1997: Discontinuous Yet Related
By Michael Floyd
Estimates of the number of HTML pages on the "public" Web as of January '97 were placed at about 80 million. At this same time, there were roughly one million Web-site names in common usage and 450,000 unique host machines. In June 1993, there were 130 Web sites.
Sun applied this past March to the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee to become a recognized Publicly Available Specification submitter for its Java technologies. In October, Sun sued Microsoft contending that the Redmond-based company breached its contract when it shipped Internet Explorer 4.0 without two key components of the JDK 1.1: the Java Native Interface (JNI); and Remote Method Invocation (RMI). At PC Expo this past June, Web Techniques and Web Review awarded the Editor's Choice for best "Java Tool" to Symantec for its Visual Cafı Pro.
As measured by the number of bytes, the typical Web site was 20 percent text and 80 percent images, sound, and executables. The average HTML page was 5KB in size. The typical GIF image was 12 KB. The editor's choice for the best HTML authoring tool was presented to Microsoft for FrontPage 97. NetObjects Fusion 2.0 received honors for best site-design tool.
Apple acquired NeXT computer, fired CEO Gil Amelio, and appointed Steve Jobs interim CEO. Microsoft handed Apple $150 million in an alliance that allows the two companies to cross-license their technologies. According to the U.S. Patent Office, Apple has registered 754 patents. Microsoft has 328 patents.<>
