The war of the desktop Web browsers has focused all attention on two Goliaths: pioneer Netscape Communications Corp., with its Navigator software, struggling against enormous odds to stave off software giant Microsoft Corp. and its Internet Explorer. Great story, good read; but that was yesterday's news. Today, there's a quieter, more subtle struggle just beginning, mostly out of view, among a bevy of Davids: the competition in alternative Web browsers, often designed to link the Web to devices other than desktop computers.

As the Internet becomes pervasive, it seems that just about every electronic device is about to become Web-enabled: telephones, televisions, set-top boxes, kiosks, personal digital assistants and more. What most of these gadgets have in common is that they are small, lightweight and portable; and, for the most part, they all require a simple interface.

Therein lies both the problem and the opportunity. Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer are too big, too cumbersome and too rigid to work within the small memory budget of most of these devices. That opens the door for someone other than the big boys to make a market there.

For companies eyeing a variety of Web-enabled device markets, a slimmed-down browser is essential. The average configuration for Navigator or Internet Explorer requires a hefty 8 Mbytes of memory and another 8 Mbytes or more of hard-disk storage, depending on how many third-party plug-ins users download and install. So much for "thin" Internet clients.

When it came time to choose browser software for its NetVision family of Web-enabled set-top boxes, "size was definitely a factor," says Jeff George, product manager for Welcome to the Future Inc., a Columbia, Md., startup building set-tops for Internet and cable-TV networks. The company spurned Netscape and Microsoft in favor of QNX Software Systems Ltd., the Kanata, Ont., developer of real-time, embedded system software, which is bundling a small-footprint browser from Spyglass Inc. of Napierville, Ill.

"The standard PC browser today requires 16 Mbytes of memory and storage," George says, requirements that are way too heavy for consumer-electronics devices such as set-top boxes. In order to find a viable consumer market, he says, Welcome to the Future needs to sell its box for $300 or less. At most, says George, they could afford 4 Mbytes of memory and storage-one-fourth of what the standard Web browser requires.

Other Web-enabled devices need even smaller memory footprints. PlanetWeb Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., startup, is developing specialized browser software for consumer-electronics devices that runs in only 420 kbytes of memory. "We're all videogame guys," explains Ken Soohoo, vice president of engineering and chief technology officer of PlanetWeb. "We are used to writing small, tight code."

PlanetWeb has so far attracted two OEMs, both drawn by its browser's compactness. Videogame giant Sega has embedded the PlanetWeb browser in an Internet add-on for its Saturn games console, the Sega Saturn NetLink. A second OEM that Soohoo declines to name is using the browser as the interface for an upcoming Web-enabled telephone that should carry a list price of no more than $499.

Depending on the OEM's individual needs, an ideal browser should be able to scale from a minimum-function, ultrathin client with a footprint of 1 Mbyte or less up to a more functional, 4-Mbyte browser with lots of bells and whistles. But that's easier said than done, says Amy Pearl, engineering manager for the HotJava Web browser at Sun Microsystems Inc.'s JavaSoft business unit, based in Cupertino, Calif. "Many OEMs are looking for browsers that can scale," says Pearl. "It's easy to scale up, but it's more difficult to scale down."

Compactness is only one side of the size question in choosing a browser, says Carol Amos, product marketing manager for HotJava. OEMs are also looking closely at two other factors, she says: the ability to customize the browser, especially the user interface, and the availability of development tools to do it with.

More OEMs are looking to tailor the look and feel of the user interface than its protocols, says Amos. "Each application is going to have its own look," she says. "Developers like the ability to configure the browser interface."

The needs of someone developing, say, an information kiosk will vary greatly from those of someone developing a Web-enabled television, Amos says, and those two products will have different look-and-feel requirements than, say, a network computer. Developers need tools to build and customize this new generation of Web-enabled devices, she contends, and with so many tool vendors now embracing the Java language, that's a big plus for HotJava.

Sometimes the need for customization is not so much in the user interface as in the network interface. Welcome to the Future had some special requirements in this area that a standard Web browser couldn't fulfill. Because its set-top boxes are intended to provide both cable-TV signals and interactive Internet access, they wouldn't operate correctly using only the Internet's Transmission Control Protocol and Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP) over a telephone line. Instead, the company opted to use the television industry's vertical blanking interval to receive signals and radio frequencies to send them out. "IP is dependent on broadcasting through a single channel," says the company's Jeff George.

The alternative browsers come from an array of suppliers, big and small, each focused on a unique opportunity. Besides Sun, Spyglass and PlanetWeb, database giant Oracle Corp., based in Redwood Shores, Calif., and relatively tiny Opera Software, based in Kjeller, Norway, are both supplying Web browsers.

Oracle's Java-based PowerBrowser is a full-fledged browser aimed at the corporate market. It isn't intended for applications that require a lot of customization or changes in the interface; its main target audience is users of Oracle's Web Server and other Web-enabled products.

Sun, by contrast, is promoting its HotJava browser to a broad range of developers. Sun's JavaSoft unit claims two announced OEMs: sister company Sun Microsystems Computer Corp., which makes the JavaStation network computer; and IBM, which has promised to offer both the HotJava browser and JavaOS operating system as an option on its line of Network Station network computers.

JavaSoft's Amos contends the HotJava browser can scale down to as little as 1 Mbyte or up to four or so. The current implementation for the JavaStation occupies 4 Mbytes when coupled with the optional JavaOS.

Spyglass, which also supplied the base technology to Microsoft for its Internet Explorer, appears to have put in the most effort at building a business in the low-end alternative browser market. Randy Littleson, vice president of marketing, says Spyglass is pitching the portability, customability and componentized nature of its browser.

The company also offers engineering services under which Spyglass's own software teams will design and develop a custom browser. Thus far, its message appears to have found a welcome among real-time, embedded OS companies. Canada's QNX Software, along with Lynx Software Systems Inc., based in San Jose, Calif., and Microware Corp., based in Des Moines, Iowa, have all signed on as OEMs and resellers of Spyglass's browser software and development tools.

Customization is also the strong suit of AllPen Software Inc., a Los Gatos, Calif., company that builds custom software for a variety of handheld PCs and PDAs. To date, most of its customers have been end-user organizations needing specialty software for health care, sales-force automation, public utilities and other vertical markets. Most recently, AllPen signed an agreement with Apple Computer Inc., which now uses AllPen's NetHopper Web-browser software in the newest version of the Newton MessagePad PDA.

Norway's Opera Software, by contrast, is one of the few alternative browser vendors making a run at the desktop. Its Opera browser supports multiple languages, has a smaller memory footprint than its big-time competitors, displays multiple on-screen windows and sports a zooming feature. It also has an optional keyboard interface, customizable buttons and other features that users can tailor to suit their needs.

The new market for alternative browsers in Internet appliances has yet to appear in the so-called Browser Census, a widely regarded market barometer of corporate desktop-browser usage and preferences put together by Zona Research Corp., a Redwood City, Calif., market-research firm. But that may change this year, says Greg Blatnick, a vice president at Zona. Blatnick says it became evident late last year that a market for alternative browsers was just beginning to emerge for a new class of Web-enabled consumer-electronics devices. Pursuing alternative market spaces is a reasonable strategy for vendors that haven't made it in the mainstream desktop market, he adds.

Prosperity for all?

Of course, not all of these alternative browser vendors will be able to survive. "There will be room for one or more companies to be successful in this space," says Blatnick. Developers should choose carefully, he cautions, because the alternative market won't have room for all the companies crowding into it.

The browser vendors with staying power, he suggests, will be those with deep pockets, such as Navio Communications Corp., an "affiliate" of Netscape. Indeed, the twin giants, Microsoft and Netscape, haven't ignored this market altogether and are poised to gobble it up if it grows large enough.

Netscape, based in Mountain View, Calif., formed Navio last year as an affiliate company in which it holds a majority equity position. Navio is aimed at supplying browsers for non-PC systems, such as its unreleased Navio NC Navigator browser for network computers. Ironically, the August coming-out party for Navio was attended by a variety of backers-including companies such as Sun, Oracle and Sega-that have commitments to other browser technologies.

Navio recently disclosed that one of its OEMs is Zenith Electronics Corp., based in Glenview, Ill., the last domestic television manufacturer in the United States. Zenith plans to incorporate Navio's browser technology in a forthcoming Internet TV offering. Navio has also signed agreements to power network computers, including Sun Microsystems' JavaStation and the NetStation from Tektronix Inc., the Beaverton, Ore., instrument maker. Both will carry custom versions of its slimmed-down Navigator-based browser.

For its part, Microsoft is offering the Pocket Explorer, a svelte version of its Internet Explorer aimed at low-end handheld computers, as part of its Windows CE operating system. Unlike other vendors, the Redmond, Wash., company is not selling Pocket Explorer on its own but only bundles the minibrowser into Windows CE.

Blatnick says Microsoft could become a strong presence in the low-end or alternative browser market if it can overcome a historical weak spot. Where Microsoft thrives in a mass market of homogeneous commodities, the alternative browser arena demands customization and products tailored for unique niches. To compete in the low end, Blatnick says, OEMs want more than a "lite" version of the Windows OS and a Pocket Explorer, a need that goes directly against Microsoft's desire for large, uniform markets that require no customization.

Still, there's reason to fear the giants of the desktop may come to dominate this new market in the end. After all, they have gobbled other browser spin- offs before. It once seemed likely that a whole class of high-end browsers might emerge to offer 3-D Web experiences using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) standard, currently in its 2.0 release. But increasingly, the two big guns-Navigator and Internet Explorer-appear to be sucking these features into their products to support what seems, in the near term, like a niche.

InterVista Software Inc. and Black Sun Interactive Corp., both based in San Francisco, were among several companies that introduced full-fledged 3-D standalone Web browsers based on VRML not too long ago. They were trying to cash in on an emerging market for Web-based virtual-reality tours, chat rooms inhabited by lifelike characters, architectural and engineering walk throughs and product demos. Now, however, these same vendors have retreated from full- scale VRML browsers in favor of plug-ins.

InterVista, for example, came out with its VRML-based Worldview 1.0 browser in 1995. By the time the Worldview 2.0 release arrived last year, it had been transformed into a plug-in for Navigator and Internet Explorer. The same is true of Black Sun Interactive's CyberHub Client VRML browser, recently renamed Passport. Although Passport 2.0 is still available as a standalone VRML browser, Black Sun today is mainly pitching it as a plug-in for Navigator and Explorer, according to Konstantin Guericke, vice president of marketing.

Even with the scaled-down products, the market's ranks are thinning. In fact, two of the bigger names in VRML browsers, Silicon Graphics Inc. and Netscape, have agreed to merge their 3-D VRML browser technologies-Cosmo Player and 3DLive, respectively-into a single product and code base. The resulting merged VRML plug-in will appear with Netscape's release of its Communicator product, also known as Navigator 4.0, later this year.

For its part, InterVista has just signed an OEM agreement with Microsoft, which intends to offer the Worldview 2.0 plug-in as a standard component of the next release of Internet Explorer, IE 4.0. The VRML plug-in will be known as Virtual Explorer and is expected to be integrated into the Memphis version of Windows currently slated for an early 1998 release.

Blatnick says Zona Research has always viewed VRML browsers as something of a novelty with little impact on the mainstream browser market. Indeed, the market for VRML browsers has been so small thus far that none of the major research companies has ever tracked or sized it.

Barbara Tallent, vice president of sales and marketing at InterVista, begs to differ. "VRML is not a niche," she says. "It is the wave of the future and how people will interact on the Web in the future." The fact that Microsoft is building her company's VRML technology into its next rev of Explorer is proof that the technology will go mainstream, she says, even though it will not live on as a separate product.

Source: OEM Magazine