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| Is the browser more important than the operating system? |
July 10, 2008 |
With Microsoft about to launch Internet Explorer 8, many are asking: is the browser more important than the operating system?
 By Gail Balfour
For years, experts have predicted that desktop applications are on their way out and that we are entering an era of Web-based apps. After all, why stuff desktop computers with expensive and complicated software when it’s easier and cheaper to simply use a browser as the front-end access tool to online applications?
But if most business users are not ready to move to a completely online world, more reliable Internet connections, increased bandwidth and richer Web apps are encouraging many to begin viewing their computing through the window of a browser.
This means the computer’s underlying operating system — Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. — may soon be less relevant than its Web browser. And this new emphasis on the browser may have spurred the latest Internet Explorer update from Microsoft. At Microsoft’s recent MIX08 developer conference in Las Vegas, CEO Steve Ballmer admitted there had been a “painfully long gap” between Microsoft’s browser releases in the past. Microsoft had bundled major browser updates with the release of new Windows versions, but the company has decided to drop that approach.
“There are a whole bunch of things that we have learned. It’s important to integrate things, but it’s probably more important to incubate new technologies before you integrate them together,” Ballmer said in his keynote. “You won’t see those kinds of gaps (again). We now understand how we get things decoupled to incubate new innovations in the browser, separate from the OS.”
One show attendee said he was happy to see Microsoft putting more attention into the browser again. “There was a time several years ago when it appeared that Microsoft was uninterested in further improving the browser, because they appeared to have vanquished their competition,” said James Cullin, program coordinator for the Multimedia Design Diploma Program at Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Toronto.
“But the IE team looked at what Firefox, and to a lesser extent, Safari, had done and decided they needed to have the best browser. Now whether IE will return to its status as the best browser is unclear, and it’s almost neither here nor there,” he said. “What’s actually important from my perspective is that Microsoft has gotten the message that users want more out of their browser experience.”
Cullin said the new IE will likely cause the Firefox and Safari teams to ramp up their efforts. “So no matter how the IE evolution plays out, we will be working with a better generation of browsers two years from now.”
Another show attendee, Bruce Johnson, a principal consultant with Toronto-based ObjectSharp Consulting, said Microsoft made a smart decision by not tying IE8 to the OS anymore. “It’s great. The idea that you can only get a new browser with new features every five years…well, they are going to have to innovate faster than that. One of the things that made Firefox so popular is its ability to introduce features at a much faster rate. To have to wait for the next OS would be asinine,” he said.
Some of the new features announced for IE8 suggest people are using the Web in a more dynamic way, said Warren Shiau, senior associate with the Toronto-based analyst firm The Strategic Counsel. “In the Microsoft install-base world, these are fairly exciting features. Stuff like WebSlices indicates a more interactive, richer experience. That’s one of the ways things are changing, in terms of browsing.”
Any way you slice it
WebSlices are a new feature that enables users to subscribe to a specific piece of content directly within a Web page, such as a particular eBay auction or a Facebook friend’s status updates.
WebSlices behave just like feeds. Users subscribe to them and receive update notifications when the content changes so that they are visible to the user at all times right on the toolbar. They also employ a simple piece of code on the back end, making them easy for Web developers to add.
IE8 also offers a lot more support for developers and standards compliance for features like Cascading Style Sheets. “They appear to have gotten religion on the need to be very standards compliant. And I believe they will end up being more standards compliant than even Firefox is,” Cullin said.
Firefox loyalty
However, features aside, many people would still not consider switching to IE8 from another browser. At least not in the short term.
Loren Hicks, a Toronto-based independent management consultant and Firefox devotee, said although IE8’s new features are interesting, he is happy to stay with his current browser. “The most important thing for me about Firefox is the plug-ins. I have been able to customize it to suit the way I surf and, particularly, to get really granular control over security and advertising issues. A big bonus is the Restore feature when I have to restart (the browser) — it takes me back to where I was on every open tab, some of which I wouldn’t remember otherwise,” he said.
And for Hicks, the fact that Microsoft’s browser updates will now come faster to market still doesn’t compete with a community-based product like Firefox. “The key constraint on software development is not money, but brainpower. No matter how well funded, a command-and-control organization will never be able to compete on product quality against a widely dispersed open community. You can’t buy innovation or unbiased peer-review.”
Hicks admits he uses Internet Explorer sometimes, but only when he has to. “I use it maybe once a month for sites that don’t work properly in Firefox, like some of the Microsoft sites that are hardwired links from Office. I use it more frequently when a link in an e-mail or in some interactive thread on a Web site opens an Explorer window without asking me or checking my browser default setting,” he said.
Choose your browser
Johnson said more and more “average users” are getting choosy about which browser to use, and don’t always go for the default anymore. He compared the browser’s new competitive landscape to people who subscribed to AOL in the early days of the Internet.
“If you were a novice with the Web, AOL was perfect. It kept everything in a contained area. As you got more and more experienced with it, you were able to do more stuff without AOL’s hand holding. I think the same thing is now happening with browsers,” he said.
“Four years ago, Internet Explorer came with Windows and you wouldn’t think about using anything else because that was how you got to the Internet. As time has gone on and people have become more savvy, that ability to install a piece of software that you can use instead has become more palatable to people.”
Cullin, who teaches multimedia courses, is one of the people who believes the browser already is more important than the OS. He prefers to do as little as possible with desktop apps, because it makes more sense for him to have online access to his files as much as possible.
“I have become a convert of Google Docs in the last six months. I have stopped using Excel and now do all my spreadsheet work inside Google,” he said, explaining that face-to-face meetings with other teachers are often not necessary anymore because they are able to access each others’ course-schedule spreadsheets in real time.
“The data’s in the cloud.”
Cullin has also observed that most of his students prefer to develop their projects on Firefox, but admitted that this probably has as much to do with that browser’s hip young image as it has to do with any real technological benefit.
“Out of 50 students fewer than five developed their projects on things other than Firefox,” he said.
Even so, according to Shiau, most businesspeople will probably still end up using Microsoft products for the foreseeable future, even if the majority of their time will be spent online and not within desktop applications. “The browser would be more important than the OS if everyone went to Web apps completely. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t still have platform battles. There would still be a large Microsoft install base.”
WHAT'S NEW IN IE8
According to Microsoft, Internet Explorer 8 ushers in a new Web experience, whether you are a developer writing to standards or an end user checking out a new online service.
Key new features include:
> Activities: Activities are contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any Web page, simply by right-clicking on any word in the browser. Activities typically involve one of two types of actions. “Look up” finds information related to data in the current Web page, and “Send” forwards specific content from the current page to another application.
 > WebSlices: WebSlices enable users to subscribe to specific content from directly within a Web page. WebSlices behave just like RSS feeds: users can subscribe to pieces of content and receive update notifications when the content changes. Developers can mark parts of Web pages as WebSlices and enable users to monitor that information from wherever they are on the Web. eBay and Facebook are already doing this.
> Developer tools and enhancements: The browser’s layout engine is now compliant with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.1. Built-in developer tools enable developers to debug HTML, CSS and JavaScript in a visual development environment that is included with the Web browser. Developers can identify and resolve issues using the Document Object Model. The developer toolbar also allows the layout to be changed on the fly so each rendering scenario can be tested thoroughly.
IE8 Beta 1 is available for download right now. According to Microsoft, the release of IE8 will be determined based on feedback from customers and partners.
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