A rejection of the whole Netscape population should earn a lifetime ban from the Webmaster profession.Why Tesco chose to lose more than half of its online audience by forcing use of a single browser is a mystery to me, but I guess it may have been related to the fact that the company which created the site had an extremely close relationship with Microsoft. That, for practical purposes, means that IE4.0 will be the default browser for a Windows 95 user, even if your heart lies with Netscape.
As if that were not enough, Microsoft has rounded up 250 media companies, including Disney, Discovery Channel and the Wall Street Journal, to provide content for IE4.0’s “channels”. Both of these technologies are required to use the Internet Superstore.” So much for customer service.I have personally fired Webmasters who designed sites that were invisible to just 10 per cent of users, as they required too high a version of a browser. We know a bit about their “signing up” procedure on this side of the pond. It involves, if not direct payment, substantial contributions to “promotional alliances” and to marketing budgets of content partners in exchange for – yes, you guessed it – a commitment to using the proprietary solutions of Microsoft technology.One local example is Tesco and its use of ActiveX on its electronic commerce site.

I nearly fell off my ergonomically designed chair when, upon entering the shopping area on Tesco’s site, I was welcomed with: “We have detected that the browser you are using does not support either ActiveX controls or VBScript. How? Well, by blending the Internet browser and the Windows operating system together. Yes, the Dark Force is back in town, to bring a new level of atrocity to the browser wars. Darth Vader (Bill Gates to you and me) wheeled out the heavy intergalactic artillery for last week’s launch of Internet Explorer 4.0 beta.

As usual, Microsoft is using muscles instead of brains by leveraging its near monopoly in the computer industry to its own advantage in the Internet market. At the very least, that the extraordinary complaints of a misguided but powerful religious group initiates a criminal investigation some 18 months long points to a certain lack of common sense. When a hypertext link on a Web page leads to the police knocking at the door, it is shocking, and suggests an unsophisticated, undiscerning legislature. The Internet allows for a degree of democratisation within publishing and broadcasting, potentially taking the regulation of information from the hands of the few.

But in turn, is everyone and anyone to be made vulnerable to the gross distortion of their responsible Internet activity? And will people in power be left with an easy means with which to cause anguish, as and when they choose?Finally, if this new medium is to offer even a small part of its liberal promise, it must rise above the politics of the salacious. The police had submitted a final report in April, 16 months after the original complaint. Another two months later, the CPS concluded that there was nothing to go on. I finally heard from the police myself just at the end of last week. The threat of prosecution had been lifted after 18 months.But the story is not ended quite here, for it raises a number of important questions. In the first instance, how much public money has been spent pursuing an absurd case? And what were the reasons for so drawn-out and thorough an investigation? Further causes for concern also open up. But still no official noises came from the police or the Crown Prosecution Service.My MP, Glenda Jackson, became involved in January of this year.

She wrote to Dame Barbara Mills, the Director of Public Prosecutions, on my behalf, asking what was taking so long. We heard in reply that the police investigation was not yet concluded, though it might be “in the near future”.Six months later she wrote again And at last an end came into sight. LGCM was celebrating its 20th birthday with a festival at Southwark Cathedral Reform was not happy. Philip Hacking, the chair of the group, wrote to Sir Nicholas Lyell, then Attorney General, claiming, “We ourselves are also now being asked why nothing has been done by the secular authorities over what is perceived as a criminal matter,” and demanded knowledge of action being planned by Sir Nicholas, claiming that the poem had been “republished”.