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The LangaLetter

A free email newsletter about
BrowserTune, Web HotSpots, and other offerings
from Fred Langa

Week of 11/09/97

Inside Scoop:
Last week, several top Microsoft Execs came by to give me an extraordinarily long-range peek at the "next two or three versions" of their premier (and dominant) application suite---Microsoft Office!

It's very unusual for Microsoft to talk about products more than 12-18 months out. But last week I got an extraordinary glimpse at what Office will be like out through 2002 or perhaps even 2004! There are seven themes or underlying ideas that run through all the next releases---six that involve huge clusters of features and functions, and one that involves a radical shift in philosophy that will be deeply disappointing to me if it plays out. Frankly, I hope it won't because if it does, it means we---you and I and tens of millions of other end-users of Microsoft products---just won't matter very much to Microsoft for at least the next several years.

See for yourself what features, functions and philosophies Microsoft will be sending your way for the next several years---it's all in my weekly online column at http://content.techweb.com/winmag//bbs/columns/. (The column goes up on Monday and stays up all week).

BTW, previous weekly discussions can still be accessed here.

Sneak Preview Only For LangaLetter Readers!
I need your opinion about a fairly radical look and feel change to a web site I do. Does it succeed---or does it blow chunks?

Frankly, I wasn't happy with the new look for HotSpots that rolled out a week ago, so over this weekend, I've made some major, major revisions. But the change is so radical, I'd like to ask your feedback before I go any further. First, please check out the look and feel of the standard HotSpots page here (http://content.techweb.com/winmag//flanga/hotspots.htm); and then try this link to the proposed new design (http://content.techweb.com/winmag//flanga/hotspots1.htm)

Please tell me what you think ( mailto:fred@langa.com ) !

Here's the background: The HotSpots page is on the WINDOWS Magazine web site, and is funded entirely by the WinMag editorial budget. WinMag's owner, CMP Media, recoups those expenses by selling ad banners which run in the "CMP look and feel" areas of all CMPnet pages. That's mostly a good thing---the WinMag editors get to do their thing without influence from the advertising folks, and you get pages that cost you nothing but a little of your attention to the ads (and, the advertisers' hope, some clicks).

But the problem is that with banner ads blinking and strobing in your face, and with a significant portion of the page reserved for "corporate look and feel," the real content of the page can get lost.

I think that happened to the current HotSpots design. The ads and corporate stuff dominated, and the editorial content---the HotSpot information---got lost in the sauce.

So, I've tried increasing the visual impact of the HotSpots logo with a design that I think is kinda cool---but that maybe goes too far. I've also changed the fonts and sizes of the rest of the page, trying to achieve a balance that lets the content hold its own against the ads.

Did it succeed---or not? I'll let LangaLetter/Langa.Com readers be the judges. Please let me know!

Pentium Bug!
The "Intel Secrets" site and CNet are both reporting that researchers have found a new bug that crashes Intel Pentium chips. Windows Magazine is on the story---meanwhile, check out the initial reports here: http://www.x86.org/

BrowserTune:
Using the new hardware I mentioned in last week's newsletter (see below), I now have two side-by-side setups: one running FrontPage98 and IE4 and one running Communicator. This way, I can build the next version of BrowserTune with absolute certainty that one browser/page-creation tool doesn't interfere with the other. The result should be BrowserTune pages you can run with either major browser to reveal exactly where they're same--and where they differ.

About That Hardware:
What can you get for $400? I got a bare-bones 200MHz AMD K6 system that looks very much like the kit machine I wrote about earlier. [See the story here (http:/www.winmag.com/flanga/k6.htm); the assembly info and photos are here (http://content.techweb.com/winmag//flanga/tiger/diy.htm) ] The new system uses the same oversized case, etc.

By the way---this new system isn't an evaluation unit. It was a standard end-user purchase, paid for out of my own pocket the same way you'd buy a system.

The only new thing I added to the system was 64MB of RAM; otherwise I populated it with various hardware I'd accumulated over the years---keyboards, drives, a network card, an old sound card, etc. The system works fine and is fast as heck---a fine second system and hardware testbed.

My only gripes are (1) the supplied drive cables are too short so it's hard to route the cables from the IDE connectors on the motherboard to the furthest drive bay; and (2) I got bad advice on memory selections from the order-taker. This was resolved with a second phone call, and wasn't a big deal, but it it was an annoyance. In all, I'm pretty happy with the system.

LangaLetter:
Everyone reading this version of the LangaLetter should have received both plain-text and an HTML attachment. There were only a handful of people who requested the just-text version; I'm sending them a version without attachments. If you need to change anything about your subscription, just check the text at the bottom of the page.

I don't know how long the newsletter growth can continue like this, but it's up about another 20% this week! Welcome (and thanks!) to all the new readers. And if you think a friend or coworker might be interested in the newsletter, why not forward this copy to them? They can sign up for free too!

Another Free Newsletter You Might Enjoy:
You may have seen Larry Magid's byline in your local paper---he's a nationally syndicated writer with a very large following. He also is a book author, and writes columns that appear on a number of print and online areas of CMPnet. Larry's personal web site is at http://www.larrysworld.com, and he also offers a free email newsletter you can subscribe to by sending email to mailto:subscribe@larrysworld.com. Check it out!

Langa.Com Factoid:
The LangaLetter goes out during the day on Sunday; I assumed the largest number of hits to Langa.Com would be Monday. But that's not the case. For reasons I cannot fathom, more people visit Langa.Com on Thursday than any other day. Thursday! Come on, 'fess up, you Langa.Com visitors--- why Thursday? 8-)

I also just received a specially-burned eval CD from Microsoft with the "golden code" of FrontPage98; the FP98 manuals are being printed now, and the software should be on sale next month. I'll start seriously experimenting with FP98 on Langa.Com ASAP---so far, the software looks very cool.

HotSpots:
Depending on your reaction to the proposed new redesign of HotSpots (see second item in this newsletter), there either will or won't be a new look this week. 8-) But the content will be the same no matter how it's presented.! This week's lineup:

Last week's rich lineup of HotSpots is available at: http://content.techweb.com/winmag//flanga/phs.htm . Some of you have asked for a better front-end to access those archived pages---I'm working work on that ASAP.

See you next week!

Fred
(fred@langa.com)

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