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Browser Wars 2004
J. Hobbs writes "Recent posts on David Hyatt's site describing the new technology he's working on for Dashboard, coupled with recent announcements from the newly formed WHAT-WG alliance (Apple, Mozilla, and Opera) could add up to a potentially new kind of application development and deployment that I explore in this highly speculative essay. See if you don't agree..."
I'd like to see Internet Explorer become obselete as much as the next guy, but the more IE continues to develop--as they inevitably be forced to do if this plugin is released--the more competition there will be on the browser market. That's a Good Thing.
Seems like we've been there before with MSIE 4. It didn't work well then, why should we expect it to work well now?
-- There is no spoon. Only fork.
How about making Mozilla and FireFox a bit faster and less memory hungry? I know, I know, I should buy faster computers. But there are so many cases where that's difficult or impossible. I would love to recycle older machines as browsing-boxes for friends, relatives, even libraries if only they ran Mozilla somewhat faster. There's still life left in a PII-350.
If you blur the line between desktop and web browser, the don't you essentially become no diffrent than Internet Explorer, only cross platform? I suppose it could be neat if done correctly but I fear that this could just open Mozilla and others up for some nasty Internet Explorer-esque exploits.
I like competition as much as the next guy, but I'm worried that if this turns into a "Browser War" we're going to end up with conflicting standards: widgets that only work with Microsoft products, and then widgets that only work with Mozilla/Opera/KHTML. And then we'd be stuck coding two different versions of each widget, or doing hacks like are currently done in CSS to get it to work on winIE.
Which planet do you live on? Microsoft has approximately $55 billion in the bank. Do you have any idea at all what that number means? For example, after subtracting a $400 million fine from the European Union, MS would still have ... $55 billion in the bank (to the same precision).
Apple, Adobe, Macromedia, Opera, and Sun are interested in not being caused to become financially insolvent by Microsoft. Some of them won't make it. IMHO Sun will be the first to die, but all of them are in danger. They are definitely not the slightest danger to Microsoft.
>I can deploy an IE patch to 5000 systems in an hour. How will I do that with these alternative browsers?
The same way you do the IE patch - using SMS. If you use SUS instead, then add SMS to your list of neat-o technologies and voila.. you can push out auto-updates to ANY app - not just MS ones.
Thats of course ignoring startup scripts, domain login scripts, and good-old-fashioned "You must install this app or your email access will be restricted until you do". Lots of alternatives.
>These browsers are good bets from a security point now, but why would they be safe in 6 months, or a year?
Because they are designed with better security paradigms - they don't by default trust DATA as EXECUTIBLE CODE.
>As these browsers gain market share, they will be everyone's new favorite target, and there for no better off
Wrong. See Apache v. IIS. Far more Apache servers, and its attacked far less than IIS, and far less effectively. Market share != vulnerability. Even if it did, alternative browsers wont reach "majority" status for AT LEAST two years - even at the current-this-week migration %'s.
>Additionally, users will clamor for the same features, bells, and whistles IE has
Users already clamor for the features, bells, and whistles that IE *DOESNT* have that the other browsers have - tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and *real* css and png support. So much so that - oh look - SP2 will fix some of those "issues".
>don't switch because of security. Why not? Because anything computer related will be compromised.
Somethings are compromised more easily - security is rarely black and white, and it definitely isnt here.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Mod me flamebait, but are we intentionally excluding Microsoft from the browser development community now?
LOL! Are you kidding? How can these companies be excluding MS from a market that MS utterly dominates? They're not excluding anyone, they're fighting for relevance - if all else fails, this will be their last great act of defiance.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser Wars is something that I despise
For it means you can kiss standards good-bye
For it means tears in thousands of coders eyes
When they have 2 sets of code to mess up their lives
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser War
It's nothing but a heartbreaker
Browser War
Friend only to the patent maker
Browser War is the enemy of all Webkind
The thought of another browser war blows my mind
Handed down from Corporation to generation
Induction destruction
Who wants standards to die
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Browser War has shattered many OSS giver's dreams
Made their widgets disabled and broke, Free Time is too precious to be coding indoors each day
Browser War can't give family life it can only take it away
Browser War
It's nothing but a heartbreaker
Browser War
Friend only to the patent maker
Open Source, Standards and understanding
There must be some place for these things today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord there's gotta be better than MS'S way
That's better than
Browser War
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
Browser War
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
ActiveDesktop. Ads and crap floating on the desktop. *shudder* The sleazy side of the 'net always takes advantage of the new-fangled technology we think is gonna be so great and utopian.
You have a point, but you overstate it (and probably some grumpy moderator will mod you down for that...)
Some of the post-HTML standards are really beneficial. For example, the separation of document structure from presentation style (using CSS) is good, because it simplifies website maintenance and will allow programs to make sense of web pages. We're not there yet, but there's progress toward some really useful goals.
But the addition of a bunch of features just for eye candy ("very, very, very cool stuff" as the article referred to by the story puts it) is a giant leap backwards. It's just like flashing popups. The kids and the salespeople yell "wow! cool" for about 3 weeks and then suddenly they're no longer cool.
When I use the web, I want information. Stuff that looks like a video game in attract mode is just a timewasting distraction. Unfortunately, much of the advocacy for change is coming from graphic artists, not from real users.
Please.
When was the last time standing in front of the bleeding edge of technological progress and screaming 'Stop!' did anything except get you cut off at the knees?
Those of us who are, in fact, interested in what advanced content tools are authentically useful for are uninterested in your neo-Luddite tendancies. Lynx is a fine browser for those things that can be represented in text, but if you think that everything the web is good for can be presented in Lynx, you're living in a dream world. Or 1991.
> to clear cache, priacy stuff
;)
Are you missing a V, or did you just misplace that R?
The unofficial
I am pretty sure that no other browser can compete with IE until it achieves one thing: IE compatibility.
IE has one thing that no other browser has: it shows almos Every Single Page as it was intended by the designers.
I know, I know, web designers' fault. They should create cross-browser pages, but they don't.
So, while MS does not respect W3C standards, the only way to compete with IE is being able to render the pages exactly like IE does. What would be better is to provide the user with an option: "show this page as IE would or show it as it should be rendered attending to W3C standars".
Until then, we'll be in a IE driven web (which, btw, is cyclic, designers design for IE 'cos the own the market, and users use IE 'cos the web is designed for IT).
P.S. I know, Microsoft is bad. And ppl use IE 'cos is there, but ppl does not change browsers due to what is stated above.
--krahd
Mod me up, Scottie!
mod me up scottie!
Check out Googlebar.Mozdev.Org which is a Googlebar emulation thingie that some non-Google people are doing.
The competition will be with XAML, .NET Zero Deployment and the likes om them. The initiative described in the article is probably good and all, and I seriously hope they do make it into something. But make no mistake - MS has been working long and hard on getting stuff that blurs the line between web and local pages (or apps, if you prefer that name), and some of it works just fine (.NET Zero Deployment is a good example here). Soon enough, there will be no browser war because the browser will not be as essential as it is today. It still is, though - and that's why I use Firefox whenever I can :-)
Seriously, running richer and richer "weblets" (for lack of a better technology-neutral term) on your local machine, feeding them with remote data and making it all flexible and (hopefully) secure, is a trend that's been going on for YEARS now. A lot of us would like this to feature open standards, open source and other such goodness, but we need to take a long, hard look at the initiatives from MS - their market dominance means that THEIR standards will become a reality.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
So, while MS does not respect W3C standards, the only way to compete with IE is being able to render the pages exactly like IE does. What would be better is to provide the user with an option: "show this page as IE would or show it as it should be rendered attending to W3C standars".
Until then, we'll be in a IE driven web (which, btw, is cyclic, designers design for IE 'cos the own the market, and users use IE 'cos the web is designed for IT).
How would this help? Everyone would turn the option on, so that their favourite websites render properly, and web designers would continue to design for IE because that's what everybody's emulating.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
It's much easier to write UI code in HTML with some JavaScript that it is to write the same UI code with C++ or any other language for that matter. Instead of scoffing at the notion of web apps, people should embrace it as a new paradigm. Faster, cheaper, cross-platform, what could be better?
Microsoft was headed down this road with IE, but suddenly they realized that they couldn't continue or they would make the Windows API monopoly irrelevant.
IE development came to a screeching halt and they decided to come up with a perverted proprietary work-around to implement the same thing in a way that wouldn't threaten Windows (XAML and Avalon). XAML is essentially a fancy mark-up language (like HTML) that, coupled with C# (instead of JavaScript) creates rich client applications that are compiled windows apps. Throw in a little Indigo to make the apps web-aware and you've successfully recreated the wheel.
It only seems natural that someone else would want to carry the torch of rich browser-based apps. Most of the things these guys are talking about are already possible in IE. They're just trying to standardize it so people can roll up their sleeves and start writing cool apps.
IMHO, just going off an a tangent: I think many of us have been misled. Something else is quietly brewing.
.NET. Detractors may deride it as much as they want, but I believe this Microsoft's strategic weapon. Imagine a browser that can run a native lightweight UI (through Avalon). Imagine a world where such applications are trivial to build.
.NET, your knowledge in a .NET language like C# (and even your code!) can more or less be reused in ASP.NET, and in frameworks like .NET Compact.
.NET. .NET just works, for the most part. You can actually build usable GUI apps with it (unlike Java. The only decent GUI apps are SWT-based and even those feel klunky). And it will be interesting to see how things will look like in a few years.
.NET architecture -- which incidentally, was not conceived by Microsoft so much as it was by Anders Heijsberg who was pilfered from Borland. You can see the elegance of Borland engineering exude in .NET. Yes, I am a Borland fan.)
The stagnation of IE has been made to be seen as a bigger issue than it really is. We see Firefox making headway now and we are happy, but in reality, from a strategic point of view, it is no threat to IE in the long run unless it makes some fundamental changes.
If Microsoft gets its way, the fight is no longer going to be about rendering web pages.
I submit to you that this is due to
Right now, today, we are already beginning to see things like WYSIWYG HTML editors built with ASP.NET, that work like a native application embedded within the browser. (take a look at this, Devedit. Requires IE.
One might argue that we can sort of already do such things using XUL, Javascript, DHTML, Java etc. That's all nice and well, but how many technologies do you have to learn to build a simple app?
With
This was the dream everyone had for Java, and from the way things are going, it looks like this dream will come in to fruition in the form of
(btw, I am no MS supporter (my main machine is a Mac OS X box). But I have to admire the
If you want to be a coder speaking the truth, you could try to be informed first.
The philosophy of only coding for what browsers can handle is a noble one... and one that, as far as I know, every sane web developer has been doing as long as the field has existed... who wants to code for non-existent clients?
As for your description of that as "Just HTML", that's Just Wrong. The W3C standards are, currently, XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.0.
The W3C has long been advocating HTML/XHTML for markup and CSS for layout/design, pretty much since that paradigm was invented (or reinvented) by them. The W3C standards have evolved a bit since you've last checked. Your assumption was:
W3C standard: HTML 4.0
Browser Proprietary Stuff: everything else
However, there's a very different story today:
W3C standards: XHTML 1.0-1.1, CSS 1.0-2.0, SVG
Used by browsers commonly, but not W3C compliant: JavaScript (or JScript), DHTML, Java (not so much anymore)... I think that's about it.
The only designers not following your advice are those coding for Internet Explorer and not for Mozilla or for W3C standards.
How long will 55 billion USD last once you start paying dividends (as many investors both institutional and individual are clamoring for) and/or buying back stock to reduce the share price dilution due to employee stock options? The world of finance and corporate monetary structures is one just as detailed, subtle, and complex as that of code or computer architecture. Just becuase it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and would to a layperson appear to be a duck does not make it a 100% bonafide waterfowl...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
That's great and all, but as a practicing web developer, I can assure you that dealing with MSFT's various idiocies as embodied in IE is a titanic pain in the ass. Just to pick one area where IE's stagnation is very much a big issue if you do this for a living: CSS support. They barely support CSSv1 correctly even in the latest IE, and anything later than that is totally haphazard. As for why CSS is a big deal, well, this comment box isn't big enough to contain all the reasons behind that. I'll leave aside for brevity all the other ways that IE makes our lives difficult at work!
As for the rest of your post, despite how much I'd love to use web-like tech to make traditional applications, I don't see that working. It's been tried before by quite a number of people unsuccessfully, and C#/.NET/blahblahblahbuzzwordsoup isn't different enough to really stand out. I find it ironic, to a degree, that you ask "how many technologies do you have to learn to build a simple app?" when you yourself list quite a number in relation to the MSFT development paradigm. .NET is a bit better
than the trainwreck that is traditional win32 development, but not by a whole lot (see Joel Spoelsky's writings on this topic, that I'm too
lazy to link at the moment). Fred Brooks said it best those decades ago, there is no silver bullet in computer programming, and there never will be.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro/ development/
http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/
Am I wrong?
I love and use Java like hell, even though applets are now usable - but so far only Flash can really claim write once, run anywhere ubiquity. I don't even think XAML stands up to it and Flash is already pretty much in every browser from Win, Mac, to Linux....
1) They are running out of cash.
or
2) Their revenue projections are showing trouble ahead.
Clearly (1) doesn't apply as they have $55 billion. So the answer is (2). They are having to seriously slash their prices to compete on large contracts with Linux quotes.
Microsoft is not unassailable. As regards browser market share, the market share figures have started to slip for the first time in more than 5 years.
20 years ago, IBM seemed to some to be in an utterly dominating position. Their dominance had a rise and a fall. So will Microsoft. The signs that they have already passed their peak are there to see.