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What Will the Browser Look Like In Five Years?
macslocum writes "Opera's Charles McCathieNevile examines the most significant web browser innovations of the last few years, and he looks ahead to the browser's near-term future."
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I hope it will have migrated off the desktop, off the smartphone, and onto some contact lenses.
*sigh* am I thinking a little too distant?
I'm guessing it will look like a window with a tab bar and 1-2 text boxes to enter in urls and search terms, with navigation buttons nearby.
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http://apirocks.com/html5/html5.html#slide1
Three things I see happening now are 1) Displays getting bigger and bigger. 2) 3-D everywhere 3) Application integration with normal TV's. I think the next big thing in browsing will be developed for the TV user, like a widget for a web enabled Sony TV or something. I could see semething in the more distant future integrating the 3-d effect with touch/motion detection.
I already wear sunglasses to browse the web, on account of all the flash and poor color choices.
Although this is an improvement over the 90s. Back then I wore a welding mask.
Yes, opposed to Firefox, IE, Chrome, and pretty much any other browser out there, which you have to pay for. Oh, wait....
They will become the next layer, where we use our applications / games.
Hopefully the current OS-es will become irrelevant and we will fight over who is better: Firefox, Chrome or IE.
Firefox will be for geeks, who likes to customize their stuff.
Chrome will be the fastest and secure out of the box.
IE / Safari the one with the most aggressive marketing.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I'm worried that it will simply display the MOTD about being a good citizen, reminding us not to violate copyright and then pointing us to our assigned task for the day. Oh and it will have ads for entertainment content, mountain dew and viagra. Mandatory ads that is (as in no need to click here, we will simply deduct it from your account, thanks).
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It will look like flying through buildings made of data.
YES, YES IT WILL!
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It will have no buttons or any other form of input, it'll be a window to Steve Jobs browsing the internet. This is Apple's quality control in action, you'll never see any crap sites anymore.
Yes, his comment probably would have been better stated if he had left off the footnote entirely and simply said:
It’s only been since Firefox came out that there has been any innovation in browsers that many people actually use.
That way, you both disqualify Opera and at the same time you state why it was irrelevant. Win-win.
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Firefox and Safari and Chrome seem to be meeting in the middle in a basic design with one entry field and very few buttons. Whether tabs are on the bottom or top, people want a streamlined experience.
As for the rest, well I remember in 1996 when people were suggested VRML and 3D web was the next big thing. I imagine the web is largely going to look the same in 5 years except for ads. Pop-ups, pop-unders, peel-away ads and such will be joined by even more annoying ads of the future. Thankfully I block all of them.
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And the 75 Opera users will be sure to point that out ad nauseum.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Here's the worst case.
Web browsers are still around, but they're used only to look at junk sites. All commercial content is locked into "applications" for phones, tablets, and TVs. The content provider has complete control - the user can't skip ads, can't prevent the content owner from knowing what they're looking at, and can't save the content.
Bots run by the MPAA, the RIAA, News Corp., Apple, and Google constantly troll the remnants of the free web, searching for commercial content and sending out goon squads to take it down.