From about 4000-3000 BC, the ancient Sumerians, living in the cities Ur and Uruk in South Mesopotamia invented the cuneiform method of communication, this was initially pictographic, though a later form of stylisation called ideograms was added.

The ancient Egyptians made this form of communication somewhat easier when they used sharpened reeds as writing implements in conjunction with papyrus, a parchment made from Egyptian papyrus, a plant which thrived in the Nile valley.

The invention of the quill pen in the 5th century was augmented by John Mitchell of Birmingham's machine made steel nibs in 1828. Lazlo Biro of Hungary added the final embellishment to the hand held writing implement suite with the invention of the eponymous ball point in 1938.

Machine assisted presentation has also been around for many centuries, wood block printing originated in China in the 8th century whilst Johan Gutenberg (1398-1468) is credited with the introduction of movable type in printing. The first typewriter enabling the home user to print out neatly presented text was invented by Christopher Lathan Scholes in 1967 [49].

In more recent times, the production of lengthy articles of text has improved tenfold with the availability of microcomputers and word processing applications, one may write and then save and edit as required, no use of tippex or the necessity of having to re-write erroneous material. A personal investment in Microsoft Word 5.1 three years ago has more than paid for itself in time saved.

However, in the times that we live in, technology has gone from strength to strength and 'progress' has taken a more sinister twist. Every invention mentioned so far has been a tool which assists the user in their work, using Microsoft's latest version of Word in the office however, one finds that spelling mistakes become automatically underlined and even one's grammar is questioned. To be sure, these features can be disabled, but there lies the crux, the user has to do the active part in removing these clever but irritating features, it is as if Microsoft are secretly wanting you to do things their way.

As trivial as it all may sound, there is much written debate and comment about the steady encroachment of the mighty Microsoft corporation upon daily life, the 'Evil Empire' [50] are doing their best to make you go 'the way they want you to go today' [51a], [51b] . Whilst the preceding paragraphs have the intention of being tongue in cheek, the serious intention is to highlight the current battle for Internet supremacy. Perhaps one might 'ask the question why should I care who wins ?' In fact the answer is that the winner will in part influence the future direction of the way applications for the Internet and Intranets are developed.

There is already disquiet about the way that HTML is modified according to the browser vendor's bias [52], whilst this may cause the inconvenience of having your pages display differently on different browsers, the greater danger lies in the adaptation of one manufacturers browser extensions over another as being the standard.

As an example of the potential dangers of working with non-standard applications, the author worked heavily with Microsoft Front Page during the time spent at D2D as this particular application was chosen as the 'official' web-site development tool.

In order for Front Page to work properly, a number of 'extensions' need to reside on the server. Since these extensions work only with NT then one is locked into the purchase of NT as an operating system and a subtle reliance develops upon buying more Microsoft products.

The following communication should serve as a cautionary tale.

The whole point of all of this is that the Internet and Intranets function as they do because everybody adheres to a set of standards agreed between all interested parties. Where this 'alliance' becomes fragile is when an organisation with the financial clout of Microsoft begin to try and influence the direction of such standards, it would however be unfair to paint Microsoft as the only aggressor in the market, Netscape have every intention of leading the way too [53].

The way that the battle is settled will determine the way that development of day to day business, both globally on the Internet and internally using Intranets, is conducted, the outcome will be interesting to see.