Salon.com on Browser Wars, Mozilla and Internet Clients. This article makes for an interesting read for a variety of reasons. The theme of the "end of the browser wars" has been active for some time, with popular opinion being that Internet Explorer won.
It's been really frustrating to see this worldview. Quitely, in the background, Macromedia has been working on an agenda to re-establish the importance of the client software environment on the Internet, and dramatically evolve past where the HTML-based browser has left us (nearly stagnant for the past four years).
With the introduction of Flash MX and Flash Player 6, Macromedia has released what we've dubbed "a next-generation rich client" that integrates media, communications and applications functionality into a runtime that can deliver desktop-like (better) experiences both within the browser and standalone on desktops and devices.
HTML browsers are great as document display mechanisms, and for simple hyper-text based application interfaces, but fall down as the sophistication and complexity of the interface or media grows.
The other thing that's interesting is the discussion about the use of Mozilla as a platform for Internet client software. There's a lot to learn from mozilla.org and mozdev.org. It's a great, active and successful open source platform that I suspect will continue to innovate for years to come. More interesting is the nascent standards around XML user interface languages, such as XUL.
I think there's an inevitable intersection that will come about when the world of XML-based data and user interface languages meets rich clients like Flash and the CLR. One project I'm tracking along these lines is the DENG project to deliver a full XML-centric content runtime (CSS2/XML/XForms/XPath/XSLT) on top of Flash Player 6. [Jeremy Allaire's Radio]
8:21:01 AM 
|
