Comments on: Browsers: More Important Than Ever. Also More Boring.

By: a-wiki ben emosivbe.

a-wiki ben emosivbe. — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:04:32 +0000

a-wiki ben emosivbe. This peace was quite inspiring.

By: Microsoft Research Releases New Paper…Schools Us In Browser Security | Infosecurity.US

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:01:29 +0000

[...] Browsers: More Important Than Ever. Also More Boring. (technologizer.com) [...]

By: SharePoint Daily for February 9, 2009 - SharePoint Daily - Bamboo Nation

SharePoint Daily for February 9, 2009 - SharePoint Daily - Bamboo Nation — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:07:38 +0000

[...] Browsers: More Important Than Ever. Also More Boring. (Technologizer)This piece was inspired by spending the past few days using the RC1 version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. But it’s really a sequel-of-sorts to a blog post I wrote for PC World back in March of last year, when the first beta of IE 8 appeared. That one was called Internet Explorer 8 and the Boring Era of Web Browsers, and the gist was that even though browsers mattered more than ever in this era where we spend so much of our lives on the Web, Microsoft and other browser companies seemed to be focusing on under-the-hood improvements (like better support for Web standards) and were short on strikingly new features that let folks use their browsers in new ways. (IE 8’s Accelerators and Web Slices, for instance, are its most significant new tools–and they’re just not that big a whoop.) [...]

By: Chris Peterson

Chris Peterson — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:26:50 +0000

I think we are slowly going to get the best of everything. Microsoft is going to keep moving towards web standards and their browser is going to be the same boring browser it always was. No fuss or dramatic changes to the end user.
Firefox will continue to work on a community based web browser that supports plugins and other ways to make it personalized.
Chrome is there to run web apps and be quick and out of your way.
I think its great that we get such variety of software that is all doing the same task but fundamentally thinking about it in a different way.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:28:19 +0000

I use Chrome at work. I use Safari, Firefox, and Camino at home and in that order.
Chrome is infinitely faster than IE. Safari is also faster than the other two on my Mac. So speed is the main thing for me.
When Chrome comes to Mac, I’ll be happy. It’d be really nice if it just had one feature for me – ad blocks. Other than that, I really couldn’t care less about the other features. I’d use Safari exclusively on my Mac if it played nicer with some Google-related features like Blogger, etc.

By: JonathanPDX

JonathanPDX — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:18:36 +0000

Boring is good, Harry. So is usability and compatibility.

Although IE7 has made some improvements, it’s still the proverbial bull in the china shop.

Perhaps one day Microsoft will stop thinking “Microsoft-compatible” and start thinking “User-Friendly”, “Usability” and “Web-compatible”.

I tried Chrome when it first came out, but lost interest. Guess I’ll have to take another look at it.

Thanks!

By: Arthur

Arthur — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:11:05 +0000

I’m really happy that Microsoft focuses on under-the-hood improvements like Web standards, they have been ignoring it long enough.

They also finally made some performance improvements on the JavaScript engine,
which I find very important since more and more web applications rely heavily on JavaScript.
IE7′s JS engine is magnitudes slower than the competition (based on this recent talk: http://bit.ly/XTLE) but, according to Microsoft, IE8′s JS performance has increased 400% up from IE7.

I’m using a recent WebKit nightly for surfing around the web because it’s super-fast and
has a simple and clean interface. I use Firefox with some addons (Web Developer Toolbar, Firebug) for web development though as WebKit still isn’t on the same level as FF when it comes to debugging.

By: Randy Peterman

Randy Peterman — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:39:03 +0000

For the record I have Multi-IE installed (versions 3-7 [and 8 beta on another machine], Chrome, Safari [windows and OS X], Opera 9, and Firefox 3 and 3.1). I’m a developer and I have to say that IE8 is a major improvement for me as a developer. I hope that IE8.5 is a major step in performance. They could not add a new feature and improve JavaScript performance and I’d probably fly to Redmond and give Dean a hug. OK, maybe I wouldn not go that far, but its my hope they’ll blow the others out of the water with performance just to keep things interesting. Now that that’s out of the way…

I’m going to disagree: the browser manufacturers should make the browsers boring. Instead, they should allow you to add extensions and customize the browser as needed with tools that get done what you need to get done. The problem with browser vendors doing all of the work for new features in the UI instead of third parties is that they have enough on their plates trying to implement standards, fix bugs, and improve performance.

Most users of the web based applications I work on are using Internet Explorer or Firefox. If I could get all of the IE users to upgrade to IE8 their user experience of MY software would be better even if their user experience of IE8 was not much better than IE7. If Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE and Opera all deliver fast browsing, standards compliance, and an extensible API then browser users will win no matter which browser they’re using, no matter how boring it is.

Bring on the boring, but with more speed.