Andrew Hagen

Feces Flinging Monkey is one of the latest converts to Firefox. (*) Firefox is a web browser, just like Internet Explorer, except a lot better. We are talking the modern era versus the Stone Age here. As FFM is finding, if you think the Internet is limited to what that little blue “e” can do, you’re going to miss a lot.

As a volunteer for the Mozilla Project and now the Mozilla Organization over the past few years, I’ve helped troubleshoot a few bugs, but mostly I’ve just watched as the technology haa come a long, long way thanks to the arduous and persistent efforts of Mozilla’s fearsome pack of brilliant developers, programmers, and other contributors. It is more than a few times when I just stare in giddy amazement at the progress they make.

The software products of the Mozilla Project are all free. (†) They include web browsers, e-mail clients, suites that combine those and other functions, and a few other items of interest.

Since it hit version 6, the Netscape browser has been based on the work of Mozila. We expect Netscape the company to replace Netscape version 7.1, released last year, with a new version of Netscape based on the latest Mozilla technology. (‡) Netscape’s reliance on Mozilla is natural, since Mozilla got its start when Netscape adopted the open source model several years ago and turned over its source code to Mozilla.

Another of several alternatives to IE is Opera. (§) This is an excellent web browser that many people swear by. Apple’s Safari also deserves mention.

Why is all this important? After the Internet took off in popularity in the mid–1990s, web technology advanced rapidly for a few years. Then, the fabled “Browser Wars” ended with victory for Microsoft and IE. Netscape was defeated, and only survived as a company thanks to its ability to adapt quickly to deteriorating circumstances. Today, Microsoft arrogantly enjoys over 90% of the web browser market. As a result of any one company holding such a tight leash over it, web technology has stagnated, and so has the web. The tech we have on the web today is not terribly different than what we had in 1998.

Now the web is about to change, again. The Guardian catches the story. (**) Thanks to the rollout of Firefox and other highly competitive web browsers, for the first time for as long as anyone can remember, Microsoft Internet Explorer has lost market share. The overall drop was, small, but even 1% of the web browser market represents over 1 million users. Meanwhile, the rate of increase of adoption of alternative browsers like Firefox has taken off like an X-Prize rocket (††) blistering into space. Microsoft’s monopoly over the web browser market is now in dire jeopardy.

Mozilla Firefox and other next-generation products boast built-in pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, and many other handy, innovative features. Most importantly, though, these browsers are designed from the ground up to be fundamentally more secure than the market leader IE. In recent weeks, the security holes in IE have been revealed to be not unlike rotten swiss cheese. (‡‡) IE’s ActiveX feature is finally biting Microsoft back, just like many observers knew it would when ActiveX was first introduced.

Microsoft won’t be releasing a major update to IE until 2006 or maybe 2007, whenever Longhorn ships. To get the new version of IE, you will have to buy an upgrade to that entirely new operating system.

If you don’t want to wait, Firefox and other alternatives are free and ready to download now.

Microsoft fought hard against the famed antitrust case to keep IE and Windows integrated, and not separated. Ironically, as it turns out, that integration is now hurting Microsoft, making it harder to improve IE.

Microsoft won the browser wars by offering IE for free when the market leader, Netscape, charged money for theirs. Now Microsoft is telling the web browser market that they want money for the next version of IE, available only in Longhorn. The competitors will all be free. The pendulum of history stings when it swings back.

I happen to be in the camp that sees Microsoft as seeing the web as a competitor to its core business. Thus, Microsoft doesn’t have a real incentive to build a better web browser. They want to wall off the web, to limit it.

If you can build your application on a web site, you can avoid tying it to just one operating system, like Windows. (§§) That way your application can work on a Mac, on Linux, and on any other competitive system. Let the users make the choice. An application can be anything from a word processor to a spreadsheet to Amazon.com to Ebay.com. The future of web applications—applications for the web, of the web, and by the web—is only going to get bigger.

Web browser technology is on the advance today, but the really interesting news is that web technology itself is now set to advance. It’s been years since we’ve seen any architectural ingenuity pertaining to the skeleton of the web, but the time of change is here again.

Groups like WHATWG are proposing extensions to hypertext (HTML) that are compelling and just make sense. (***) If XML or some radical new concept still on the drawing board is able to make a difference on the Worldwide Web, that would merely augment what is already happening in the area of hypertext.

The World Wide Web is open, free, universal, and incredibly powerful. What we are going to see in the next few years is more innovation on the web and on the Internet in general. The web will only get bigger and better.

Yes, there are foreboding signs such as governments that want to censor the Internet. They are afraid of what free and open discussion will bring to the European Union, to Canada, to China, to the Middle East, and beyond. (†††) They are afraid that maybe the old regime doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth, and that the Internet browsing public is going to see which emperor is wearing clothes and which one is not. The tyrants and the oppressors are right to be afraid of the Internet, but what they really need to fear is the power of the people, for it is the people who power the net.

The power of the web log, or blog, is only a minor piece in this puzzle. Yet, the mere concept that an individual could publish something freely, without constraint, on the web, and anyone else in the world could read it a few seconds later is like a poltergeist to the caesars, the pharaohs, and the sultans; it rattles the bones of despots everywhere.

The recent innovations in web browser technology are only the beginning of what we are going to build in facilitation of the greater knowledge and understanding of mankind. The Internet could possibly one day store a version of the collected memory of humanity.

Little things lead to big things. Nothing else does. If all goes well, they will look back to this time we live in now and see it as a pivotal moment in the full unleashing of the World Wide Web, that ingenius product of human creativity.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2004 at 01:18 and is filed under Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.