web portals - beyond the browser

[Richard Herz]

In case you haven't seen it, just ran across "Java Web Start", a web portal
concept very similar to that written in MetaCard at the Himalayan Academy,
which inspired my own experiments (links to all below).  "Web Start" is a
small window that lists available apps/applets on the web.  Open one and it
downloads from the web and runs, all independently of a web browser.  Simple
concept but especially valuable with MC stacks which can't run in a web page
like a java applet (but who cares - see Richard Gaskin's "Beyond the
Browser" link below).

Rich Herz
herz at ucsd.edu
www.ReactorLab.net

Java 2 (v. 1.4.0 and 1.4.1 beta)
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/index.html
Web Start is part of package and is shown in this page in graphic of Java 2
hierarchy (second layer from top on left)

Himalayan Academy site MC web portal
http://www.himalayanacademy.com/studyhall/

which inspired my experimental MC "web courses"
http://mechanics.ucsd.edu/research/herz/web_24/
(this took me a couple hours to get going in MC - wonder how many
progammer-hours and $$ it took Sun to do Web Start in Java?)

REBOL View, a similar idea
http://www.rebol.com/view-platforms.html

Richard Gaskin's article "Beyond the Browser"
http://www.fourthworld.com/embassy/articles/NetApps.html