Future of Diskmags
I suppose that all of Hugi's readers already know what a diskmag is, therefore there is no need to describe it. ;) It cannot be said that the last couple of years were successful for diskmags. Hugi, Pain and Shine - as for me, I can't remember any other international mags. Anyway, there weren't many mags.
But why? Why is this estimable branch of the scene barren and neglected now? I think that the main grave-digger of the discmags is the Internet. This foundations-destroying thing already killed a lot of wonderful things such as BBS's, telegraph (in some countries), ftn (also in some countries) and many others. Though, we have to admit that because of the Internet we received a lot of new possibilities and opportunities.
During the Internet-boom a lot of people decided that WWW was the top of perfectness and all other stuff sucked and had to die. That's why we have numerous aimless sites with html-forums and a browser as universal client for everything... Maybe it is because of the army of new, "non-advanced" users who can't set up any program except the built-in Internet Explorer.
Ok. What about diskmags? Will executable-based diskmags die? As for
me, I think they won't, because they have some features that online
versions haven't. The first great feature of diskmags is their offlineness.
You have only download the mag, put it into your filebase and use it every time
you need. You don't have to download it again, again and again.
The second great feature of executable-base diskmags is their executableness. Though current webnologies, such as HTML, CSS2 and Flash, are rather powerful, their abilities are limited. Flash is fine webnology, but is not suitable for making diskmags, because of the required hardware and i-bandwidth configuration. Writing a diskmag in C++ (or Assembler :)) is much more effective.
Of course, it can't be updated often, but for receiving fresh news humandkind invented websites. :) Diskmags are suitable for publishing articles which shoud be read attentively and thoughtfully.