Will new browsers really upgrade the Web?
Mozilla is exhorting users to "upgrade the Web" with Firefox 3.5 and variations on that better-browsing theme can be found with Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera.
The hope is that the Web will evolve from a series of relatively static pages to a lively home for Web applications--everything from today's e-mail to tomorrow's spreadsheets. But it could take awhile for reality to catch up with the vision.
It's indeed a bright, shiny future for browsers, and the avant-garde is advancing rapidly. Web developers eager to invigorate their Web sites or build fancy Web applications have to reckon not only with the massive, slower-moving army of ordinary Web browsers, but also with inconsistent support for the latest technology.
Browsers of the future
Many of new browser features stem from HTML 5, the still-not-finalized next iteration of the HyperText Markup Language standard that defines how Web pages are described. HTML 5 has spurred the arrival of built-in video and audio, local storage that Web sites or applications can use, "Web workers" that can perform background processing tasks for a Web application, drag-and-drop for better user interfaces, and other technologies.
That's not all. Also on the frontier:
• Faster JavaScript--the language that powers Web applications such as Google Docs--is a public priority for all the top browsers except Microsoft, and performance has surged in the last year.
• Google wants browsers to use computers' processing power with Native Client and O3D.
• Through Opera Unite, Opera wants browsers to host their own applications by turning the browser into a server others can visit.
• And a variety of other standards--CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)--stand to improve browsers' graphical sophistication.
• Geolocation technology can, with the your permission, let a Web site know where you are to tailor location-specific content accordingly.
Bumps on the HTML 5 video road
The case of video support is illustrative. HTML 5 includes the "video" tag, which holds the potential to make video as routine and easy to handle as images have been for more than a decade on the Web. Instead of having to rely on a browser plug-in such as Adobe Systems' Flash Player, Microsoft's Silverlight, or Apple's Quicktime, video becomes a native part of the Web.
In theory at least. In practice, HTML 5 video is rough around the edges.
One of the biggest issues is inconsistent standards support. For images, most browsers get by fine with JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats. But in video, Mozilla has built in support for Ogg Theora, while Safari and Chrome are inclined toward the H.264 standard. The former may be distributed without licensing and royalty constraints, but the latter is more widely used to supply video content today.
So, for example, video site DailyMotion is transcoding its 300,000 videos to Ogg, but at least for now, only Firefox will play them in that format. Other browsers revert to Flash, so the site still functions without Ogg support, but that's status quo for the Web. Is it the job of the operating system, a plug-in, or the browser to supply video-decoding software?
HTML video does offer a significant departure from Flash's embedded rectangular boxes, and it's arriving on advanced mobile devices such as Apple's iPhone and Google Android phones that presently lack Flash support.
"You can start to get the Web page interacting with the video," Firefox Director Mike Beltzner said in an interview Tuesday. For example, one video can be embedded within another, and JavaScript can control the video. In one demonstration, a face-recognition software learned who was in a running video, then identified those individuals later.
A different problem afflicts local storage, which lets browser-based applications store data on a person's PC or phone, for example letting Gmail work even without a network connection. The technology derived from Google's Gears project, which embedded the SQLite database software, but others have questioned whether SQL's syntax is the best interface for Web developers. Even relying on SQLite as a standard doesn't guarantee compatibility because browsers can use different versions, Beltzner observed.
Refresh rate
It doesn't just take time for standards to be hashed out. It takes time for users to update to new browsers and for Web developers to decide there's critical mass to support them.
The most notable example is Internet Explorer 6, which initially shipped in 2001 and still is in widespread use. IE overall has 66 percent market share, according to Net Applications' May 2009 statistics; IE's share breaks down to 41 percent for IE 7, 17 percent for IE 6, and 7 percent for IE 8.
Web programmers long have bemoaned IE 6. There's a Stop IE 6 campaign. More recently, John Martz attracted attention with his cartoon message created for use when IE 6 users visit the Momentile Web site; it depicts various browsers in the treehouse spurning IE 6.
One of the benefits of Adobe's Flash is that it sidesteps some of these issues. Of course, it's a proprietary plug-in, not an open standard, which raises some developer hackles. But Flash works the same on different browsers and different operating systems, and Adobe has a reliable mechanism to upgrade users relatively swiftly to the latest version.
"Flash's success paints a target on its back," Adobe blogger John Dowdell said in a blog post about Mozilla's publicity pitch. "'Upgrading the Web' is what happens with each new Flash generation."
But browsers are getting more fluid with auto-update technology. Though Microsoft, in particular, is held back by business-user requirements, all major browsers come with technology to download and install the latest versions relatively easily. Chrome updates itself automatically without giving users any say in the matter, making its upgrade cycle perhaps the fastest of all.
Until the large number of IE 6 and IE 7 users and conservative businesses can be persuaded to get on the fast-upgrade train, though, programmers will have to reckon with older browsers, too.
But the new-browser generation has one thing going for it: standards. HTML, CSS, SVG, JavaScript, and other technologies remain fluid, but they're in the driver's seat in a way they weren't in the days of Microsoft's unquestioned dominance.
More browser variety, along with IE 8's standards-mode default, means Web developers can rely more on standards than on whatever Microsoft chose to do in 2001. It's a long way to a faster, richer, more powerful Web, but the path is clear.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
The fact is that past IE versions created a lot of laziness in the development community and that makes it hard to upgrade when applications need to be replaced or upgraded just to support the newer browsers. I think once we get past IE6/7 this may become less common.
Even today when IT is supposed to be as important to any business as Sales & Marketing, IT is still considered as a step-child and any expense towards IT is either delayed for as long as possible or is undermined by the Top Mgmt.
I don't blame Microsoft completely for the non-compatibility issue. They cannot innovate because they are obligated to support the legacy systems used by Large corporations unlike Mozilla or Google or Apple. Google is entering the Enterprise market with the Google App and they too will soon end up with this problem of supporting Legacy systems.
IMHO This is what happens when people make applications that work in browsers. Browsers are constantly updated while the applications may not be. This leads to older applications breaking in newer browsers.
For my business, I have been using all applications on our computers that do not require a browser to operate.
I see a cool future where we have 3d browsers and cool video and other stuff on the web, but I'll stick with local applications.
Perhaps global governments should fund awareness programs (major newspaper ads, etc.) that highlight the issue to normal consumers. After all, global internet commerce depends heavily on the internet & its related technologies & standards.
Our organization is stuck on IE6 because there are a number of web applications that are mission critical for HR, payroll, accounting, business continuity, etc., that are optimized for IE6 and don't render at all with IE7 or other standards-compliant browsers.
Yes, the applications are sloppy hacks run by companies who don't know anything about the web and purchased by groups here who don't know anything about the web, so we're kinda stuck. (Even upgrading your browser on your own to IE7 here messes up applications installed on the computer.)
and the poor college students that somehow think that firefox is 'faster'
firefox isn't faster.
it's not more secure
it doesn't half half the features of IE.
and now google is jamming their own version of rich clients down your throat-- so you guys think that somehow-- IE has been _WRONG_ for doing this.. and now chrome wants to do the same thing?
Most web developer that primarily use firefox are 100% out of touch with reality.
go get a new job if you want to use obsolete netscape tech!!
Wow! You made a couple of VERY emotional IE statements, in the comments for this article. Are you an IE developer?
This comment was not about IE. It was simply suggesting that there be a campaign to get people who are using outdated browsers to upgrade them, so that web developers can start making use of some of the latest features of HTML5, etc.
IE6 is over 8 years old and has over 20 security hole in it right now, even if you install all of Microsoft's security patches. To play the security card when justifying not upgrading IE6 for a corporation is just appalling if not totally ignorant at best.
Here is some light reading.. scroll down to the security vulnerabilities section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Security_vulnerabilities
Perhaps you do not fully understand how Flash works.
FIrst, the standards are pretty loose resulting in issues wit interpretation and the only real interoperability testing is ACID which isn't bulletproof.
Then, we have browsers trying to out feature each other which results in:
Bloat and what should be a nimble document and light application container becomes one of the largest resource hogs on my machine.
I want firefox and chrome to be able to do everything that IE does before I begin to care!!!
I am not saying that things should not evolve, but it is the combination of a broken standards process combined with proprietary implementation of what standards we have that leads to the headaches we have in cross-browser functionality.
I worked with the groups that established the standards for EDI-Int (Electronic Data Interchange over the Internet) and it was quickly recognized that the key to making the standards successful was to establish interoperability testing and certification and I think the browser market could stand a good dose of this process.
Of course, who should do this testing is another matter. 8^)
BTW, thanks for being active in the conversation after you post. It really adds to the discussion.
Matt
Having watched a lot of standards, successful and otherwise, I have concluded there is a big gap between standards and reality. Reference designs can help clear up the inevitable ambiguity in the spec, at least, though. Certification is a nightmare, of course. Handy tests like ACID3 are a help, at least, even if they're imperfect. Certification? That's going to be tough.
Most companies are still stuck on Windows 95/98/2000/Me/XP. 98 and 2000 have the largest amount of installs.
Occasional law firm or hobby shop still using Windows 3.1 or DOS.
Windows Update hasn't been applied to most of those installs. Ever. The company simply doesn't care.
Unless it was a media company, and most of them have switched to either Harris or Apple systems, people are still stuck on old Windows without updates or anything upgraded about either IE6 or IE5.
So many people find what works for them and stick with it. "Why should I upgrade?" is the question they're asking, "as long as the old tech works for me?"
When you can no longer access major sites, users will switch browsers. It does require a bit of guts, because your pushing away users. Unfortunately, corporations are generally spineless in this area, so they aren't willing to take the risk -- even if it would quickly pay off for all.
For example, while Microsoft is happy to push Silverlight contents on you, it won't force you to upgrade to IE 8 to access their site.
It will be interesting to see how the video tag comes into play and how that will work... specifically for required codecs and such.
- by FearNo1 June 17, 2009 10:53 AM PDT
- I did not know there was a royalty with h.264. I thought it was an open standard.
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