Here is yet another example of mankind's arrogance.
The applet tag was just about as simple as you could get
when it came to adding dynamic content. It was
ingenious. A dedicated hard working programmer could
write code that could provide new dimensions to a web
page and the hard working small business person could add
it to their web page with a few simple parameter tags.
Then came the object and embed tags. What was simple now
became complex. You now had to add two parameter lists
for each, with what used to be called an applet.
I guess it started with the lawsuits. Sun sued
Microsoft, Microsoft sued Sun and us programmers were
caught in the middle, forgotten, without a hint of any of
that customer service they tried to cram down our throats
when we paid of their products or services. Yes the
petty battles caused java class objects not to work with
IE while Mozilla based browsers had to use another set of
tags, the embed tags, to call the Java class file we
slaved over. So what was once, easy enough for a high
schooler to code, now required an advanced computer
science degree.
You know I put off getting into the Internet when I
first heard about it in 1993. I knew it would consume
me. I had read about gold rushes in the past and I
couldn't recall any of the second wave of prospectors
getting rich. I considered it. Between 93 and 95 I
spent about $300 on books trying to figure out how to
climb onto the Internet band wagon. Then I decided I
better put on the skids so I bought a boat. For the next
couple of years I invested my time in restoration, wood
working, and learning craftsmanship instead. Then the
Japanese announced they'd pay a million dollars for c
programmers, in 1998. I could learn C. So I did and I
got back into the Internet.
The internet was the new papyrus. You could write
your book and publish it too, FREE. This was fantastic
so I invested all my time in html. Not the C route I had
planned, besides the Japanese deal was off and it was
1999 - 2000 and the internet bubble was starting to
crack.
I did however, jump off the deep end with Java. I
spent days, months trying to craft code the perfect way.
I came up with an aggregate shopping cart. Now I know
that doesn't mean much to most of you folks out there,
but in 1999 when I first came up with an aggregate
shopping cart there weren't any. You'd go to the typical
shopping cart on the Internet, put something in your
cart, by clicking add to cart, and whoosh! The cart
would go on up to the checkout stand. Then you'd have to
navigate your way back to the web page your were on and
go through the process again. It would quite literally
be like going to a brick and mortar store, putting
something in your metal shopping cart and Whoosh! The
metal goes up to the checkout stand and you have to
trudge up there and bring it back to your isle. It
was/is totally not like consumers were used to shopping.
Not only were there no aggregate shopping carts, there
were no sales tax boxes or real time shipping. Plus 93%
of all credit card numbers were sent unencrypted so not
only did people have to trudge up to get their carts on a
pseudo internet store, they were thrown to the den of
thieves after they paid for their goods or services. It
was no wonder the internet bubble burst. I even heard
that one billion dollar start up, pets dot com, only had
a thousand dollars in sales. Go figure. Those poor guys
with a billion dollars in stock were probably frizzled
beyond compare as they ran around trying to get this
internet thing to work to make sales.
So html was perfect. It was the simplest programming
language, if you will, in the world. By 2000 I figured
every high school in the country must be teaching it so a
simple applet with a few parameter tags would be the
easiest shopping cart in the world to add to a web page.
I figured if the business person, and by now everyone was
trying to sell something on the internet, didn't know
html, they had a son, daughter, nephew or a grand kid who
could write it for them. But I soon discovered nobody
knew html. At least in the local community organizations
I got involved with to promote and try and get some
feedback on my software/applet designs. All of a sudden
it seemed, everybody was a computer expert. You couldn't
tell them nothing about the internet or computers and
they sure weren't willing to sit down and learn how to
install (or read the docs) a free shopping cart.. They
knew all they needed to know about computers because they
had all, at one time or another, had a computer key board
in their hands and from that point on they were computer
experts. One local club had a non profit donate some
computers and an internet connection and the civic
leaders had a computer committee where they elected a
bookkeeper as the head of the committee because she was a
devout computer expert, knowing how to use quick books
and all. Couldn't save a Word document as html though.
Why put the power of computing in the hands of the
people? Give them complete control over their shopping
cart. But even a cart as simple as using an applet with
parameters killed the concept. Instead everybody flocked
to EBay where the get rich quick stories, i.e. the new
gold rush, had endowed a new set of experts who knew how
to submit their credit card numbers to eBay for billing.
Nobody sold anything, but they knew how to pay eBay for
their listings. My cart was free.
So getting back to it, now the applet tag has been
deprecated. Actually, I think it was deprecated with
hmtl 2.0 or something, and now were actually going to see
it deleted from html 5.0, so it's time, or rather the
last chance, to convert your applet tags to object tags,
except there's one thing, YOU HAVE TO USE OBJECT AND
EMBED TAGS. So now a simple applet with three lines
becomes an object with fourteen lines and some of those
lines have some pretty scary attributes the public will
never take time to figure out. So what was once simple,
and could empower the public with control of their own
online businesses, has become complex and put control of
free speech, free enterprise and the internet back into
the hands of corporate oligarchies. But Hey! An object
sounds cooler doesn't it?
