The votes are in… and the browser has won!
Earlier in my start-up career I was convinced that the promise of Java + platform independent Web browsers represented the next step beyond PC dominance of the 90’s. Imagine a lightweight client that is massively connected and is just as home on a cell phone or mobile device as it is on a MAC, desktop PC or workstation. Sounded wonderful back then but it didn’t happen. Why? In my opinion, there were two reasons: the over-hype/immaturity of client-side Java, and the powers brought to bear to crush Netscape and hobble the browser as a platform.
Well times have changed and the browser is back. In the NY Times article “An Upstart Challenges the Big Web Browsers”, author Brad Stone discusses the next round of browser releases of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Flock. Mr. Stone does a great job of rekindling the browsers evolution, especially the 5 year period Microsoft spent between browser releases. It didn’t take a genius to see the potential impact a lightweight client could have on the status quo. What it did take was the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox, a browser with little baggage and an appetite to compete. Also, as this article points out, Apple is getting very aggressive with Safari, both as a platform on open systems (PCs and MACs) as well as on the proprietary iPhone.
Fast forward to today. AJAX provides Web browsers near the power of conventional client-server apps. Google Apps have become legitimate competitors in the personal productivity space and, being Web based, actually have some real advantages over their more traditional terrestrial ancestors. Kids are coming home from school and walking past the TV, choosing entertainment on their terms via YouTube. The consumer has seen the advantages of moving from a captive marketplace offering limited choices at a high cost to an open market offering best-of-breed choices for free. Life is good, unless you are stuck in the old, captive model. In my opinion, when Mitch Kapor says “The browser is extraordinarily strategic”, he is being conservative. I believe we are rapidly reaching the point where the browser is the platform and the underlying hardware is rapidly becoming insignificant.
So how does the browser stand up as a platform? Well in our experience, actually it does pretty well. We have been doing development in-house for Internet Explorer and Firefox and here’s what I’ve gathered. (Note that I am a CEO and not a developer any more, so my impressions are based on what I get from staff meetings when I get to ask embarrassing, almost child-like questions to my patient development staff).
Internet Explorer PROs: Developers benefit from Microsoft’s huge depth of development tools, APIs and support solutions. It appears that somewhere on the Web, someone has tried everything imaginable with Microsoft stuff. So you can always find someone to commiserate with and usually offer some help. This all adds up to quick time to market.
Internet Explorer CONs: Vista. Vista security. Vista (again). We have one feature that we have yet to release as it is taking more time to figure out the install mechanism than it took to get the app to work. Another CON is that, obviously, IE is very partial to Windows OS’s. And I am really getting heat for MAC support.
Firefox PROs: Portability. This is very slick. We have started a port recently and it is going very well. Certainly a portable code base requires platform specific glue code, but we find this to be well segmented and easily understood. Another PRO for the Firefox camp is that it just installs so nicely. I have to admit that it has been explained to me repeatedly and apparently I am not smart enough to understand this phenomenon. We had to jump thru hoops to get our Internet Explorer version to install in Vista, yet in Firefox it’s just two files that install themselves. I thought Microsoft had all this internal magic that bound IE to Windows and that wasn’t fair. So how come Firefox just drops into place? It’s beyond me.
Firefox CONs:I guess the glue code that has to be written for each port is technically a CON for Firefox. But that’s not really fair, as each OS is different and the alternative would be to write the whole browser from scratch. So I’ll have to keep looking and get back to you on that.
Safari: I don’t really know. We are not there yet.
Others: No offense to other browsers. We are a small company and just trying to meet the needs of the most people we can with our limited resources.
Having developed software products over the years for a variety of platforms, I have to say that I like the browser best. First and foremost, there are a billion or so users. High bandwidth communications is provided automatically – heck, it’s a Web browser – and the content is free. But for the startup developing in today’s Web 2.0 space, there is one significant difference; we don’t have to do it all. Actually, the less we do the better. It is now longer about rows and rows of menu items. It’s about developing tools that do a few things well and play with other tools. It’s not about dominance; it’s about peaceful and productive co-existence.
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Thanks for this rundown. The day I discovered firefox and its capabilities definitely changed my relationship with the internet. Now, that we share bookmarks (foxmarks) in my company, it is even more vital. Other than an occasional crash, its been a loyal companion.
I use Firefox and IE7 - of course I am testing things a lot. 8). What amazed me was the observation that IE had gone so long between releases. As has been proven over and over again, competition is good thing for the customer. And it sounds like there will be more competition in the coming year with Safari and others going broader as well.