Why?

"Eric Anderson tells why he wrote the Cyberdog Central web site"

(which is now being integrated into the Cyberdog.org web site)

I was recently asked why I would devote any time and energy into a website about a dead product. Was I in denial? Could I not handle the truth that not only this program, but also the underlying technology on which it was based have been shelved by the company that created it? Am I one of those poor saps who can't read the handwriting on the wall?

Well, I'd like to think not...

Okay, maybe I'm in the minority for using Cyberdog for my Internet needs. No problem. I'm used to being in the minority...I use a Mac. The thing is, this is a wonderful program. Not without the occasional wart, and requiring a little bit of learning, but a wonderful program nonetheless.

I check my mail first thing in the morning. Occasionally, some people will send me URLs of websites. No problem. I highlight them, and since I have a trackball button programmed as Command-K, one click and I'm there. I have a Notebook full of the sites I visit daily. I have a notebook for email addresses. I have a notebook of links to do with soccer. I can have notebooks of just about any configuration and content. I like that. I think it's great to have URLs, FTP sites, telnet connections, even other programs easily referenced from a Notebook. It works for me.

I like the mail client. Some may complain about lack of features. I do not. I have multiple email accounts, and CD checks them just fine. Either all together, or individually. I have filters set to move certain mail certain places. High volume mailing lists go into their own trays. Low volume lists show up in the Inbox in varying colors. Email from my advisor shows up in bright red. I can send mail out either in rich text or in plain text. I can make the decision about what to send from a list of letterheads. I can have letterheads for different accounts, for different audiences, for different seasons. Plus, it's always a kick to hear that I have new mail from someone, and I actually hear that person's name read aloud. It works for me.

HTML is a rapidly evolving (some would say devolving) standard. Cyberdog is no longer being updated. I can still access the overwhelming majority of sites that are out there. While there may be a segment of the web population insisting on layers, and style sheets, and pixel-level control of web pages, I think there's still a larger segment interested in sharing information. To do that requires, to an extent, writing to what can be read. If there is some information that absolutely, positively cannot be communicated except by using layers on a webpage, that information may pass me by unless I use another browser. I'm not so stubborn that I will decline to use another browser to investigate a site, however. Cyberdog remains my choice for day to day web browsing because it is small, fast, elegant, integrated, and, of course, because it works for me.

I shuffle a fair number of files back and forth using ftp. Cyberdog's ftp implementation lacks a couple of key niceties, like being able to resume an interrupted download. Luckily, this hasn't been a problem for me, and the times it has, Fetch has balked at the site, too. Again, though, accessing an ftp server using CD is as easy as double-clicking in most cases. I don't have to launch another application. It's elegant. And it works for me.

I'll confess to using another telnet client. CD's telnet client could use some work. I wish I were a gifted enough programmer to do something about it, because I sense that this could be made much better, given a couple of nice features, without turning it into a bloated warthog of a client. But, on a dedicated Ethernet connection, I have had few problems with actually using the telnet client. Even over a PPP connection, I generally use another client to play it safe, rather than out of frustration at a crash. So, I baby this part of CD. I wish I didn't have to, but I can live with it. Even when it doesn't work all that well for me.

Hopefully, you can see why I did this. I really like this program. It's one of the best programs I've ever seen. It gives me the same sort of feeling that I got when I first used a graphical web browser. The sense of "Wow!" that comes from seeing a great idea implemented in a slick manner.

Cyberdog isn't dead. It's alive and well and living (and thriving) on my Desktop. I've had days when it is the only program that I've used. Seriously. If I have something to change on a website, I go to the page, view document source (which pops up in a text editor), do the corrections, save it as a generic file, ftp it back to the original directory on the server. Count 'em... one program. Okay, so I'm not counting the web server or the ftp daemon on the UNIX box. Fine. But Cyberdog is the only program I launch...

And the only one I need to launch. Because it works for me.

Hopefully, it works for you, too. That's part of what these pages are about. Some of what is contained here is knowledge that was hard to come by, and only surfaced after several rounds of things not working. I don't want that to happen to people just trying out this technology, including a lot of people who will install it with OS8. I have seen Cyberdog converts come through the cyberdog.general newsgroup even as Apple was pulling the plug on the technology. I watched, saddened, as Dan Hughes shut down the Cyberdog Pound website. Now, about 3 months after those events, Apple is set to ship the final version of CD 2.0 with Mac OS8. I'd like to see that propitious event not be saddled with the depressing sound of new CD users uninstalling the program because of the learning curve involved.

Why am I doing this? Maybe it is just a charge at the windmills of the "Big Two" browsers and Apple's abandonment of OpenDoc and Cyberdog. But, I'm also a teacher, and being able to help people get a handle on Cyberdog would be deeply satisfying to me.

Thanks for reading this far.

Eric

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