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Firefox's popularity repeats Microsoft's dominating mistakes all over again
It's fairly inarguable that Firefox needs to exist. Going back just a few years ago to when Mozilla introduced what would quickly become their flagship browser, much of the internet was in the equivalent of the digital dark ages. Netscape was struggling along after Internet Explorer had successfully derailed its efforts years ago, but even IE was suffering from a stagnating development process and an industry that was trying to move forward with efforts in standards and compatibility. Sure, Opera was always on the outer fringes, but its market share hasn't really seen much of the leap that its devoted following believes it deserves.
In 2007, Firefox certainly hasn't destroyed IE's market share, but it sure has made a dent. While that's a positive thing in the name of choice and the triumph of good software, Firefox has quite possibly made a negative impact on the development of web sites and software when viewed in the context of accessibility. Think about it: before Firefox, most websites were not only 'optimized' for IE, you pretty much had to view them in IE if you wanted to see anything more than the equivalent of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle blown apart with a shotgun. Even though it could be argued that web design standards have come quite a ways since then (and they certainly have), the damage done from Firefox's wild popularity among the tech savvy (and even not-so-savvy) primarily lies in this new frontier of web apps and services.
Context
The web was originally conceived to deliver information in a format that anyone with an internet-connected device can read. Certainly, we've come quite a ways since then with virtually any kind of device accessing the web and sporting any size screen, but complex web apps and services like StumbleUpon, Clipmarks and even del.icio.us occupy an entirely new space altogether. These web apps aren't necessarily vital to the common internet user, but they still are services delivered (or in the case of the fantastic new del.icio.us Firefox add-on: greatly enhanced) over the medium of the web - as long as you're only using IE or Firefox.
Examples
Take Clipmarks, for example. With a unique approach to the website clipping, bookmarking and sharing experience, the only way to partake in their services is by installing an extension that exclusively runs on IE or Firefox. StumbleUpon is even worse in this regard: not only are their services designed to work with a toolbar for Firefox alone, but significant portions of account management - including changing one's password - can only be done through the toolbar; there is no way to change your StumbleUpon password unless you are using Firefox with the StumbleUpon toolbar installed.
Discuss
Without doubt, it is valid to question how important or meaningless these browser/plug-in constraints are. While it is likely that the general user won't take much of an interest in many of these web apps, the fact still remains that these companies are shunning web standards and accessibility in the creation of their services. In effect, we have transitioned from a period where web design, apps and services required Internet Explorer to function, into an age where they require Internet Explorer or Firefox to function. An improvement? Certainly, and especially for the large portion of internet users who are browsing with an OS other than Windows. This is not an improvement, however, if one values accessibility, standards and browser agnostic services.
The solution? It's hard to say. Many will be quick to point out the now-famous quote which sums up a good portion of a rebuttal: "I love web standards; there's so many to chose from." And in a big way, they would be right. Different browsers feature different rendering engines which all treat HTML, CSS, JavaScript and dynamic web languages in subtly different, though often significant ways. Could a 'universal add-on' format ever make it to our desktops? Not likely. Should we start pushing JavaScript bookmarklets as the way to provide these services and allow virtually everyone to play along (especially considering that, for example, much of Clipmarks' functionality has been replicated well in the Tumblr bookmarklet)? That probably isn't it either, considering that JavaScript is admittedly far limited when compared to the power of true software extensions.
Who knows: maybe there isn't a solution, and maybe there doesn't need to be one. The rest of the world is getting along fine without using StumbleUpon, while the vital services like Google and Wikipedia are plenty accessible without the need for fancy extensions or even bookmarklets. Still, the discussion surrounding the direction of the web and these highly specialized and still-proprietary web apps and services is one that should be more out in the open - as long as the forums and blogs that house the discussion can be used in more than just Firefox, of course.
Comments
23
Subscribe to commentsColonel NikolaiJun 14th 2007 7:42PM
Coming late to the party: why doesn't someone write a BHO for IE that will run FFX plugins? Maybe that someone is me.
The only thing stopping me is that I think it's illegal. Seriously, I think they would sue me. They've done just this kind of thing before.
Microsoft has developed a strategy for their franchise that has made them the enemy of the future. They would love to see the Internet become nothing more than MSN and TCP/IP to become Microsoft Networking Internet Protocol. Their only hope in this situation is to lock arms with lawyers and try to take everyone down "legally" they don't like. They have the wrong strategy and it will fail. The questions is how many of us ordinary people will have to pay for the duration.
David ButtrickJun 24th 2007 4:52PM
I think that even some of your fundamental assumptions are flawed. The web was not invented originally to allow anyone with a connected device to access it.
It was originally invented in Switzerland, at CERN to allow heterogeneous scientists on heterogenous systems to share research in a consistent way. I seem to remember HTML coming after HTTP. What they needed was a way to share research on a consistent namespace. HTTP afforded them that ability.
It had very little to do with consistent representation, though that was its next step.
Think about all the places where the web took so much to do things right - like content negotiation.
Oh do you remember the very early but seldom used HTTP ANNO method? This allowed scientists to annotate each others works, and manage that in a consistent way. This method probably goes unimplmented in most servers these days, and where it is implemented, it is unused.
The web has been evolving since it was released. the needs right after its release far stripped the initial implementation, forcing all sorts of browser specific functions, and HTML markup to be implemented. Netscape released frames, ie was slow to implement them.
the advantage that HTTP brings is that while it is stateless and non-persistent, it is relatively synchronous (even though we're not supposed to think of it that way) and it does comply with a standard, and is ubiquitous.
These advantages make it easy to move away from thing about the web as a medium, and start thinking of it as a communications platform.
This is where web services comes from.
People are jumping on this because not only is this a machine to machine platform, it a machine to human platform. and that in and of itself, makes it a better platform than many others that have been built in the past.
All that said, I dont understand your point. No duh no two browsers are alike. While this sucks, rule #1 is always blame MS - they're browser is the worste for compliance. And we do love web standards, because there are so many to choose from! That's why its good - you never have to re-invent the wheel.
Bill GarrettJun 16th 2007 3:28AM
The theory presented here is interesting, but wrong, for one reason: the services that are cited as specific examples, while related to the World Wide Web, ARE NOT THE WEB. They are services built atop the Web, in much the same way that (say) a browser's bookmarks feature is a service that adds value to the Web.
I don't see anyone decrying how the Internet Explorer Favorites feature is "destroying open standards" because you can only access your Favorites in .. Internet Explorer. Of course, migrating your bookmarks between browsers these days is fairly trivial - but that's only because the "bookmarks" metaphor is mature and the implementations are well-understood. StumbleUpon and other such services are as new and proprietary as bookmarks.html once was, and they are no more "Web-based" than bookmarks are. They are a value add that exists in the browser, just as Firefox add-ons are a value add which the user can opt into.
None of this has anything to do with the actual standards of the Web itself, nor are those standards being adversely impacted by the existence of add-ons such as the ones being mentioned. A better example of a browser lock-in feature is ActiveX, which IS integrated into Web pages as a browser plug-in and which can render large swaths of Web site content inaccessible if you choose the "wrong" browser. By comparison, Java applets, Flash, and now Microsoft's "Silverlight" (which open source luminary Miguel de Icaza has promised to port to Linux and other platforms) provide a relatively open, browser-independent experience.