Specialty Browsers are Emerging to Offload Complexity Jon Udell gives a nice perspective of the state of the browser and Internet applications with his tongue in cheek "the browser is dead" lead to his longer essay.
Zero-footprint, cross-platform ubiquity is the upside, a clumsy UI tied to a Net umbilical cord is the downside.
At BloggerCon I referenced a paper by Bill Buxton in which he asked the question "what question was the pocket watch invented to answer". The paper is Less is More and in that document he describes an analogy between the water net and the Internet which I think is at the root of what Jon is bringing to light. The browser is going to be a retrograde where later we refer to today's browsers as web page browsers much like we have to use the distinction between oven and microwave oven. Both cook things but in very different ways.
The browser is an engine for displaying -- and interacting with -- structured documents.
Specialty browsers are emerging to optimize the task and experience of the user in ways that offload complexity and free up the user to use their mental resources in new ways. . . . (more)
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