A narrative on the future of web browsers and web browsing

Browser Bits and Bobs for May 15, 2008

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Opera Mini 4.1, with a number of bug fixes and tweaks, has been released. TechCrunch with an article on Mozilla's "stealth data project", which aims to collect statistics on web usage from Firefox's 170 million strong user base. Mozilla CEO John Lilly provides some clarification. Mozilla joins the LiMo Foundation, which develops ...

Memo to Microsoft: Buy Adobe, Not Yahoo

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

If nothing else, Microsoft's prolonged attempt to acquire Yahoo has added some zest to the tech news echo chamber. The ongoing saga has provided seemingly endless fodder for mainstream news outlets and blogs to speculate about the financial merits of the deal, the strategic implications for Microsoft and Yahoo's allergic ...

Deconstructing Rich Internet Applications

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

A post by my Prism partner in crime Mark Finkle sent me spiraling back in time along an interlocking blogathon of attempts to nail down the term Rich Internet Application. Intense speed-reading of so many mammoth posts can scar the psyche, so let me paraphrase them and save you the ...

Adobe’s Quest for Web Domination

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

With the announcement of the first official release of AIR, all eyes have been on Adobe's ambitions in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) space. But Adobe also has far-reaching plans to add new features to its Flash runtime with big implications for the web, both inside the browser and out. Content ...

More on the Open Web

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

There were so many great comments on yesterday's post that I have material for at least two follow-ups. I'll talk more about the new DRM capabilities of Adobe Flash tomorrow, but first let me clarify a couple of points about the open web. Considering that most people reading this are ...

AIR, Flex and the Open Web

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

With the official release yesterday of Adobe AIR and Flex 3, it's worth taking another look at the question of what these products mean for the evolution of the web. Criticism of Adobe for the proprietary nature of its technology is hardly novel. A widely read piece by Ted Leung ...

AIR, Flash and Self-Fulfilling Prophesies

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Yesterday I mentioned in passing my bet with Mike Shaver that Adobe will deliver AIR as part of a new Flash version at some point during the year. So naturally I speed-dialed my accountant when I saw the following on Ajaxian this morning: The biggest advantage that AIR has, though, is ...

Ten iPhone Browser Improvements Steve Jobs Could Have Announced… But Didn’t

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Since I'm now a total iPhone fan boy, I'm officially allowed to say that I was a little disappointed by the 1.1.3 firmware update announced on Tuesday at Macworld. I'm actually still running the 1.1.1 firmware, since I couldn't find a freely available hack to unlock 1.1.2 for use here ...

Browser Trends: Site-Specific Browsers

Monday, January 14th, 2008

One thing that clearly differentiates web apps from their desktop counterparts is that the former run inside a tab or page in the web browser rather than in their own process. This has a number of drawbacks, several of which are elegantly set forth in the blog post announcing the ...

Browser Trends: Offline Storage

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

I'll start my exploration of the future of web browser technology by discussing some key trends that will come to the fore in 2008. The first is the addition of local storage capabilities to web browsers. This is an area that kicked into high gear last year with Mozilla's work ...