Web Browsers and OS Wars
by Pierre Boisvenue. 24/05/2007 1:58:34 PM
It is interesting to watch Adobe, Sun, Open Source, IBM, Google and Microsoft to name of few entities, fight it out for the attention of customers,
customers being Corporations, small businesses, governments, home user and software developers. Yes, software developers
are customers to but a special kind.
Customers needs are unique and so are the platforms they use but web applications such as web browsers has somehow crossed platform boundaries. An interesting point is that if it were not for standards a lot of the technologies we use and take for granted everyday would not be possible. What is interesting to watch is how the big software entities pull technologies and standards their direction to gain market share and watch Google, first a search engine extending itself ever more using the web browser and soon other devices as the means.
I believe that Google’s audience at the moment is the regular web user and offers technologies what I like to call ON. I try not to get to close and make heavy use of technologies based on JavaScript like Ajax and Gears however waiting patiently for a JavaScript replacement or improvement based on a real object oriented language and solid data types. However the technologies presented by Google facilitates communication and the creation of web communities also phrased as web 2.0.
As a Programmer/Analyst I am bombarded everyday with new technologies and must make choices and to what is worth pursuing.On the web server side I was tempted by Apache but now that IIS 7 is out I will stay put with it and .Net. Microsoft with IIS 7 is also inviting on board PHP and Python developers traditionally coding towards Apache.
On the client front end we have Apollo from Adobe which is a new package containing existing technologies such as Flash, Flex, Html, ActionScript, JavaScript and Ajax. An interesting mix of parts to make web and standalone applications. It is unfortunate that Flash is not so well received within the web community because in my opinion the user experience is so good that Microsoft took notice and came out with SilverLight. Now why search engines and Adobe cannot meet to discuss standards because SilverLight will be discoverable by search engines apparently.
We are also being presented by .Net Framework 3.0 found in the next OS generation from Microsoft found in windows Vista and Longhorn server to be released shortly that contains technologies such as SilverLight, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Cardspace. Basically .Net 2.0 code organized into modules is what .Net Framework is about.
The thing with .Net and the CLR it is closer to the OS that the other technologies and it is a fact that who controls the OS controls the applications for better or for worse and that fact may be leveraged accordingly.
In my opinion, information technology serve two camps. First the business community that sometime rely on mission critical applications and the regular user community that is more geared towards news, access to information and entertainment. The choices made available are tremendous and everyday decisions must be taken. Making wrong decisions can be costly and this is why I will continue to examine, analyze, learn and keep an open mind.
WEB Browser, Vista, Google, Adobe, Flash, Flex, SilverLight, .Net framwork 3.0,Sun Open Source, IBM, PHP, Python, .Net 2.0 , CLR, IIS 7
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