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Why Browser Innovation Matters
dvanatta was one of a several people who noted a new article by Mitchell Baker on Mozilla.org about why browser innovation matters - especially Gecko, and why it will survive things like Safari Whoops - got the name wrong. Updated.
Nothing beats the web gestures of opera. It has not only made me a faster researcher, it has improved my social life.
As an occasional website designer, I would like to avoid having to delve into the DOM to maintain a consistent appearance and functionality across platforms/browsers.
Browsers are mature. IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, etc. are all mature pieces of software now.
What "innovations" can you put in mature software, other than small details?
If big innovations are possible in mature software, then people wouldn't stick to MS all the time. Remember that a lot of MS software won because they were "good enough", not because they were "the best".
It is Mitchell Baker, but Mitchell is a woman. So, I don't know who she is more pissed at, people who spell her name wrong or people who mistake her gender.
Personally, I use Chimera on OSX, Moz on faster linux and windows machines, and Phoenix on slower linux and windows machines. Konq is a good choice too.
The comparison here isn't really between two opposites - business plans are driven by the goal of satisfying customer demand, which is the best measure whether something "benefits human beings". All too often techies get wrapped up in what they think is a great innovation, but in reality the broader user base doesn't really care (see the dot-com bust)...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
...Because everytime it occurs, geeks everywhere complain about the new way, and how good it was in the ol' days.
(Remember Arpanet and Gopher? I remember when we used to complain about the world wide web, and how it was going to ruin the internet.)
Flash popups anyone? That's innovation for ya.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Safari/KHTML vs. Gecko/Mozilla is just like KDE vs. GNOME. It's a matter of personal preference based on what is important to the end user. Some will choose speed, others choose features, and still others choose standards compliance. The end result is the great thing about open-source projects: They will all eventually gain the features pioneered by the competing projects if the public shows enough of a demand to make it worth the developers time. Also, if you like feature a of x browser, but it doesn't have feature b, FIX IT!
damn i love open source
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
the fact is, every time i turn on a regular L-user to Mozilla as an alternative to IE, they make the switch and never go back. they love the pop-up blocking, and the control they have been given back. lets face it IE allows those drive-bye shooting like viruses (spyware) to be presented for install so fast, it is the worst security risk out there today, and the biggest dump on useability (cuz spyware is obnoxious as hell) in the entire os.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
No, no, not a troll. Just a subject to grab attention.
Compare IE v5, v5.5 and v6.0. Nothing much really changed between them. Sure, they cleaned up some of the CSS support (although there are still some large gaps), and added some non-browser type things, but overall, they're basically the same. Now compare that to the changes between IE 3, 4 and 5. There were HUGE changes, and they happened quickly.
What changed? Well, for one thing, the web was still fairly new, and people were still figuring out what would be possible to do with it. But, more importantly, during that time, they had heavy competition from Microsoft. IE didn't win the marketshare battle simply due to being in Windows (although it helped). It leapfrogged over Netscape in features. And as long as Netscape was stuck on the 4.x codebase, it stayed that way. That code was crap.
But, now, here were are in 2003. NS 4.x is dead, IE 4.x is dead, and the web is growing up and finally truly embracing CSS. And you know who's in the lead? Mozilla, followed by Opera and others, and in last place? IE. This, plus innovative features in non-IE browsers is beginning to show IE users what they're missing. And some are switching. For the first time since "winning" the browser war, they're facing real competition. And, the early signs of IE 7 don't make it look like anything too revolutionary. (Will they even manage to get PNG right this time?)
IE is dying, and if Microsoft doesn't act quickly, it'll be too late for CPR. Being a part of Windows gives IE a competitive advantage, but it doesn't stop people from finding something better.
The killer app for the web browser is browsing.
Is it? I mean, probably a lot of us do online banking. That's not just browsing anymore, is it? Posting to slashdot is not 'just browsing' as well.
The point is, the browser is an UI for a lot of things these days. Web banks, forums, groupware or whathaveyou use the browser. Why is improvements etc. a bad thing for these?
And (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view) these web applications will get bigger and have a lot more functionality. Maybe this is not a good thing, but anyway the browser is a key point in these things.
I don't think this is just egomania on the browser peoples side, but the web browser, as simple as it seems to be, is an important app these days. Why people shell out to buy Opera, if it's 'just browsing'?
I'll tell you one thing, the world doesn't deserve a browser as good as Opera. I had the pleasure of using a computer that had Windows installed the other day, and the new Opera 7 is simply amazing. Not only can you do anything by using exclusively the mouse (or the keyboard), but the small screen rendering works perfectly. And I thought that was just going to be a crap marketing feature that mutilated the page. It's got integrated e-mail with spam filtering and PIM features, button themes for skins, and renders stuff that Internet Explorer chokes on. And that was just what I found in one night. I know I sound like a corporate shill, but it's not advertising if they didn't pay you for it. This is one thing I would GLADLY pay for if it came out on Linux (and think it was a small price to pay, too). If I browsed the web a lot, I think I might consider booting into windows just to browse, for this reason.
As a web developer, I am more interested in seeing all browser being 100% compliant with the w3c standards than anything else.
As a surfer, though, I want my browser to be fast on loading, handle bookmarks properly, and to start quickly. That is why I almost exclusively use Phoenix, despite it being only version 0.5 (at least, that's the one I am using). It starts up on my windows machine much faster than IE, Mozilla or Opera. I don't use Netscape itself, because the difference between that and Mozilla is negligible (yep, I know it's blasphemy to say it, but there it is.)
But to me, the most important part of the whole equation is this: give me WEBSITES that comply to standards as set by w3c. No, you don't HAVE to use CSS, or even a particular scripting method (php vs asp? who cares. If you know one, design with it, but be ready to learn the other if a company wants it).
Part of the problem is that a lot of people making websites are not programmers, or even really that informed about standards. A lot of sites are done by graphic designers, who only want it to be pretty.
Thats great, but pretty doesn't mean a thing to the people surfing with an alternate browser that doesn't display pictures. People who are blind come to mind. But if you come from an art background, its hard to think about that. It's worse than you think, though. I know a man who teaches at a University here locally. He teaches graphic design, holds a Ph.D. from a presitigious university (I think Texas A&M), and regularly requires his students to create web pages as part of the course. He uses almost nothing but Adobe products (GoLive in particular), and Macs. He doesn't worry about accessibility that much though, and he is COLOR BLIND! Standards don't seem to matter, as long as it looks good.
With that kind of situation being common, it is going to take a long time to make the community aware of the need for standard compliance.
Now that I am off my soap box, any one who needs it is free to borrow it.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
1) Because in some ways, the browser is the most important piece of software we use. Modern computers are valuable not so much for computation, but for communication.
2) Because if the browser is done well (like Mozilla or Opera) it can handle other tasks as well, like email and usenet, thus improving the whole user experience (yes, I know some versions of Opera don't do email anymore, but some do, or at least did).
3) Because if the browser is done well (like Mozilla) it can become a platform for running new classes of application, which brings all sorts of interesting things to light.
4) BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY, if the browser is done badly (IE), it becomes a ready-made backdoor into your system, a virus and worm propagator, a stumbling block in the way of people trying to innovate in other areas, and in general, a royal pain in the ass. If there weren't alternatives to IE, there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth (cats and dogs, living together, etc).
To sum up:
Browser innovation is what saves us from having to use crappy proprietary tools like the rest of the rubes, and what allows us to actually get some use out of our computers (instead of being hacked ten times a day by bored script kiddies).
Or is that too cynical a take on this?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Where the hell is phoenix
:)
Ummmm. Arizona?
*ducks*
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I wonder when any browser will truly compete with the speed and precision of the almighty Lynx! Bring forth your pretty GUI "innovations"! The power of the lynx should not be questioned!
-ad105
seems to me to be about why Gecko/Mozilla is better than anything, namely Safari. It seems to boil down to "Mozilla is better because it is truely open-source."
Personally, I liked Mozilla (well now I use Phoenix on windows, less bloat) on windows and I used Chimera on Mac OS X. Chimera didn't crash as often as IE 5.2 did plus it had tabs and was faster. Once Safari was reveiled I jumped instantly. (The introduction of tabs has made me never look back)
The real big thing that grabbed me with Safari was the Bookmark management and the orange arrow thing (I forget what it is called) While they may be small, they feel like big end-user innovations. It just kind of irks me that the Author implies the only reason I use Safari is because it is "bundled" with Mac OS X. I use it by choice because it feels better. I could care less if my browser renders a page a half second faster.
We may have super-elegant-configurable browsers now. But innovation remains important: the people at w3c are working hard to set new guidelines for the future:
Trouble is, if MSIE doesn't follow, will the web evolve? I mean, why are there still GIFs all around as they were designed for 8-bit VGA (remember the pre-web times in its glorified 320x200 mode?) Why is there a problem with PNG implementation on MSIE? It's a 1996 recommendation! Will that be the same principle holding us back from browser innovation?
people who spell her name wrong or people who mistake her gender.
Reminds me of "It may be spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronouned "mozilla""
Her name may be spelled M-i-t-c-h-e-l-l, but it's pronounced "Chief Lizard Wrangler"
Anyone with a title like that is likely to be on the receiving end of sexual advances more adventurous than most of us.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They are not especially receptive to patches concerning anything they're not allready looking at doing, and they have been known to ignore user input in favor of following the Netscape party line.
The most obvious and complained about example is there splash screen. It ties up memory, noticablly slows down launch times, leaks memory, and impedes usability when users are waiting for the browser to launch, There have been many complaints about it on bugzilla, and far more on various mailing lists and bulletin boards. Patches to add a prefrence to disable it have been submitted. Yet they continue to prioritize branding their browser above user needs. The splash screen is still there, and the only way to disable is if to hack arround in the application's contents, and exploit a known bug in apple's NSImage object by substituteing the wrong kind of data.
There are other examples. Key behaviors that follow Netscape precedent at the expense of usability and Apple HIG compliance, tab options and layout, etc...
The source may be open, but the project isn't especially open to outside direction. I like the browser alot, and really look forward to the
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
There seems to be a great divide between the Microsoft World and the *nix World. The former creates easy to use software at the expense of power, and the later creates the reverse. The middle ground MUST be reached.
Perfect example: I bought a new box, installed Redhat 7.2, ran Netscape, viewed a couple web pages. Looks like absolute crap! Don't tell me about getting new fonts and blah blah blah--thats not my problem. Even if the software is free, the goal is to make me (the customer) want to use it. I don't have the time or energy to fiddle around with settings all day and night. I just want it to work. When I see a webpage in browser XYZ, I want it to look the same as it does in IE 6.0 on my windows box. You know why? Because 94.5% of visitors to my website use IE, and 97.5% use Windows. I know that IE renders things "wrong", but because of those percentages, that makes it right, and everyone else wrong. So why can't Netscape/Gecko/Mozilla/etc render things the way I want them to? And until they do, I'm using IE.
All of this talk about ECMAScript, XUL, all of these new technologies that will make my life so wonderfully easy mean nothing to me until they become adopted, and they will never become adopted until they are easy to use. That should be the focus area--not cool techno addons that 0.0001% of sites will utilize. I want my browsing experience to be simple and powerful, but simple is more important.
Mike
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Quoth Mitchell Baker:
Everything we've seen suggests that KHTML has a ways to go to catch up with rendering real web pages. At the same time, Gecko should become smaller and simpler.
This statement and the fact that Apple chose KHTML over Gecko seems to resonate with a comment I saw the other day about OS X. "Apple realized that it's easier to put a good GUI on UNIX than to debug Windows."
I am all for the improvement of Gecko, whatever slimming down it needs, but I don't think Apple was so mistaken to choose KHTML. From what I can tell, it's a smaller project and I think they will undoubtedly have more of an influence on it than they would on Gecko/Mozilla. It shouldn't be anay more difficult to extend KHTML, at least not any more difficult than it would be to speed up Mozilla.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
It's not subtext-- the author plainly states, "We would have preferred to have Apple use Gecko or collaborate with us on the development of the Camino browser...", but goes on to say that the larger goal of providing alternative, standards-compliant browser platforms is still being met.
I read the whole thing as, "we would love to have Apple as part of our team, but are still happy that there is another team out there doing The Right Thing."
While the Aqua user interface elements necessitate a binary end product for the time being, it is reasonable to expect two-way traffic between the Apple folks and the folks responsible for the care and feeding of the KHTML widget. As I understand it, some of this has already happened. Apple's decision to base Safari on KHTML is good for both Apple and KDE, and represents a departure in the right direction from a completely closed development model.
It may even be ideal-- all the standards based parts are out in the open for access by the community, and Apple is free to add their own proprietary icing on top of that foundation.
It does take a leap of faith that Apple will release their changes to the KHTML base, but it is most likely in their best interest to do this.
"Why We Still Feel Okay About Ourselves Even Though Those Nasty Safari Developers Chose to Use Khtml instead of Gecko, Those Jerks."
by Mitchell Baker
As usual, Apple releases a beta of an app and people either a) exult or b) express dismay that it didn't utterly change the world. It's a Web browser. By version 1.0 maybe they'll have a nice, stable, lean little browser that hooks into the rest of the OS without becoming cancerware like IE on a Windows box. That'd be handy.
-- fellow Chimera user.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I think that Mozilla's current feature set is good enough. It doesn't wash your dishes for you, or take out the trash, but it does browsing very very well. When I get a chance, I show it or Pheonix to folks and most decide that they do want to switch -- for reasons that they think are substantial enough. That said, here's a true story;
Like many of you, I get tapped as tech support by friends and relitives. In one case, I was attempting to figure out what was wrong when a friend of my little sister went to a web page.
When asked what browser she was using, she replied "Netscape -- I always use Netscape". Asking the version was painful, so I skipped that question (bad idea).
After going through the menus for 15 minutes over the phone, looking for an option that might enable support for what she said was "broken", I decided that she was must be lying. For one, she seemed so certian ("definately Netscape -- it's all I use"). Also, she kept telling me how "I don't know about this new version -- it's not as nice".
An old tech support method kicked in;
Her: "I dunno -- it's just not working."
"Do you see an N in the upper right hand corner?"
"No...why?"
"Do you see a little E or a globe in the right hand corner?"
"Yes! The little globe."
Five painful minutes later, and a couple misdirections, I figured out what to tell her to get her to make the repair.
Last time I asked, she still insists that she uses Netscape, only Netscape.
Point 1: Many Janes and Joes don't have a clue what software they are using -- yet they will brag or defame it at the drop of a hat.
Point 2: People won't switch but will use what they get -- and only if it's bundled. This is the core problem with adoptation of software -- from browsers to operating systems.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Innovation in Mozilla need to stop for a couple of months in order to fix all the Bugs #.
This is what happends:
you have a constant number of developers but an incriesing number of inovation. Every innovation has an increising number of bugs reports. Developer have a constant capacity of fixing bugs.
So, do the Math. Mozilla can't support so many innovations in every release because the number of developers are not incriesing.
What do we need? An aplication with costant features that has no bugs, or an aplication that has many features but is buggy?
Seems to me that this innovation stuff is more like a marketing campaing. Sad to hear that the campaing is comming from the development department and not from the marketing department.
BTW, I love Mozilla and I use it every day since Netscape 2.0
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