Browser Bits and Bobs for October 14, 2008

14 October 2008 by Matthew Gertner - Category: Industry News

Let’s call this an “in case you missed it” edition of Browser Bits and Bobs, since I’ve been disgustingly busy and haven’t posted anything in far too long. But for those who have been preoccupied by events outside the tech sector (MLB postseason, impending financial armageddon, talking chihuahuas, etc.): this is for you.

  • Chrome uptake tails off quickly (with more gloomy commentary at Giga Om). I’ve been running cold and hot on Chrome’s market potential, but with the steady hand of hindsight (backed up by statistics) to prop me up, I’ll stick with my original assertion that there simply isn’t much room in the market for a new browser brand. Google should focus on making Chrome an awesome single-site browser. I suspect that, once market realities set in, they may well do this.
  • I learned a lot from this interview about HTML 5 with Ian Hickson. Just one thing: 2022? Really? I’m all for setting realistic (i.e. highly pessimistic) deadlines, but let’s strap on a pair and get this puppy out the door. My long and storied experience with missing delivery dates has taught me that setting deadlines too far in the future doesn’t make it more likely that you will hit them. It just reduces urgency and makes everything take even longer.
  • Ars Technica has a detailed writeup on Skyfire, a Gecko-based browser for Windows Mobile. I’m not sure that users are going to be that gung ho to install third-party browsers on their devices, but maybe Skyfire’s strategy is to cut OEM deals once they are ready. The server-side rendering idea is certainly intriguing, although it breaks a core adage of the technology sphere: never bet against Moore’s Law.
  • Did you know that Google has an open source effort called Chromium that complements its Chrome browser? Oh, you did? Ah well, my fault for having such spectacularly smart, well-informed and discerning readers. Anyway, here is a veritable slew of information about the relationship between Chromium, Chrome and the Google mothership
  • I’ve been hearing for many months that Adobe has Flash running on the iPhone in its labs. Well here’s confirmation (that they are, at very least, working on it). Lack of Flash is one of the things I love least about my iPhone, so I dearly hope this happens. What use is a web without Flash video and Scramble?
  • Todd Ditchendorf has done a fantastic job on Fluid. Now he’s readying a new OS X browser. The feature list is hot, but the same caveats mentioned for Google Chrome apply here, minus the market-bending might of the web’s most powerful company. And why the heck is this a “social browser”? Is every new piece of software now “social” by default?
  • Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith of Ajaxian join Mozilla to head an effort creating new tools for web development. The web sorely needs better development tools. Firebug is getting more love, and Ajaxian (them again!) ran a fascinating piece today about JS Bin, a pastebin variant that enables collaborative development of JavaScript code. Methinks I spot a trend.

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COMMENTS
  • Screwtape

    The 2022 thing has been addressed before (many times in fact, in the wake of that interview) but it bears repeating: Hixie expects it to take that long for *two* interoperable *complete* implementations to be available. HTML4 has been around for however many years and I don’t think there’s even one complete implementation, let alone two interoperable complete implementations.

  • Matthew Gertner

    Fair enough, but I still think that:

    a) The PR impact of attaching HTML5 to a date in the distant future (won’t we all be too preoccupied with our jetpacks by then to care about markup standards?) can only be negative, and

    b) Even if the goal is to have two interoperable implementations (certainly an excellent goal), they could be a bit more ambitious with the deadline. After all, I don’t think the lack of interoperable HTML4 implementations has anything to do with the fact that they set the deadline for this to happen too soon and failed to meet it.

  • http://enefekt.com/sansbrowser/ enefekt

    Careful, that Flash talk is off-message for Planet Mozilla. :)

  • Matthew Gertner

    Heh, I’ve been accused of many things, but toeing the line of Planet Mozilla orthodoxy isn’t one of them.

  • http://www.ardisson.org/ Smokey Ardisson

    You also missed that Opera has hired Jon Hicks (designer of the Firefox and Thunderbird logos, etc.) as Senior Designer for its various products.

  • Ricardo Proença

    Regarding your last point, I think JavaScript is clearly gaining momentum.

    As Dana Blankenhorn said when Google released Chrome “JavaScript wins”, because it is deep in the core of the browser. Even if it can´t draw to many users at least it validates JavaScript and the Mozilla vision of the web – one where it is a core language.

    Another push is JavaScript library JQuery being adopted by Microsoft and Nokia.

    These 2 events are just to part of a series that unfolded in the last few months.

    It reminds me of the momentum that Python built when everyone was praying its easy learning curve and when it was chosen to be the first supported language on Google App Engine.

    Dare we say: “JavaScript is the new Python”?