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Netscape Founder Says Web Browsing Innovation Dead
mattOzan writes "Marc Andreessen told Reuters today that browser innovation ended five years ago (which would put us at about Navigator 4.5 beta -- what was so innovative about that? The "What's Related" button? Beatnik integration?) "Navigation is an embarrassment. Using bookmarks and back and forth buttons -- we had about eighteen different things we had in mind for the browser." Well, pass me the NDA and tell me what they were!"
It just happens to coincide with the time he left Netscape to go start his own failed company LoudCloud.
5 years ago was a great time, though. Good times.
I have been pwned because my
Microsoft have got the market, they don't need to do any work to keep it, so why add furthur inovations to IE, no reason at all, theve even held back on full PNG support, well the work doesn't need to be done so why do it?
And everyone emulates IE....
Flash is a scourge, and so is Shockwave.
The best innovation of the past 5 years was the suppression of pop-ups. Everything else is just tuning.
And that's the complete story as I see it.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
well, word processing hasn't changed all that much either in the last five years.
No, netscape did it to themselves. Ask any webprogrammer/designer, netscape 4.x is the bane of their existance.
Bookmarks, back and forward buttons are FINE, the real innovation is in the content, and the display of said content.
Nonsense, unless you graduated from the 640K is all the memory you'll need-school.
The current browser form is not perfect and there are tons of room for innovation. Because you or I can't see it right now doesn't mean anything. I have a feeling that you couldn't envision anything like a browser 10 years ago.
It will take some people with special insight to advance the browser. Just give it time.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
IMHO he's right, although I don't think NS 4.5, was the cut off point for such innovation. What he's talking about is large and dramatic innovation, not add-ons and great expansions (like Tab's, Gestures etc).
But this isn't necessary a bad thing, everyone who uses the net is currently used to using a web browser and its heuristically defined layout, back, forward, reload, home and stop. It doesn't really need (currently) to be changed, the same applies to the controls of a car, the way a book works or even mobile phone interfaces. It works this way, billions of people use it such and changing it would have to be for dramatic purposes.
It doesn't stop us refining it though (again, Tabs, Gestures), just like a car (ABS, Sat Nav, Power Steering etc).
It may not be the best solution, but what about something like this: a 'teach gestures' option; when checked, every time the user did something another way that could be more efficiently done with a gesture, this would display a popup with a diagram of the relevant technique.
Yeah, and innovation for the book died when they created the index, the table contents, and page numbering. As long as the glue that binds the book holds and the ink doesn't run when it gets wet, I'm happy.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
I don't agree with that. Java, Flash and other client dinamic content tools are greath, but still browser usability lacks a lot to be desired.
Content rendering: Browsers are still forgiving about handling crappy HTML, not to mention than they are heavy as hell (Opera maybe is fast but i use Linux so Mozilla is my choice).
In an ideal world XHTML or even pure XML (with proper Stylesheets) will be the commonplace.
Secure browsing? yeah, every three weeks or so i have to install a patch for my Windows XP box because a new vulnerability in IE was found.
Interoperability: JavaScript is dead (unless you're masochist enough trying to be complatible with IE and Netscape), Java applets are slow as hell, Flash abilities are more limited than Java (thus is controled by a single vendor).
Spyware: Cookies are abused, ads are anoing (only mozilla seems to care enough to allow you to block them).
You mention PHP... what that has to do with the browser, thats a server side languaje not a client side languaje like Javascript or VBScript.
I think browsers like Mozilla, Safary and Opera do a cool job; Others like lynx let you do usefull job with little and some others like IE5 are just useless (i mean no competition == no inovation).
Browsers could do better than this and hopefully one day they will.
My two cents.
JV.
Jose Vicente Nunez Zuleta RHCE, SJCD, SJCP
well I'm glad he thinks browser innovation is dead. now how about they start working on properly supporting things like CSS!
So incredibly annoying building a page to perfect standards and having a browser munge it anyways!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Javascript is not dead if you stick to the DOM and ECMA script standards, most stuff works. As a web developer I use a fair amount of Javascript and it works fine, even without browser detection.
... I know, I work with several of them.
The problem with Javascript is that there are so many crappy programs out there that don't properly utilize the language, resorting to stupid 'Netscape' or 'IE' detection hacks rather than testing for the existance of functions. Then the so called 'web developers' just download this stuff and stick it in. "If it works in IE its good enough for me"
The Anti-Blog
If there were no Flash, there would be no Homestar Runner. And that would truly be a sad thing.
Grandparent is missing the point -- it's not that browsers should not have forward back and bookmark, somehow replacing these with "better" functional metaphors. It's that they shouldn't have only forward, back and bookmark as navigation and information storage paradigms.
Parent, on the other hand, is on to it -- keep going! How can browsers make it easier to remember what we saw, where we saw it, and why we cared when we saw it? These are the questions that don't seem to be influencing modern browsers (or any browsers, ever, see below).
Gestures are cool, but they are functional improvements (immediate, operational efficiency enhancements) -- where are the higher-level, conceptual, long-term efficiency enhancers? Why can't my browser warn me if there is a reputable opionion on an arguable topic I've been researching that I have not yet read? Google knows, or very nearly does. It's a challenging but possible leap to make a browser be able to understand sets of info (refer to Google sets, google for it if you don't know, it will blow you away. It basically takes a few items from you, figures out what is in common between them, and fills in the other things like them. All from web context clues.) Why doesn't my browser note that I'm checking out info on items A and B, look up the fact that these are both items in set z, and then gently suggest that I also check out the other items C, D, and E since it knows these are also in set z? Maybe they're all in set y too, offering yet another angle -- the browser should know. My point is that the info should be there, making it available inobtrusively is a trivial detail for interface designers to ponder.
I can do more with perl and wget (or LWP) in less time than any browser that exists, and I do occasionally resort to that when searching a tricky topic. This should not be a true statement.
Why can't my browser (at least pretend to) understand some of the info I see every day, categorize it, and make sure I can find it (and extract summaries from it) later, easily? The technologies exist (data mining, xml, bayesian filters, crude ai) but they have not been integrated into browsers. Tivo lets you thumb up/down any content and thus vote your preference to see more of the same. Why don't browsers have something like this? (To be fair, I have seen attempts at this, but they all tend to degenerate into advertising-ruined information dead-ends.) And why can't it learn (or ask) why I did/didn't like a site, and extract from that aggregate info what sites I might like or not (maybe even including some % of what my friends like.) Then from this form bayesian-like filters (more intereactive than those used for emails these days) to help prioritize (not filter, really) data. I'm thinking of a meta-google appliance that applies your own categories of interest and weighting preferences to google pagerank results, re-ordering the results for your preferences (i.e., I am a member of the European Demolition Association, so searches for 'EDA' should show me demolition-related hits before Electronic Design Automation hits, which would otherwise dominate the first-listed google results.)
Let me steer you a bit more another way -- it's what we have seen that's important. Google is doing a great job of letting me find new stuff. No problems there, but what happens when you need to go back later and find that really cool site on that topic that just happened to come up again a few days later and ooh, it was so relevant and full of meaty info and if I could just rememeber the keywords I used to find it . . .
So, css, gestures, etc. aside (they are innovations, but minor, and not involving any major architectural change), we haven't see much change or innovation since the very first browsers created. Other than speed, some standards changes, and aesthetics, you can use Mosaic 1.0 to find info on the www pretty much as easily as IE or any of it's modern competitors.
And that's the point he should have made.
everything in moderation
Take a look at The Brain for an innovation in browsing. I'd like to see more sites adopt this sort of navigation scheme. Something that's always bothered me about browsers (I use IE primarily, as I'm one of those unfortunates that is locked into Windows) is the disgusting underuse of the "Forward" button. I don't know how many times I've backed up on a path, gone down some other path, then wanted to get back to where I was. I could back up to the fork point, but didn't have any "Forward" options other than where I just came from.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Exactly. I would much rather see browsers considered mature technology while getting their standards correct then more tacked on 'enhancements.'
I don't want a browser that's secretly a P2P app.
I don't want embedded media and plug-ins crashing it.
I don't want a browser that is also a PIM.
I don't want a little avatar asking me if I want to go to shamelessmarketers.com.
etc.
Why does everything have to be attached to the browser? A simple interface and a stable platform is what companies should be aiming for, with the exception of tweaks and minor enhancements like pop-up blocking, tabs, etc.
The Mozilla team has learned from this mistake. People kept complaining about the "Mozilla Suite" and the bloat and they responded by announcing plans to seperate the browser from the suite.
Microsoft in the meantime continues its "the browser is the desktop" nonsense which mixes WAN data with the OS. As we've seen with ActiveX, vbs, etc this is a security nightmare.
I'm not sure what Andreesen was secretly planning, but an url box, back/forward buttons, and a stop button are surprisingly effecient when dealing with html-based technologies.
Extremely long work hours.
No clue what your company was really about and how it had any hope in hell of ever turning a profit someday.
Loads of sleazy people in the industry.
HUGE egos everywhere (dot-snobs).
Impossible to keep up with all the latest and greatest "next hot things".
Everybody spouting off like they know everything.
John Kerry is a Joke!