> - and not only does it not generate any income it cost a lot of money in > development costs (IMO MSIE is better then NS today, though with revision > 5, NS4 looks more like MSIE) As previously stated: IE3 is compatible with NS2, as far as JavaScript goes. As far as cross-platform capabilities go, IE is sadly lacking. But IE does support VBScript and a bunch of other things that NS is lacking. IMHO, even though it's not free, NS is better. I'll leave it at that, lest we start arguing about the wrong thing. > one point against Java (IMO) is that if I have something that runs the > same > both > on my NC and my mainframe - then i think I can safely assume I won't be > useing the whole power of my mainframe. If I start to build more > functionality into the version that runs on the more poweful machines , I > loose the other side of Java the crossplatfom capabilities One point of Java is that it is a complete implementation, regardless the platform. This means that the Java app on your NC should run _exactly_ the same as the Java app on your mainframe, perhaps just a bit faster. I've seen NS for the AS/400, BTW. It's not pretty! <g> Similarly, IE for the Timex DataLink Watch leaves a lot to be desired <g>