pc vs mac - Page 2

lurk · #9 February 8th, 2006, 01:52 PM

Just google for berners-lee nextstep and you will get lots of references.

texanpenguin · #10 February 8th, 2006, 11:20 PM

The main reason PCs are used so much in web-design is that, unlike print design and imaging/video work, web-pages are viewed again by people with computers, most of whom have PCs.

That is, a web-designer would have to be pretty careless not to test on (and build around the flaws of) Internet Explorer on Windows, since that's where most people will see the final product.

That having been said, I know a lot of people who do their web design work on Macs and do compatibility testing on the PC browsers (instead of the other way around), myself included.

zoranb · #11 February 9th, 2006, 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by texanpenguin

The main reason PCs are used so much in web-design is that, unlike print design and imaging/video work, web-pages are viewed again by people with computers, most of whom have PCs.

Excuse my ignorance but that doesnt sound like a good reason to me!

nixgeek · #12 February 9th, 2006, 09:59 AM

Sure, the reasoning shouldn't be this way, but that's the reality. The majority of people viewing your website will be users on Windows machines using IE. Of course, this is slowly changing in the direction of Firefox, but mostly on the PC. In truth, you really have to make your website is accessible to your end users no matter what they're using. Mind you, the rare person still browsing the web on an old 68K Mac running System 7.5 or even a PC user running Windows 3.x on a Pentium I might not be your priority, but definitely most end users will be running either a Mac OS X or Windows 2K/XP computer running either IE, Firefox/Netscape, Mozilla/SeaMonkey/Camino, or Opera. And you might even want to make sure it displays in the open source desktop enironments properly as well.

RacerX · #13 February 9th, 2006, 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdnky

Huh? You might want to double-check that.

in responce to nixgeek:

Heck, the first web page was designed on a NeXT cube!

The first web browser, which was also the first web HTML editor app (and it was WYSIWYG by the way), and the first web server were designed and built on a NeXT Cube running NEXTSTEP 2.0.

In the beginning the web (defined as hyper text transport protocol serving hyper text markup language documents) was only for NeXT computers. And the first web page can be found here... which was (again) made on a NeXT computer.

The first development version of WorldWideWeb.app was made in November 1990. First pages accessible via httpd by NeXT systems started by the end of 1990.

By March of 1991 ports to X11 and Motif had started (line mode browsers, April 1992 for HTML browsers). First port to Macintosh was in December 1992.

The basics of the hyper text markup client were quickly ported to X11, Motif and Macintosh based systems because these were the systems used by scientists, researchers and educators. But the first Windows client would have to wait until after NCSA started making Mosaic (June 1993 for development, first public release was in November 1993). This was due primarily to the fact that DOS/Windows systems were used mainly by secretaries, data entry and home users (none of which needed to be included on the web because it was originally for sharing research information).

The inclusion of Windows on the web marked a giant step backwards. Because of the limitations of DOS/Windows, web extension standards were changed. Before Windows was on the web most file extensions were not limited to three characters (for example html and jpeg were the original standard extensions), but because of the 8.3 limitation of DOS/Windows, the web file names took a step backwards until Microsoft was able to catch up with the rest of the computing world.

It should also be noted that Microsoft didn't even do the initial development of Internet Explorer. IE is based on Mosaic.

Hope that helps resolve things.

nixgeek · #14 February 9th, 2006, 06:24 PM

OK, I think we can close the thread now.

RacerX, I'm so glad that we have you here on MacOSX.com. Thanks for the wealth of information you always provide and can count on.

I learn more everytime you post here.

**fryke** · #15 February 9th, 2006, 06:35 PM

Well... Yeah, but it's not really an answer to the _original_ question.

I'd say that "web design" (not web development, the question was design...) at its very beginning wasn't really a design job for graphics designers. You simply _couldn't_ design much. The Mac-using graphics designers _I_ know of the early times had a problem with this. They wanted to replace as much of the pages they designed with pictures. But that was a problem for the web, which was very slow as soon as you had to load a lot of pix. (Well, it's still much better if you use text and code instead of images today, but with CSS etc. we have a lot more "designable" code.)

Before there were WYSIWIG HTML-editors, designing web pages often was a three step process. A designer (most probably on a Mac) desigend something in Photoshop and Illustrator/FreeHand. Then the webdesigner told the graphics designer to *NOT* base everything on 300 dpi but on 72 dpi. Then the graphics designer quit the contract. Just kidding. But I guess it's part of the truth. Designers had to adapt to the new medium or they would rather stay with print. Classic webdesign was more of a code/hack/design-appropriately-to-the-medium kind of job.

nixgeek · #16 February 9th, 2006, 06:39 PM

This is true. Now that I think about it, most web pages were done in raw HTML code using editors and such. Then you had the WYSIWYG editors like Claris HomePage which tried to but never really actually gave you the design you saw. Seems like web design went through a lot of growing pains during the 90s.