by Arnold Kling
October, 1996
This is the fourth in a series of monthly essays on the business implications of Internet technology. Feedback on these essays is highly appreciated. The focus of the essays is on how technology can be applied in business. In addition, I like to think about the implications for the stock prices of companies such as Netscape. For an index of my occasional writing on Web technology and business, going back to July 1994, see Business and Economic Issues.
When a company starts to develop an Intranet, an issue that often comes up is that of document conversion. You typically produce documents using word processing software, such as Microsoft Word (TM). How do you get these documents onto the Intranet?
One approach that may come to mind is to have everyone ship documents to a central Webmaster, who then will convert the documents to HTML (the coding needed to make Web documents) and place them on the Intranet. (A variation on this would be to have the Webmaster use ActiveX controls to embed the Word documents into Web documents.)
Companies ought to consider taking the opposite approach: convert people, not documents. What this means is that people change from habitually using word processors to habitually writing Web documents.
How can people learn to write Web documents? There are three possibilities:
A reasonable estimate is that over 95% of Web content owes its origins to the "clone-and-edit" approach. It is the best proven method for generating Web documents.
This document is being prepared using a simple text editor. A previous document was cloned, and then text was added. By using an ordinary text editor, the author can see the HTML. I feel most comfortable if I have hands-on control of the HTML codes.
A better approach to "clone-and-edit" is offered by Netscape Navigator Gold. The idea there is you use the Navigator browser to get to a page you want to clone, then click on "edit," and proceed to edit the document in a WYSIWYG environment. You do not need to learn HTML.
To implement the "convert people, not documents" strategy, have your corporate Webmaster set up templates for memos, newsletters, presentations, and other documents on your Intranet. Then have everyone else use the "clone-and-edit" approach to develop documents as Web documents. This allows you to finesse the issue of converting documents from a word processor, because you never create such documents in the first place. Let your word processing software collect digital dust.
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