Comments on: The Web's unfortunate fetish with the browser

Why do we persist in looking at the Web through a browser, asks CNET Blog Network contributor Matt Asay.

[jacobshm]

Hey Matt,

You might consider using Prism from Mozilla. Its basically a browser for a specific site, meaning I use it for Pandora and Google Reader and the icons stay on my desktop. When I open Pandora from the desktop it loads exactly like in the browser but without any toolbars or buttons.

Keep in mind this is an early prototype and only for Windows, but my Vista laptop has NEVER had an issue with it. You can read all about the project at the link I posted; scroll down to find the download link.
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/

BTW, your blog is awesome.

[Matt Asay]

Just updated the blog with Prism in case people don't read the comments. This is *exactly* what I was looking for. Thanks for sharing.

[rmccabe916]

The reason why the browser exists is so that developers can have a way to create web applications based upon standards that have been made to be followed across many different devices. It would be very difficult for developers to create seperate applications that have to depend on the eccentricities of each device they are trying to get them to run on. Not everybody wants to follow the same path and I believe you understand that as one of the main advantages of open source and open standards.

I would also like to take issue with your statement that proprietary browsers cannot strip away their elements like what Prism can. I use Opera and have been able to do this for quite a while since before Prism was released. Opera simply needs to take some time to do what Mozilla did with Prism for each application.

And a final though: would you actually want a desktop icon for every website you visit? I think that everything would become extremely cluttered in my opinion if you wanted more than one application/site open at once.

[jottley]

I wouldn't want an icon for _every_ site I visit, but for those web applications I live in: Zimbra, SugarCRM, Google Reader, etc. it is invaluable.

[watnotte]

There's another one called Fluid based on WebKit for Mac OS X.

http://fluidapp.com/

Says it's inspired by the Prism project. Maybe this is the next logical step in the evolution of the rich web application.

[mikekrause]

Hi Matt,

I think you're right on. The web and the web browser were initially designed to be stateless and to present multi-valent documents by letting you pull together various bits of information onto one page. Great. It does that very well.

Web browsers were never built to perform thick-client application tasks. Tasks that require a real model-view-controller architecture and state. AJAX is still in its infancy and is a poor solution for trying to get thick-client like functionality in a web browser. I truly believe it's forcing the entire industry to take ten giant steps backward with regard to thick client applications which were already being done well with Java and .Net.

It's truly a sad state of affairs right now that we are still forced to use a web browser for something it was never designed or intended to do.

[paul.saulnier]

I think you're complaining about nothing.

If you don't want 3 tiers of toolbars, then disable them!

I'm a fan of Firefox myself, but your attack against IE is unfounded. It's very easy if not easier than Firefox to strip away the browser artifacts and integrate it into a 3rd party application.

Maybe the web browser was never intended to do what it does today, but it has advanced because developers had deemed it the best platform for a variety of tasks. Initially, computers themselves were only large numeric calculators. Maybe we should argue against any progress that is outside this realm as well.

[mikekrause]

Not "the best platform" - it's the ONLY platform on which to deliver web content that works and works consistently well. Sun has partially solved this problem of distributing a thick client over the web with Java Webstart. But webstart suffers from a few very serious problems that make it a versionitis nightmare.

I think Matt's point is that there ought to be something better to come along that gives us thick client capabilities over the web that doesn't require hobbling programmers.

[rcrusoe]

We run CommuniGate email servers and our users love their Pronto! email client. It's a flash app that launches from a browser but will soon be available as an Adobe AIR app.

http://www.communigate.com/pronto/

[arackaf]

I must say, I'm quite confused about all this hype for prism. Is the address bar, back/forward buttons etc so unbearable that people want to split out each website into a separate app for prism? Why would I want to go back to my start button and click a shortcut to go to Amazon.com, my bank, google, etc, when I can just open a new firefox/IE7 tab and type in an address or click a bookmark.

[jacobshm]

Sometimes its much easier to keep things seperate. For example I use Google Reder several times a day as a news aggregator and I much prefer to have it act like a native app. Its always logged in as me and I dont have to Go through the couple extra steps. It basically comes down to preferance: if youre someone who is bothered by small things like that, then you might find it handy.

Thank You for reading the comments, Matt.

[ps_martin]

I haven't read or heard anyone suggesting that they "want to split out each website into a separate app". For general browsing I use the tab functionality in Firefox and IE.

That said, I have a couple of web applications (Backpack & Basecamp) that I use constantly and it is nice to have them in their own window and to be able to treat them like separate applications.

The old saying "Different strokes for different folks" comes to mind.

[jacobshm]

Sometimes its much easier to keep things seperate. For example I use Google Reder several times a day as a news aggregator and I much prefer to have it act like a native app. Its always logged in as me and I dont have to Go through the couple extra steps. It basically comes down to preferance: if youre someone who is bothered by small things like that, then you might find it handy.

Thank You for reading the comments, Matt.

[Matt Asay]

I personally don't want a separate "app" for each web application. But some just feel like they should be separate. Facebook, to me, feels like something I'd do in a browser. Zimbra? No. Google Search? Yes. SugarCRM? No. Etc.

[tony_alicea]

This is a constant struggle for web application developers, as the browser was never designed for maintaining state and rich interactivity. Everything that is attempted now is a workaround, or an add-on. It depends if your application is web-centric, or self contained. If it is self contained, then it makes perfect sense to build a windows application (or mobile application for a particular client) and call web services for data management. If the application, however, wants to be open and interact with other sites then it should be browser based.

This has bothered me a great deal as a developer coming from a stateful environment to the web environment during the course of my work. I wrote an article once proposing a stateful browser and web server architecture. I've stuck it up on my blog here: http://www.allthingshappy.com/1009.aspx

As websites become web applications (and users demand more and more functionality), this issue will become more and more important.

[florianscalix]

Matt,

knowing you've been a fan and friend of Zimbra for a long time, might still be worth noting that even without wrapping the browser with an application specific shell to reduce it to it's engine (which may require installing "something", even if little, on the local machine, and that's always a step to be considered), one can still improve the user experience quite easily.

One can get rid of most of the browser artifacts; as a matter of fact, our own webmail client, Scalix Web Access, has done that by default for years, since it's inception, and all that without the use of Flash, Prism technology or anything else - plain old browser is sufficient. The login screen has all the goodies around it, the next window opens in what's technically a pop-up, off you go. You can close your login window and all that remains is a floating application window that has very little browser flavor to it. Simple. Further activities (such as writing a new email) also open in their separate and true and real windows, not simulated overlays like for some other applications - working in them in parallel, copying and pasting between them is easy, possible, straightforward, app-ish.

The price we pay for this is that the user needs to unblock pop-ups for their mail server, given it's a one-time per client this seems reasonable.

IE7 has reduced the experience a little as it reqires to display a URL bar for security reasons, but main menu bar and toolbar(s), the most distracting elements and UI confusions are still gone. And for what remains, doing it for IE is no rocket science.

So the choice of user experience is clearly in application vendors hand's and it's fairly simple, if not trivial to resolve the issue; the above was ours and I agree to your opinion that this is what the user prefers for web applications, it fully matches the feedback we get....

Cheers,
Florian.

[MadLyb]

Wow!

I have an idea. Let's get rid of the browser and have standalone apps for each thing I need to do on the web...

I think this is called Client Server and we already did it...before the web.

As other posters have already mentioned, the whole point to using the browser was to get rid of hundreds of standalone clients sitting on a machine, requiring separate maintenance, creating conflicts, consuming resources.

I agree that using the browser as an application platform is like using a wheelbarrow to move your house, but no standards based solution that doesn't involve vendor lock-in, or IP entanglements has surfaced.

Then, you need good tools for that platform that again don't involve vendor lock-in, or IP entanglements.

Then, that platform has to scale to the web where you can go from a few dozen transactions to millions in just a few seconds.

Get the picture. It isn't easy and so the browser remains the primary vehicle.

The missing piece is persistence beyond the network and it is a tricky animal. Many have tried to fill the gap. You mentioned Adobe and AIR, which is the latest step in their almost decade-long march (Flex, Shockwave, Director). At their pace, we have a true replacement by 2010.

As to the toolbars, turn them off or hide them. It's really easy. In IE, which you really unfairly bashed (trying to build some street cred?), just hit F11 (Fullscreen) and set the remaining bar to autohide and voila, all you have is the main browser or application interface if you prefer.

[jdreeves]

This article would have been much more credible if you had acknowledged and articulated why the browser *is* such an attractive medium for distributing applications. Making software succeed isn't easy, and clearly the browser has something going for it that whatever new technology comes along to augment/replace it will have to factor in somehow.

For example:
- users' fear of downloading and installing software. Many people are worried about fear of viruses and corrupted systems, and right or wrong, regard the browser as a kind of 'firewall' against nasty stuff off the net.
- many users can't install new software on their computers because of IT policies
- what else?

[CanadianAvenger]

Seems like this could easily be addressed with some command line options with the browsers. (unfortunately, currently not supported as far as I can tell)

With a link, and some javascript, one can specify a new window, with none of the browser jewlery, the browser writers should add these options to the command line, so shortcuts can be created to do the same.

I would prefer it this way... I shouldn't have to install a new browser for each web app that I want to use. But I agree, it would be nice to do it from the desktop, like any other local app.

As a work around, for those that don't want to usesomething like Zimbra, one could create a local "launch" desktop webpage, that would open the selected app in a new window, without the 'extras'.

Hi Matt,

I agree with you 110%, and me and my colleagues have been working on exactly this for a few years now. You might want to try the open source Sidewinder Web Applications Viewer:

http://www.swcube.com/

There are some tutorials with screenshots, if you want to see how it works, showing things like:

* how to use iPhone applications as desktop gadgets;

* running some of the Adobe Flex demos as desktop applications;

* how to run large apps like Google Reader, GMail, and so on as full desktop
apps;

* how to use JavaScript as a first class programming language (i.e., not
embedded in HTML, but as a standalone web applications language);

* how to remove chrome so that windows can 'hover' over the desktop,
particularly effective with Silverlight/PopFly applications (there is a video
tutorial for this at http://www.swcube.com/howto/popfly-facebook);

* how to hide windows off the side of the screen when not in use (great
with GMail and Google Reader);

* how to control the creation of new windows so that they too can be
docked or slide off (again, great with Google Reader, when you open the
full version of an article).

Sidewinder does a lot more, including providing an editor, a standalone browser mode, a shortcut and menu creation tool, easy creation of browser extensions like toolbars using XHTML, and it can even run embedded in IE.

Oh...and you can switch rendering engines with a simple parameter. At the moment Sidewinder supports IE and Gecko (the Firefox engine) but we'll shortly be releasing WebKit support.

The philosophy is that with Sidewinder any web application can be loaded as a desktop application, and this can often be done in many cases without even using a manifest file, via a novel technique for passing run-time parameters via the URL. By controlling the creation of new windows, and managing communication between them, we're aiming to enable complete desktop applications to be written with XHTML, SVG, XForms and a little script.

Some background to the ideas, is here:

http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2007/08/sidewinder-and-need-for-semantic-web.html