A narrative on the future of web browsers and web browsing

Browser Trends: Business Models

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Commercial web applications must overcome a vexing business dilemma: how to make money in the face of so much free competition. This is a symptom of the VC-fueled internet economy that has prevailed since the dot com days. Venture capital firms provide companies with money based on some woolly half-baked ...

Browser Trends: Web-Enabled TVs

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Is the television next in line for a big technology-driven overhaul as the transformation of mobile phones into miniature computers continues apace? A panoply of set-top boxes are vying to serve as the brains of the humble boob tube, from PVRs (TiVo and company) through game consoles (XBox, Playstation, Wii) ...

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 ...