 | ||
|
| ||
| ||
|
| ||
Eileen Duncan
Technical Editor
Microsoft Corporation
Updated: October 13, 1997
The following article was originally published in Site Builder Magazine (now known as MSDN Online Voices).
Editor's note: At the Seybold San Francisco 97 
conference -- a gathering for Web and print-based publishers held September 29-October 3 -- you could opt to hear software-industry titans like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and John Warnock hold forth. Or you could schmooze with Hewlett-Packard's rowdy robot. MSDN correspondent Eileen Duncan did both, and sent us these observations.
The last time I was in San Francisco, I did not work for Microsoft. I worked in print advertising, and had brought along a prized, plastic Fred Flintstone doll, which I had kidnapped from a venerable colleague.
Fred's previous tribulations, such as being force-fed marshmallow chickies, were many, and were followed with a fervor by most of the advertising department. But on the occasion of his escape to San Francisco -- in the company of a Barbie-doll acquaintance -- Fred had a heck of a good time. The proof's in the photos: Fred and Barbie kissing in a cafe, with Alcatraz in the background. Fred and Barbie roaming Golden Gate Park. Hanging out at bead shops in the Haight-Ashbury district, still smiling those plastoid smiles. As my friend Patty and I set up the scenarios and photographed them, passersby would grin and say, "Cool!"
I really like this town.
Whether the target audience consists of one or millions, a publisher's top concern is communicating effectively with that audience. During this visit to San Francisco, I was hoping to hear about anything that my team could use to make site maintenance and revisions easier. I also met people who had built their first Web pages and were looking for direction on where to take their sites and how to manage them. We shared excitement over new possibilities, mixed with concern over how to best use the online medium.
The organizers of Seybold know what's on publishers' minds. In his Visions Keynote, John Warnock of Adobe described how desktop publishing revolutionized the publishing process, and thus the industry. Now -- just over a decade later -- the publishing process is again going through a transformation. But, as a graphic designer pointed out after this presentation, "Even if I use PDF files to store my designs, I still feel that I need to do separate designs for print and online to use the capabilities of each well."
John Gage of Sun Microsystems cited Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Extensible Style Language (XSL) as examples of software companies coming together on standards that would be beneficial to publishers. He summarized the concerns of Web publishers as, "We need to get work done." In an era of such change, standards seem a safe way to go.
My interest piqued, I attended the XML session. Jean Paoli of Microsoft showed how to customize tag names to help with queries and revisions. You can use the tags that are defined industry-wide, or company-customized tags, all on the same Web page. Alan Karben demonstrated Wall Street Journal Interactive's XML-capable tagging system. Their tags have names like "headline," "summary," "sidebar," and so forth, and are defined in a central location. If you need to change an editorial element, simply change the spec at its central location. A small number of templates handle their articles. The Wall Street Journal Interactive site is currently live. Can something so easy to learn and use be true?
The need for cross-platform standards came up in almost every session I attended Wednesday. In the Webcasting seminar, the speaker from RealNetworks stated that the emergence of platforms and standards for streaming 
were among the top things necessary for Webcasting to progress.
Bill Gates (above) pointed out in his keynote that for Internet publishers, standards will deliver content across a broad set of users, and will make the Web more pervasively useful. An XML demo showed what you can do without making your audience sit through a server hit: sort data to obtain the view a user wants, link data from different sources, and update only specific portions of data the user selects. As someone who builds, maintains, and updates a large number of pages, and doesn't want any hassle getting things done, I see instant and long-term benefits to using XML.
I found the DaveNet Live evening session a refreshing change of pace from a day of serious, formal seminars. Dave Winer assembled executives from Microsoft and Netscape, as well as Gil Amelio, and moderated some dynamic conversation. The main subjects were privacy and e-mail encryption, Java, and the Macintosh. I like Winer's approach because he can think like an end user, yet knows enough technically to ask the right questions of technical people and really pin them down.
The Expo was a brilliant, pulsating plethora of information and hands-on experiences, in concentrated form. But tradeshows always remind me of Chuck E. Cheese stores. As I walked the aisles, sophisticated printers spewed glossy, poster-sized images. Every few steps brought another theater presentation. In between were rows and rows of computers at which you could sample the latest products and technologies.
There was even a clown. My favorite item, however, was the rolling Hewlett-Packard robot, whose degree of interactivity surprised and amused most people. "You're crowding me!" she exclaimed as one visitor peered closely at her. I experienced a perverse wish that my vacuum cleaner could be as entertaining and self-propelled.
Inspired, I'm heading home with loads of information (although I'm nervous that when the good managers of MSDN Online read this, I'll no longer have access to their plastic toys). I am encouraged that as Web tools move more toward standards, production processes will be even further streamlined, leaving everyone in publishing more time to know their audience, to refine their publishing strategies, and even (gasp!) for being creative.
Eileen Duncan is an editor on the MSDN Online site. She is particularly close to the Microsoft Agent genie.
Much of the buzz at Seybold San Francisco 97 was about Extensible Markup Language (XML). A simplified subset of Standardized General Markup Language, XML provides a uniform format for describing different types of data -- a crucial area in which HTML is very limited.
MSDN Online explains XML in Robert Carter's feature story Elementary XML, and has a comprehensive page full of links to more information in the XML section.
Microsoft is one of a trio of software makers to jointly submit a spec to the W3C for an XML Stylesheet Language, dubbed XSL, which will add powerful formatting capabilities to Extensible Markup Language.
MSDN Online Web Workshop has dusted off, spruced up, and overhauled the Design area, with lots of new features on Web-design technologies, tools, color management, and typography. Plus an events calendar, and profiles of other creative pros.
One of our very own, MSDN Online Voices columnist Nadja Vol Ochs (left), was a featured speaker at Seybold San Francisco 97's Designers Online day. Nadja, who lectured on Dynamic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, is one of MSDN Online Voices's Site Lights columnists, exploring Web-design issues every month.
Did you find this material useful? Gripes? Compliments? Suggestions for other articles? Write us!
© 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of use.
Back to top