Of the browser road ahead

Read/WriteWeb has an interesting post about the road ahead for both Firefox and Internet Explorer:

Mozilla recognizes that its strengths for normal users are its extensions and customization....So Firefox is aiming to be the best general Web browser - e.g. it wants to be faster for AJAX apps.

...

Among the mandatory requirements listed for FF3 are improving the add-on experience, providing "an extensible bookmarks back-end platform", adding more support for web services "to act as content handlers" - all of which show that Firefox wants to be an independent information broker rather than a simple HTML renderer in its next version.

...

Looking ahead, it's obvious that IE will continue to hook into the advanced functionality that Vista offers.

It's certainly no surprise to anticipate that IE will deepen it's hooks into the OS, making advanced features of Vista available. As long as that doesn't make it a giant security liability, then it seems like the obvious choice. Firefox, meanwhile, opening more directly up to web services could face similar security issues.
Either way, there is too much of an install base for the countless javascript/AJAX apps out there to have either new browser break what works now....in the depths of the browser wars years ago, sites were forced to adapt -- in todays environment, if a new browser release doesn't work with core online applictions, such as gmail, yahoo, or hotmail, expect that users won't upgrade.




Read the rest at: Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation - Browsers Heading Apart Again

Posted by juechi at January 12, 2007 12:10 PM