7) Is there any hope for Gopher, or will the Web and other resources make it (eventually) obsolete?

No hope for Gopher anymore, according to my opinion. Gopher menu structures and facilities can be provided by HTTP. The latest development ideas by the Gopher inventors, 3D objects and similar things, can easier be implemented using VRML or Java on the Web.

8) Electronic Commerce; significant numbers of Web users, especially in the US, buy goods and services through the Web. With the current state of data protection/encryption, would you feel comfortable in sending your credit card number to a company or service through your Web browser?

I wouldn't send my credit card number at the moment. The payment routines in VISA's and their competitors approaches, which will make the breakthrough during 1996, avoid the necessity to send real credit card numbers over the net. They seem to have developed pretty safe electronic transactions and they will take the risks on behalf of their customers.

The proposal of the Millicent protocol seems promising to me, in order to recover some of our costs as public sector information providers.

9) The frames feature, introduced by Netscape within their browser, allows the interface to be split into several quasi-independent windows. Some people have started to use this feature as a basis for presentations [someone at Boston did and it was surprisingly effective]. Newer versions of Netscape use it to good effect as the basis of the inbuilt Usenet reader. What are your feelings on this feature?

Very good feature, offering several "windows" inside one. Usable for comparing things, showing table of contents or help information together with other data in the same document window.

10) Web pages can be generally created by either (a) using software to convert from some other format e.g. RTF, to HTML (b) using a package such as HoTMetaL to automate/validate the construction or (c) hand, in a text editor and then validated by e.g. the Halsoft validation mechanism (mirrored at Hensa). Which method do you use, and why?

I use all the methods mentioned, depending on the original document, I am working with. When writing a completely new document, I prefer still a HTML add-on to emacs, my normal editor. HotMetal and similar editors for UNIX seemed to slow and not individually configuerable enough. When i work with existing files, I use conversion software like RTFtoHTML. When working under MS Windows I prefer to use a special editor like HTML Writer.

I try to avoid validation software, its to finicky and not "flexible" enough.

11) What would you like to see happen in the field of the World Wide Web in 1996?

Advances in scalable, distributed indexing.
Agreement on index data exchange format standard, at least in Europe and a closer cooperation in this area.
Adoption of an URN standard and establishment of URN-URL distributed resolver services, alternatively agreement on the PURL model (OCLC proposition).
Advances in cooperative software for usage on the Web.
HTML 3.0 should be adopted, and an embedding tag introduced in HTML.
Realtime video applications on the Web (cf. VOSAIC).
Comprehensive freeware authoring environment, easier SGML and PDF editing tools.
Dramatic increased involvement from Nordic and European libraries and cooperation on innovative applications and services.

I hope, not to be drowned in business, marketing and selling when the big electronic payment systems are released.

TRAUGOTT KOCH,
Electronic information services librarian
LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARY,
Development Department NetLab,
P.O. Box 3. S-221 00 Lund, Sweden

Tel: int+46 46 2229233 Fax: int+46 46 2223682 or 2224422
E-mail (Internet): traugott.koch@ub2.lu.se
URL:Traugott Koch,
Lund Univ. Electronic Library

Traugott Koch is also the author of 'Spotlight on BUBL' in the 'Features' section of this issue.

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