Web Development Live

The browser, that porthole onto the broad horizon of the Web, is about to get some fancy new window dressing.

Next month, after three years of development and six months of public testing, Mozilla, the insurgent browser developer that rose from the ashes of Netscape, will release Firefox 3.0. It will feature a few tricks that could change the way people organize and find the sites they visit most frequently.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft recently took the wraps off the first public test version of the latest edition of Internet Explorer, which is used by about 75 percent of all computer owners, according to Net Applications, a market share tracking firm. The finished version of Internet Explorer 8 could be released by the end of the year and is expected to have additional features.

Even Apple, which once politely kept its Safari browser within the confines of its own devices, is making a somewhat controversial push to get it onto the computers of people who use Windows PCs.

In other words, the browser war the skirmish that landed Microsoft in antitrust trouble in the ’90s is heating up again.

“The typical browser for today’s consumer doesn’t look all that different than it did 10 years ago,” said Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, one of the firms that invested in Flock, a browser start-up. “That is an unsustainable trend that is the launching point for the second browser war, which will not be won by monopolistic muscle but by innovation.”

America Online, which acquired Netscape, spun off the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation in 2003. Its Firefox browser soon inspired an open-source movement backed by computer enthusiasts. Early versions of Firefox introduced features like a built-in pop-up blocker to kill ads, and tabbed browsing, which lets users toggle between Web windows.

Firefox now has 170 million users around the world and an 18 percent share of the browser market, according to Net Applications. That is especially impressive given that most of its users have made the active choice to download the software, while Internet Explorer is installed on most PCs at the factory.

In addition to giving Microsoft a kick in its competitive pants, Firefox has also reinforced for the high-tech industry the financial and strategic value of the browser. In 2004, Google struck a deal with Mozilla to include a Google search box tucked into a corner of the Firefox browser. According to Mozilla’s most recent tax documents, in 2006 Google paid Mozilla $65 million for the resulting traffic to its search listings.

“People in the industry foresee a time in which for many people, the only thing they’ll need on a computer is a browser,” said Mitch Kapor, the software pioneer who now sits on the board of the Mozilla Foundation and has created a start-up, FoxMarks, that is developing a tool to synchronize bookmarks between computers. “The browser is just extraordinarily strategic.”

That notion has helped to rekindle the browser wars and has resulted in the latest wave of innovation. Firefox 3.0, for example, runs more than twice as fast as the previous version while using less memory, Mozilla says.

The browser is also smarter and maintains three months of a user’s browsing history to try to predict what site he or she may want to visit. Typing the word “football” into the browser, for example, quickly generates a list of all the sites visited with “football” in the name or description.

Firefox has named this new tool the “awesome bar” and says it could replace the need for people to maintain long and messy lists of bookmarks. It will also personalize the browser for an individual user.

“Sitting at somebody else’s computer and using their browser is going to become a very awkward experience,” said Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation.

Internet Explorer 8, from Microsoft, promises its own set of tricks. One new tool, Web slices, allows a user to bookmark a dynamic piece of a Web site, like an online auction or a sports score, and save it in the margin of the browser, where the user can watch as it changes.

Another new feature, called activities, allows users to highlight text on a page, click on it, then instantly send it to another site, like a mapping, e-mail or blogging service.

Asked whether Firefox’s increasing popularity had motivated these and other improvements, Mr. Hachamovitch of Microsoft said only, “We love to compete.” But he did say that amid the new competitive pressures, “the quality and quantity of my team has gone up significantly.”

His group will have one other company besides Mozilla to keep its eye on: Apple’s Safari Web browser has a little over 5 percent of the market, according to Net Applications, and subsists mostly on the loyalty of devoted Mac and iPhone owners.

But in March, deploying the kind of strategic jujitsu more commonly associated with Microsoft in the past, Apple began using the automatic update software that is packaged with its iTunes music player to deliver Safari onto the computers of people who use Windows. (Users had to specifically decline the Safari offer if they didn’t want the browser to be downloaded to their computers.)

The tactic irked even Apple fans in the blogosphere, along with Apple’s browser rivals. But it was at least partly successful: Net Applications reported that Apple’s market share on Windows computers had tripled since March.

In a statement released last month addressing the comments about the maneuver, Apple said it had made it easier for customers to distinguish minor updates from new programs delivered through the update software.

Apple’s boldness underscores the new importance of the Web browser in a world that is increasingly shifting online.

Shawn Hardin, chief executive of Flock, which is developing a browser that helps users share photos, videos and blog entries more easily, said consumers would ultimately benefit from the new browser battle.

DEEP in the bowels of a Las Vegas hotel, a smiley face and the
words “Hello World” display on a web page. Applause breaks out. The
page is called the Acid2 Browser Test, and the web browser is a
preview of Internet Explorer 8, presented by its platform
architect, Chris Wilson.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” says a member of the
audience to more applause from about 3000 web designers and
developers at the Mix08 conference, where Microsoft showed its
latest internet technology.
The Acid2 page (webstandards.org/action/acid2/) was created by
the Web Standards Project to test whether a browser conforms to the
official standards for describing page layout, mainly focusing on
cascading style sheets (CSS).
The reason for the applause is twofold: first, until now
Microsoft’s web browser, used by an estimated 75 per cent of
net surfers (although Firefox has been eroding that hold), has
never been close to passing the test; second, Internet Explorer’s
poor standards compliance causes significant extra work for web
designers.
When users navigate to a web page, they expect it to look and
work the same whatever the browser or operating system they are
using. Achieving this is difficult. Different browsers display the
same page differently, with IE often the worst offender.
Web developers now hope they do not have to insert conditional
code to account for these differences, but can deliver a standard
page to all browsers. “CSS support in IE8 looks thus far to be
very, very promising,” says Eric Meyer, an independent expert in
the field. “It’s very important, because the level of CSS support
in IE7 and IE6 has served as a brake on advanced CSS adoption by
authors, limiting them to less-advanced techniques and
capabilities.”
Internet Explorer has a curious history. Six versions were
released between 1995 and 2001, the time of the “browser wars” with
Netscape. Microsoft won the war and then did not release another
major version of the browser for five years - long enough for it to
become thoroughly outdated.
IE’s CSS implementation fell far behind that of other popular
browsers. In late 2006 Microsoft released IE7, which fixed some
problems but still lagged behind its rivals. “Differences between
browsers simply waste too much developer time,” says Dean
Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for IE, without
mentioning the extent to which Microsoft created the problem.
Mr Hachamovitch, who has led the Explorer team since 2003,
explains why Microsoft took so long to address these deficiencies.
“It comes down to what we were doing with our time,” he says.
“Between 2001 and 2003 we were building what you experience now as
Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight.”
These technologies display not HTML, the language of web pages,
but XAML, Microsoft’s proprietary code for creating rich visual
content.
“In 2003 and 2004 we were making IE secure,” he says, referring
to the security-focused Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Security remained the theme in IE7. The dilemma was that fixing
bugs introduced compatibility problems. “You can’t just flick a
switch and have all the browsers in the world change, or have all
the servers and services in the world change,” Mr Hachamovitch
says. The result was that some websites looked worse than before,
because they detected that IE was accessing them and delivering
content that took into account presumed peculiarities.
Microsoft’s answer was to build “compatibility modes” into IE8.
The manner in which this was done remains controversial. The
question was whether to default to the IE7 compatible mode, or
default to the better standards mode, Mr Hachamovitch says. “(We
found in) releasing IE7 that web developers were slow to modify
their sites. We wanted to keep the web working.”
Microsoft initially announced that IE8 would behave by default
like IE7. Page designers would have to include special code to turn
on IE8’s standards support. The decision was greeted with a hail of
protest because it might perpetuate a non-standard web.
Earlier this month, Mr Hachamovitch announced that Microsoft had
changed its mind. “We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default,
interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it
can.”
Apparently the key to that change of heart was a separate
strategic announcement last month, covering what Microsoft calls
interoperability principles and promising “open connections to its
products, support for industry standards and data portability”.
According to Mr Hachamovitch, Microsoft now had “a more
interoperable way; a more compatible way”.
It sounded good, but what about browser scripting. The context
is important. Mr Hachamovitch had already stated that Microsoft
spent three years neglecting IE for the sake of a more proprietary
technology, which is now appearing on the web as a browser plug-in
called Silverlight.
This is similar in some ways to Adobe’s Flash, and supports rich
multimedia effects within web pages as well as the ability to run
applications written in Microsoft’s .NET Framework.
Silverlight and Flash applications in effect bypass the browser.
Web standards advocates are wary of them because they replace the
open web with content that depends on a proprietary plug-in.
The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the cross-platform Firefox
browser, prefers to upgrade the capabilities of the browser itself.
A key component of this is JavaScript, the programming language
that runs in the browser and that is standardised by ECMA, the
European standards body, under the name ECMAScript. Mozilla is keen
to see the current JavaScript upgraded to a far more powerful
version called ECMAScript 4.0.
“Why do we care about ECMAScript 4.0?” asks Mozilla’s
vice-president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer. The answer is that
JavaScript is the language of the net. We want to keep pushing that
technology forward to make it easier for people to build bigger,
faster, more secure websites.”
Asked if Microsoft will implement ECMAScript 4.0, Mr
Hachamovitch prevaricates and talks about competing demands on the
IE development team.
“Right now there isn’t really an ECMAScript 4 offering to
implement, there is an ECMAscript for discussion.” he says.
The Guardian

DEEP in the bowels of a Las Vegas hotel, a smiley face and the
words “Hello World” display on a web page. Applause breaks out. The
page is called the Acid2 Browser Test, and the web browser is a
preview of Internet Explorer 8, presented by its platform
architect, Chris Wilson.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” says a member of the
audience to more applause from about 3000 web designers and
developers at the Mix08 conference, where Microsoft showed its
latest internet technology.
The Acid2 page (webstandards.org/action/acid2/) was created by
the Web Standards Project to test whether a browser conforms to the
official standards for describing page layout, mainly focusing on
cascading style sheets (CSS).
The reason for the applause is twofold: first, until now
Microsoft’s web browser, used by an estimated 75% of net surfers
(although Firefox has been eroding that hold), has never been close
to passing the test; second, Internet Explorer’s poor standards
compliance causes significant extra work for web designers.
When users navigate to a web page, they expect it to look and
work the same whatever the browser or operating system they are
using. Achieving this is difficult. Different browsers display the
same page differently, with IE often the worst offender.
Web developers now hope they do not have to insert conditional
code to account for these differences, but can deliver a standard
page to all browsers. “CSS support in IE8 looks thus far to be
very, very promising,” says Eric Meyer, an independent expert in
the field. “It’s very important, because the level of CSS support
in IE7 and IE6 has served as a brake on advanced CSS adoption by
authors, limiting them to less-advanced techniques and
capabilities.”
Internet Explorer has a curious history. Six versions were
released between 1995 and 2001, the time of the “browser wars” with
Netscape. Microsoft won the war and then did not release another
major version of the browser for five years - long enough for it to
become thoroughly outdated.
IE’s CSS implementation fell far behind that of other popular
browsers. In late 2006 Microsoft released IE7, which fixed some
problems but still lagged behind its rivals. “Differences between
browsers simply waste too much developer time,” says Dean
Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for IE, without
mentioning the extent to which Microsoft created the problem.
Mr Hachamovitch, who has led the Explorer team since 2003,
explains why Microsoft took so long to address these deficiencies.
“It comes down to what we were doing with our time,” he says.
“Between 2001 and 2003 we were building what you experience now as
Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight.”
These technologies display not HTML, the language of web pages,
but XAML, Microsoft’s proprietary code for creating rich visual
content.
“In 2003 and 2004 we were making IE secure,” he says, referring
to the security-focused Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Security remained the theme in IE7. The dilemma was that fixing
bugs introduced compatibility problems. “You can’t just flick a
switch and have all the browsers in the world change, or have all
the servers and services in the world change,” Mr Hachamovitch
says. The result was that some websites looked worse than before,
because they detected that IE was accessing them and delivering
content that took into account presumed peculiarities.
Microsoft’s answer was to build “compatibility modes” into IE8.
The manner in which this was done remains controversial. The
question was whether to default to the IE7 compatible mode, or
default to the better standards mode, Mr Hachamovitch says. “(We
found in) releasing IE7 that web developers were slow to modify
their sites. We wanted to keep the web working.”
Microsoft initially announced that IE8 would behave by default
like IE7. Page designers would have to include special code to turn
on IE8’s standards support. The decision was greeted with a hail of
protest because it might perpetuate a non-standard web.
Earlier this month, Mr Hachamovitch announced that Microsoft had
changed its mind. “We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default,
interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it
can.”
Apparently the key to that change of heart was a separate
strategic announcement last month, covering what Microsoft calls
interoperability principles and promising “open connections to its
products, support for industry standards and data portability”.
According to Mr Hachamovitch, Microsoft now had “a more
interoperable way; a more compatible way”.
It sounded good, but what about browser scripting. The context
is important. Mr Hachamovitch had already stated that Microsoft
spent three years neglecting IE for the sake of a more proprietary
technology, which is now appearing on the web as a browser plug-in
called Silverlight.
This is similar in some ways to Adobe’s Flash, and supports rich
multimedia effects within web pages as well as the ability to run
applications written in Microsoft’s .NET Framework.
Silverlight and Flash applications in effect bypass the browser.
Web standards advocates are wary of them because they replace the
open web with content that depends on a proprietary plug-in.
The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the cross-platform Firefox
browser, prefers to upgrade the capabilities of the browser itself.
A key component of this is JavaScript, the programming language
that runs in the browser and that is standardised by ECMA, the
European standards body, under the name ECMAScript. Mozilla is keen
to see the current JavaScript upgraded to a far more powerful
version called ECMAScript 4.0.
“Why do we care about ECMAScript 4.0?” asks Mozilla’s
vice-president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer. The answer is that
JavaScript is the language of the net. We want to keep pushing that
technology forward to make it easier for people to build bigger,
faster, more secure websites.”
Asked if Microsoft will implement ECMAScript 4.0, Mr
Hachamovitch prevaricates and talks about competing demands on the
IE development team.
“Right now there isn’t really an ECMAScript 4 offering to
implement, there is an ECMAscript for discussion.” he says.
The Guardian