By Peggy Watt
Network World, 5/25/98

They started life nice and trim, neat little packages tailored to provide only the most basic Internet access and communications functions. But my how browsers have grown.

Like a Weight Watchers flunkie with a penchant for peppermint patties, Netscape Communications Corp. and Microsoft Corp. just can't seem to stop loading their browsers with little goodies - a bewildering array of features, add-on options, HTML extensions, plug-ins and helper applications. The more bloated browsers get, the more we've got to ask the question: Are we squandering the browser advantage?

Microsoft and Netscape each answer with a resounding "No." These browser bastions think they've only just tapped the surface of the browser's potential and that IT managers have yet to fully experience the software's advantage.

Each company positions its browser as the gateway to all data, whether it's on the desktop, the enterprise or the Internet. Microsoft plans to integrate Internet Explorer into Windows 98, which is due out this summer. And Netscape built a wealth of enterprise applications and utilities into its next-generation Communicator, turning it into a client environment that includes a browser.

The frequency of the major browser updates makes the situation more dramatic - Netscape and Microsoft have gone from zero to 5.X releases in just over three years. The more they add, the more they diverge. Microsoft favors its ActiveX technology, for example, and each has its own implementation of Java and broadcast technology. The products - and the challenges to IT managers - just keep growing, especially as companies extend their intranet to customers and other business partners.

Collision on the extranet

VW has adopted Navigator 4.0 for intranet access and uses Java, custom MIME types and other Navigator-specific functions. But company Web developers are reluctant to use these same functions on the extranet because some VW partners run Internet Explorer, not Navigator.

"Now what? Do we require all our dealers to use Netscape browsers, or do we change our design, or do we try to support both and treat the extranet like the Internet?'' asks Dan Goussy, IT manager at VW. For the foreseeable future, VW is taking the latter approach.

Goussy's peers at Chrysler Corp. have confined most of their customization to the server, but require visiting browsers to support Java. Chrysler is counting on Java being widely used and its implementation being generic enough to duck any browser peculiarities, says John Kay, electronic commerce manager at the car maker, also in Auburn Hills.

Another intranet project manager, Ricardo Cole of Informix Software, Inc., in Menlo Park, Calif., struggled with a number of minor but annoying browser incompatibilities because of differences in how Navigator and Internet Explorer handle HTML code. On the intranet, Informix developers are free to experiment with the latest and greatest features, such as Java, dynamic HTML and cascading style sheets, because the company has standardized on Navigator 4.04. Internet Explorer also supports these features, but differently enough that Cole discourages extensive use on Web pages accessed by company outsiders.

Honeywell, Inc. Project Manager Wayne Thayer says he has compromised the richness of the intranet environment by having to support both browsers. In particular, he struggles with deviations between Netscape's JavaScript and Microsoft's JScript. About two-thirds of the users at Phoenix-based Honeywell run a version of Navigator; the rest use Internet Explorer 3.X.

"You can't test everything,'' Thayer says. "And you can develop a much richer environment if you have homogeneity on the desktop.''

Enough's enough

After some recent evaluation, Symbol is standardizing on Navigator 3.02, choosing other than the very latest browser version because its functions serve users' needs without overloading them with features.

Navigator's successor Communicator is overkill at this point, agrees Forrest Jerome, director of technology information systems at Colgate-Palmolive Co., in Piscataway, N.J. The company uses Lotus Development Corp. Notes groupware software and is migrating to the Lotus Domino Web offerings, but will stick with its early choice of Navigator.

Intranet managers can assert a browser mandate, but users often clamor for updates nonetheless. Some users even shun policy and download the latest versions without IT's knowledge. So it is a rare and fortunate corporate IT department that does not expect to support a potpourri of browsers.

Digital Equipment Corp., whose users started browsing its intranet with Mosaic in 1994, takes that expectation to the extreme. Digital is so committed to supporting a variety of browser capabilities that its Web page designers produce every intranet page in four versions: Java, Java with tables, text-only and non-table pages, says Kathleen Warner, director of Digital's Internet/Intranet Deployment Office.

Creating redundant Web pages causes extra work, but Digital stands by its procedure. Developers rely heavily on templates to smooth duplicate development, and IT is implementing page sensing so browsers will automatically call up the appropriate version. Until then, a pop-up box asks users which page version they want.

"Corporate IS strategy is to have all systems Web-enabled and have the browser be the access tool of the desktop,'' Warner says.

That's got to make Microsoft and Netscape happy. It's what they've been preparing for.

Netscape introduced Navigator 1.0 in December 1994, suggesting users run at least a 386sx system with 8M bytes of RAM and 6M bytes of hard disk space. A brochure boasted "everything you need for Internet access,'' including full e- mail capabilities, a newsgroup reader and MIME support, along with "an easy and intuitive interface.''

In August 1995, Microsoft at the last minute bundled Internet Explorer with Windows 95 instead of shipping it a few months later in a Plus Pack as scheduled. Its Internet Explorer recommendations echoed the operating system: a 486 processor, 8M bytes of RAM and 35M bytes of hard disk drive space. Each update has boosted system requirements along with refining and adding features. In the 2.0 releases came new security functions, frames, advanced HTML and scripting support. But with each vendor's 3.0 release, the browsers gained weight of applications, primarily multimedia players and broadcasting channel capabilities.

With Navigator 3.0's June 1996 release, Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale noted, "We don't call it a browser anymore. Browsing is only one of the many capabilities of this client software.'' The comment gets truer with each upgrade. Upon shipping Communicator in June 1997, Netscape relegated the browser to one of many applications, including groupware and conferencing utilities, a calendar, editing tools and e- mail.

As they bulk up their browsers, Microsoft and Netscape also keep light editions. Navigator 4.02, equivalent to the browsing functions in Communicator, is available as a stand- alone program. It requires 15M bytes of hard disk space, half of the capacity needed for Communicator but more than twice that of the original.

Microsoft offers several versions of Internet Explorer 4.0. The full release, which includes NetMeeting and FrontPage, consumes 25M to 60M bytes of hard disk space, depending on the options selected; the standard version, which provides the browser and the e-mail client Outlook Express, takes up 16M bytes; and the browser only is 13M bytes.

Internet Explorer 4.0, with its slew of applications, is essentially the product Microsoft built into Windows 98, says Craig Beilinson, an Internet Explorer product manager at the software giant. Microsoft will continue to develop and release Internet Explorer singly and for other platforms even after it integrates the browser into Windows 98, he adds. Integrating the browser with the operating system will not necessarily boost the Windows footprint. "We have a lot of shared code libraries,'' Beilinson says. "That will continue with Windows 98. Internet Explorer is leveraging a great number of system files that are built into the operating system, and third- party functions can use them as well.''

Users with high-end systems will have another option in Windows 98. Microsoft is working on a multimedia Web browser, code-named Chrome, designed to support 3-D animation and sound.

For its part, Netscape expects corporate customers to integrate Communicator with enterprise applications. "They want to deploy Communicator into their own information systems, taking advantage of its e-mail and other intranet document-sharing functions,'' says Michael LaGuardia, a Communicator product manager.

Done deal

"Internet Explorer 4 makes the assumption that you use the Internet or intranet as part of your desktop,'' Fenik says. "Microsoft is trying to eliminate the discrete barriers between commands like HTTP, FTP and File Open.''

Users do have a few options if they don't like this approach. Still available are a handful of simpler browsers. Among the best known are the text-based Unix browser Lynx, a product of the University of Kansas maintained by the Internet community, and a browser marketed by the Norwegian firm Opera Software A/S.

And one other frequently mentioned potential solution is network computers or other thin clients that run streamlined browsers and put the computing burden on the server.

"It's expensive to keep a PC on everybody's desk, so the future of the smaller network boxes is interesting,'' says John Minteer, system integration manager at Cubic Corp., in San Diego.

Minteer is keeping an eye on such devices, but is in no hurry to invest in new hardware shortly after buying dozens of PCs. The lure? "The vendors will have to sell these on the lower cost of ownership, reliability and performance,'' he says. Another variation is letting the server do more of the work, as Chrysler does.

"Why ruin the simplicity of the browser with Java applets or ActiveX?'' asks John Telford, principal at Infomax Consulting, Inc., in Portland, Ore. "Don't send me junk food, send me pure HTML.'' Keep the browser simple, and run the complicated and hefty code on the server, he says.

"We can squander the browser opportunity in the static world,'' says Richard Tanler, chairman of Information Advantage, a business analysis software company in Minneapolis.

"This is not about providing Excel in the browser, it's about providing the content with the Excel logic. That means we have to keep as much out of the browser as possible and keep all processing on the server,'' he says.

Microsoft, it seems, is taking criticisms of browser bloat to heart. It is looking into configuring a browser with a small footprint that could dynamically load features it needs as it hits particular Web pages, Beilinson says.

It's a delicate line to walk between size and performance. Many IT staffs are eager to take advantage of the broad range of new functions, from multimedia to modular programming, but most are still trying to figure out whether bigger really means better.