Why has the Web been so successful?
In order to understand the HCI issues of the Web, first you have to understand
the nature of the Web itself. Key to understanding the nature of the Web is to
understand why it has been so successful in such a short period of time.
- Geographic universality (URL)
- Single conceptual space (URL)
- Uniform look (similar browsers)
- Simple user interface (hypertext)
- Rich enough content
- Leveraged existing documents (ftp, gopher, etc)
- Communicationally light (http)
- Free software
- Immediacy (access, gratification, retraction)
- Cross-platform
- Open (on many fronts)
- Weak initial platform, easily extendable
- Easy, wide-ranging publication
- Human intermediaries to filter information
- Some multi-lingual features (å)
- Good timing wrt Internet and Intranet maturity
- People ready for it mentally
Then as a followup, we discussed
why Xanadu, HyperCard and Notes have not been as successful:
- Xanadu
- Based on a royalty model. Was not evolutionary (it had to scale
to infininty from day 1).
- HyperCard
- Closed, limited to one platform. No leveraging of existing work,
everything had to re-built from scratch for HyperCard.
- Notes
- Not clearly solving a problem. Expensive from a management point
of view. Multi-platform but not completely cross-platform. Single
vendor.
instone@acm.org / 96-05-07