML with no coding — without screwing up the rest of your hand-coded page — has got developers squealing with delight. The only question for developers is, does it have enough new features to justify the hefty price tag? In this article Wes tells you what he thinks.

Striving for Standards

Is HTML Irrelevant?
by John Berry
More and more today creating Web pages is about design not markup, so what's the point in keeping around a markup language that is ill-equipped to do design? Are the chances HTML will be scrapped as remote as industry experts would have you believe? If you're having trouble coping with these questions you better read this article.

PNG's not GIF
by Greg Roelofs
Close your eyes and imagine this: lossless compression that's better than GIF, automatic gamma adjustment across platforms, and alpha-channel support. If you just shrugged and said, "So what?" just go on your merry way using GIFs. But, if you're salivating right now, you need to read more about PNG (ping).

The XML Files
by Dale Dougherty
Special Agent Dougherty has seen strange things lately. He's seen multidimensional documents — capable of being processed by different programs, delivered by different methods, and viewed differently by different users. Is he out of this world, or is it the XML Files?

HTML 4.0: Less is More Important
by Dale Dougherty
With this latest release of the official HTML spec it appears that the crazy feature rush so prevalent in the last few years is subsiding as developers are demanding more interoperability. Of course, the question remains, will the Web software developers "respect the spec"? Dale explores this question with Tim Berners-Lee as he delves into this newest spec.

Legion of DOM
by D.C. Denison and Dale Dougherty
This year, developers were once again forced into trying to make sense of two diverging standards — one from Microsoft and one from Netscape. Well, if you've been trying to get to the bottom of Dynamic HTML, you've just hit bedrock. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released a spec draft that lays a new, solid foundation for dynamic content on the Web. Unfortunately, it is just a spec. But if it succeeds it may be the last such model you'll have to learn.

Multimedia

Liquid Audio Fine Tunes Music on Demand
by John Gilles
As in every year, a lot of new technologies bubbled to the surface in 1997. And Web Review covered many of them. In this article John asks, "Can this new startup company challenge RealAudio as the reigning champion of streaming audio?" It can if it sounds better.

A Digital Video Primer
by Danna Hoshino
Video on the Web, just shoot it and slap it a page, right? Wrong. There's a lot you need to know to get started in publishing video on your Web site. You need to know about formats and compression and hardware and software and ... whew! There's a lot to know and this primer will get you started.

Getting Loopy with Shockwave
by Bob Schmitt
Shockwave for Director is a very deep program, and there are a vast number of tricks of the trade to learn. One of these tricks is filmloops, and this article shows you how to make use of this powerful aspect of Director's Score.

Streaming Media Without Plug-ins
by Wes Thomas
I'm still willing to download plugins, provided the content is worth the effort. Sadly, it nearly never is. So how can you deliver media-rich content without plugins? Use a Java player instead. Here are several promising technologies that surfaced in '97.

Too Many Pixels, Not Enough Bandwidth!
by Ho John Lee
You've got a really, really, really big graphic and you just have to show it in all its pixel-happy glory. Trouble is, who's got the bandwidth to view it? Well, with this new Internet Imaging Protocol you can have your pixels and download them too. The FlashPix file format allows you to provide fast, interactive access to high-res graphics, even over relatively slow connections.

Web Developer's Toolbox

LiveWire Series
by Dirk Reinshagen
Interaction. It's where most Web sites are headed. And Netscape's LiveWire is one server-side solution for programming dynamic content on the Web — for making a Web site more interactive. This three-part tutorial provides examples of how LiveWire can do those common programming tasks so necessary in interactive Web sites.

Active Server Pages (ASP) Series
by Dirk Reinshagen
It's a boring name, but an innovative Web development technology that's changing the way dynamic Web pages are developed. ASP is "active" because it enables Web pages to be programmatic; interpreted on the "server" and developed on a "page" basis. This three-part series covers the basics of creating dynamic content using Microsoft's ASP.

Java Servlets
by William Crawford
OK, has anyone really seen a Java applet on a Web page that is truly useful? Hmmm? I didn't think so. But, have you ever stopped to think, what could Java do outside the browser — like, on the server-side? Ahhh, now I think we're getting somewhere. This article outlines this killer usage of Java.

Building a Catalog Shopping Application
by Dirk Reinshagen
What could be more important to Web developers than actually making money with a Web site? And what could be more important to making money than collecting it from your customers? This four-part series walks developers through creating an online shopping cart using Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP).

Programming

Agent Perl
by Ben Smith
Having a Web agent continually searching the Web ensures that your information is the most current, but your agent must be polite if it wants to roam. Meet Agent Perl, The Polite Web Spider, and learn how to design your own Agent Perl, using object-oriented Perl modules.

The Show
by Nick Heinle
Dynamic HTML was one of the hottest topics on the Web in '97. This article highlights its power by showing you how to create an interactive game show.

Java: Will Invention Become the Father of Necessity?
by Andrew Schulman
Java is easily the most talked about technology on the Web. Whether your opinion is that it's the cure-all for everything or just a great big dud, you loved talking about it in 1997. But when it's all said and done, did anyone really find a use for Java? Andrew explores this issue and others as he asks, will Java "create its own necessity?"

Design Studio

How to design for WebTV
by Bruce Stewart
WebTV is going to be big, big, big. And Web developers are going to have to devote more of their attention to it in 1998. And there are many special design considerations for delivering Web-based content on the living room TV. Find out what you need to know in this enlightening article.

Organizing Your Site from A-Z
by Lou Rosenfeld
In 1997 people moved from merely having a Web site to having Web collections. And with such large volumes of information, comes the need for better navigation systems. This article discusses the value of good information architecture and how to help users navigate through your collection by creating a sexy site index.

Web Fonts: Changing the Face of the Web
by Daniel Will-Harris
At the top of a long list of complaints designers have about designing for the Web is that you have no control over the fonts used on your pages, in 1997 that all changed with the introduction of Dynamic, or embedded, fonts. Now designers can create font files that link to their pages and render the fonts, whether or not the user has them installed in his system. Of course it only works in 4.0 browsers, but not to worry, as Daniel says, "eventually everyone will have v.4 browsers (probably when Netscape and Microsoft release their v.6 browsers)."

Tutorials

Evolution of a Comet (2 parts)
by Jonathan Lyerly
If you want to create games on the Web how are you going to do it? Java? ActiveX? JavaScript? Get serious. Shockwave's the only way to go, and this two-part article shows you how to get started with a shoot-em-up game.

The Definitive Rollover Script
by Nick Heinle
It seems like every Web site you looked at in 1997 had something that glowed, blinked, popped or spat when you put your mouse over it. And it was all done with JavaScript. But, what's the best way to code it? In this article, Nick delivers the final word in rollover scripts.

Creating Your First Style Sheet
by Eric A. Meyer
There wasn't anything hotter in 1997 than Cascading Style Sheets. Style Sheets hold, not only the promise of pixel-level control over every aspect of a Web page design, but the ability also to make documents far more portable by removing hard-coded layout from the document level. This article shows you, step-by-step, how to get your feet wet in this exciting technology.

Auditorials

Enhancing Your Digital Images
by Bob Schmitt
We all upgraded in 1997 to Photoshop 4.0, and although we were a little disappointed in the lack of new features, one new gem did catch our attention. This Audio-tutorial walks you through how to increase your productivity by using PS4's new Adjustment Layers feature.

Enhancing Your Digital Audio
by Dylan Thede
If you're like most Web developers, creating good audio is a real mystery. Not anymore, as this Auditorial runs through some very simple techniques you can practice to make your digital audio sound better than ever.

Making Frames the Easy Way
by Bob Schmitt
In 1997 a glut of so-called WYSIWYG HTML editors hit primetime, all promising to make coding HTML a visual experience. Chief among these was Adobe's PageMill. And while PageMill has steadily been passed by many newer, feature-loaded products, it still offers a quick and easy (and often mimicked) method for creating frames. This Auditorial takes you through the process of creating frames, step-by-step.

Webmastering Series

Webmastering Mars
by Chuck Toporek
A little guy named Sojourner captured our imaginations in 1997, as it trundled its way across the surface of our nearest neighbor. For us on the Web, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) kept us up-to-date with all the adventures on the Red Planet with pictures, video and data feeds. But just how did JPL's Webmaster handle the bazillions of hits the site got each day? Chuck gets the answers in this exclusive interview with the JPL team.

Inside Adobe's Abode
by Janice Berman
Not content on merely creating a corporate site with a bunch of sales blather, Adobe Systems set out to create a site packed with information almost as indispensable to designers as their tools are. In this article Janice gets inside Adobe's abode and learns how Webmaster Wendy Govier went about recreating the site from the ground up.

Standing Tall in Search Engines
by Daniel A. Tauber and Brenda Kienan
I think we all know the frustration of looking for our site on the major search engines and finding it's either not listed or it's buried near the bottom of the list. Daniel and Brenda reveal just how the major search sites organize their listings, and give crucial tips on how to improve your site's chances of being noticed.

Notorious

The Virtues of Perl
by Dale Dougherty
In 1997 it became more and more apparent that the Web is big business, and its universe is being overrun by the Evil Empire (I won't name names). But with the Force on their side, there's a small band of rebels that's been laboring for years to keep the PERL programming language open and free. Dale talks to the shy and philosophical rebel leader, Jedi Knight Larry Wall.

RealAudio Interview with Tim Bray
by Dale Dougherty
"Knowledge is a text-based application," says Tim Bray, one of the architects of XML and co-editor of the XML Specification. In this RealAudio interview Tim discusses how XML came about and where it might take the Web.

Shades of Black
by Ingrid Becker
Roger Black, the graphic design guru responsible for creating the look of dozens of national magazines (including Advertising Age and Rolling Stone), talks about Web Sites That Work.

Write-In Candidate

Did we miss an article you thought should be included in the voting? If so, let us know what the title of the article is and we'll include the top three when we report back with the results in the Jan. 16 issue.