The browser wars are over, and now Microsoft, Mozilla and other vendors plan to focus on positioning the browser as a development platform. That was the consensus of a panel of representatives at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo who help develop Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and the Google Reader.
when I see it.
Same here. I don’t think the browser wars are truly over, as every browser will continue to fight for market share.
Even if this story is true, knowing Microsoft’s track record, they will most likely develop something, then make it IE or Windows specific, igniting the browser wars once again.
Hmm, silverlight, wonder if that’s the next catalyst of that…
At least for the time being they plan to support multiple browsers, including Firefox and Safari which are so far supported, and Opera which support is under way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight
Apart from antitrust fears, an IE exclusive technology won’t probably take off any more. Microsoft is not dominant on the Web. They can’t just let go of a rapidly growing part (10-15% for now) of the market and compete with a cross-platform, cross-browser and highly established technology like flash.
As a web designer and developer who travels to the 9th circle of Hell and back to get the same code to look render the same on Gecko, IE6/7 and Safari, I call BS on the big four claiming that the browser wars are over. MS still doesn’t support real standards, and until that happens I don’t see the war as being over in any way.
Yeah Im not winning anymore … game over.
agreed :/
So does that mean Microsoft will ever get IE to support a ten year old standard long implemented by everybody else? Microsoft want to cuddle up with the now ‘hip’ other vendors to try brush off the hatred a lot of web designers have for IE. I’m not interested in anything Microsoft has to say, or promises. Deliver CSS2 compliance, and stop avoiding the issue.
I’m not too sure what to make of this. It seems as though they’ve decided to move away from ‘feature’ browser wars and onto ‘development platform / content delivery platform’ wars. It just seems to be a shift in the battle focus, rather than an end to the “wars” as such.
I think this is very true, but to me, this is something that should have been in there from the very beginning. Of coarse nobody can predict the future, but at the same time, nobody can afford to be complacent with security either.
This I do not agree with. This sounds like a, “we don’t know how to do it properly yet” style comment. People can be electricuted by a faulty light switch, but to suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t have lights to ensure that people don’t accidently die is very much overkill. The better idea would be to improve the switch design.
It’s not as though the internet is a new thing, it’s been around for a decade now, with respect to wide public adoption.
In reality, to me what we’re talking about here is a shift of battle between browsers on the platform of choice for content delivery and so called, “rich applications”.
To me, this isn’t new and will be anything but peaceful.
Edited 2007-04-18 22:57
“The most secure system is the one that is not plugged into anything including the power,” Wilson said. “Coming up with security model that actually works for billions of users is the trick.”
This I do not agree with. This sounds like a, “we don’t know how to do it properly yet” style comment. People can be electricuted by a faulty light switch, but to suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t have lights to ensure that people don’t accidently die is very much overkill. The better idea would be to improve the switch design.
That is EXACTLY what Microsoft is saying. They don’t know how to do security right on Windows (XP or Vista) so why would anyone expect them to know how to do security in IE which is NOTORIOUS for its bad security.
it’ll just get smaller and less televised.
The fact is that Microsoft still has a lot to gain by getting developers to make web sites or web apps only compatible with IE and the Windows platform. I think fact is that Microsoft realizes that it can’t fight a browser war when developers are using Firefox or some other browser. Even worse for Microsoft is those developers are now telling Microsoft that they need to make IE more W3C compatible.
However, you have at least two browser (Firefox and Opera) that are still fighting for their piece of the pie and I doubt Microsoft is just going to sit back and forget about that. And as nicholas said ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
They don’t have a browser – no, Google Reader doesn’t qualify.
Google are in the business of content delivery so I guess that might have something to do with it. They’re also a very big heavyweight in the industry.
Google hire many Mozillaians who work extensively on Firefox. Google are one of the largest contributors to Mozilla.
I’ve never even heard of Google Reader…
Edited 2007-04-18 23:27
Microsoft, firstly, please patch your Visual Studio, Visual Studio.Net , so that they can produce standard compliant code.
Don’t be NATO.
Edited 2007-04-18 23:04
Name me one Microsoft product that complies 100% with a standard:
ASP? VBScript, proprietry. Can use Javascript – but is JScript – Microsoft’s bastardisation of the language.
ASP.NET – Uses non standard tags everywhere, refuses to use proper CSS, will not validate in a month of Sundays
IE – Does not support Javascript fully, does not work with with xhtml+xml, does not support abbr tag, does not support CSS fully (not even CSS1)
Visual Studio – Proprietry languages, non standard C++ headers (?) Proprietry compiler, Windows-only differences everywhere
MSSQL – Non standard syntax in places
Windows – Uses e/e/e SMB, XPS instead of PDF, WMA instead of MP3/OGG/AAC, WMV instead of MP2/4/AVI
Office – Does not support ratified standards, trys to subvert the standards, does not support PDF, awful HTML output
…
Edited 2007-04-18 23:24
Every product does the same thing slightly differently (which is a given, because they are not the same thing), and companies do not (cannot) stay in business by holding still to implement static standards developed by people who don’t have to be competitive and innovative to stay alive and who couldn’t forecast what people would be wanting to do even six months after the ratification (and following calcification) of the self-declared standard. Stop the presses!
Or, in short: Name me any Microsoft product that complies 100% with the ‘standards’, and I’ll name you what I’m using instead of it.
Edited 2007-04-18 23:25
Phew! That was a mouthful. Could you please use more punctuation and prevent everyone from running out of breath?
You don’t have to use standards, but being half arsed implementing them is worse than not using them at all. Apple use a mix of standards and proprietary systems (so make a good example), but when they use a standard; they use the full standard, and not an incompatible, buggy, e/e/e version. (or at least as far as I have experience thus)
I think you misunderstood my comment.
I really cannot name one, that why I make this comment.
Am I being mod down because of this ?
Edited 2007-04-18 23:46
No, sorry, I think others are misunderstanding, I was simply tagging onto your statement to extend the discussion; I’m not asking you to name a standards compiant Microsoft product- just that Microsoft don’t, as your comment was stating. I’ve modded you back up.
“ASP? VBScript, proprietry. Can use Javascript – but is JScript – Microsoft’s bastardisation of the language. “
JScript is the ECMA standard ECMAScript. There is no Javascript “standard”, IIRC. Javascript was Netscape proprietary language. And being proprietary, they had the ability to change it at a whim. Microsoft’s JScript was MS’s implementation of Netscape’s proprietary language. So that other browsers would have a real standard to work with, Microsoft submitted their implementation to ECMA, which became standardized as ECMA-Script.
“ASP.NET – Uses non standard tags everywhere, refuses to use proper CSS, will not validate in a month of Sundays “
Is there a recognized “standard” for PHP, JSP, et al? (I don’t know.)
“IE – Does not support Javascript fully, does not work with with xhtml+xml, does not support abbr tag, does not support CSS fully (not even CSS1) “
There is no browser that supports all of the standards. Even the ones that pass Acid2 don’t pass all of CSS.
“Visual Studio – Proprietry languages, non standard C++ headers (?) Proprietry compiler, Windows-only differences everywhere “
Lot’s of compilers have extensions. They’re clearly documented as such. Devs can use them or not use them according to their own judgement.
“MSSQL – Non standard syntax in places “
no comment; I know nothing about SQL.
Windows – Uses e/e/e SMB, XPS instead of PDF, WMA instead of MP3/OGG/AAC, WMV instead of MP2/4/AVI
Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft so they can’t use PDF.
WMV is a recognized STMPE standard now (to be more exact, it’s Microsoft’s implementation of the VC-1 standard).
And WMP uses any video/audio format for which a DirectShow codec is installed on the system. MP3 support is built-in. OGG DirectShow codecs are available for download. I don’t know if anyone has bothered making an AAC DirectShow codec.
“AVI” isn’t a video format; it’s a video *file* format that can contain any type of video (DivX, DV, WMV, MOV, “raw” AVI, etc). DV and “raw” AVI .avi support is built-in. DirectShow codecs for non-standard video formats that use the .avi file format (DivX, Xvid, etc) are easily available for download.
“Office – Does not support ratified standards, trys to subvert the standards, does not support PDF, awful HTML output “
Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft so they can’t use PDF out-of-the-box (Microsoft provides a downloadable PDF plugin).
HTML output has been redone in Office2k7 to provide clean HTML without MSO-specific tags (they basically abandoned the idea of trying to maintain fidelity that would allow one to faithfully roundtrip converting an Office file to HTML and back).
Edited 2007-04-19 01:50
Uh… no. Both are implementations of ECMA engines for ECMAscript version 3. Both work about the same. The problems do not primarily come from the ECMA engines, but from the fact that IE has a really crappy DOM implementation.
This has nothing to do with the scripting language, but rather the (X)HTML that is produced.
It’s not about being 100% perfect. Every browser has bugs. It’s about how closely the browsers follow the standards. When comparing the major browsers, IE is found severly lacking. (Although IE7 was a major step in the right direction in trying to fix CSS and PNG alphas)
Edited 2007-04-19 02:39
I write ASP.net with VS2k5. You can set the doctype in the ide, and if you set it to xhtml strict, everything that doesnt comply shows up as an error. It’s actually a bit of a pain in the ass when it is asking for alt attributes on an image that isnt anything but a black line. These errors show up at design time in the ide (red squigglies), and in the build report. Not only that, but generated code (in my experience) consistantly validates properly.
IMHO VS.net gives Dreamweaver a run for its money as the best web IDE/WYSIWYG.
MS has said many times that it believes (like many others do) that CSS2 was a crappy standard, and that they will support the bits that make sense. IE5 was better then the competition, IE6 was a raging piece of crap compared to the competition. IE7 is equivilent to the competition in features, standards compatibility, and security. FF plugins still own, but the loading speed and memory footprint are attrocious compared to IE.
Basically, when MS has no competition, everything goes to hell. When they actually start losing significant marketshare, they shape up.
“””Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft so they can’t use PDF out-of-the-box (Microsoft provides a downloadable PDF plugin). “””
Please show us where yu got that info! i’d really like to see it! cus it sound to me like a distortion if the facts!
Apple uses PDF as a core part of there OS… and adobe is happy with them…. WHY on earth would adobe sue MS for a similar thing?
ASP.NET – Uses non standard tags everywhere, refuses to use proper CSS, will not validate in a month of Sundays
What a bunch of crap. It’s entirely possible to make a perfectly valid XHTML page in ASP.NET.
Most Open Source software doesn’t comply 100% with the standards. In fact hardly anything anywhere complies 100% with the standards.
“Visual Studio – Proprietry languages,”
So?
“Proprietry compiler”
So?
“Windows-only differences everywhere ”
So? POSIX-compliance is not a goal for Windows.
“MSSQL – Non standard syntax in places ”
Ah, just like oracle, mysql, postgresql and every other sql database ever?
“Windows – Uses e/e/e SMB,
What should it use instead? NFS?
“XPS instead of PDF,”
PDF is not a standard (yet).
“WMV instead of MP2/4/AVI ”
WMV is not comparable to avi. wmv is a set of codec technologies while avi is a container format. Guess who created AVI, btw?
Produce standard compliant code? Can you be more specific please?
By now you should understand that when Microsoft is implemnting a standard it is _Their_ standard and not the one you think it is about which you can find the info freely on the net.
If you decide to work with Microsoft platform then you have to think the Microsoft way.
so please stop complaining and use another platform…
Did anyone hear McSoft speak from the hinder region again?
in the 80’s when the PC/MAC was supposed to be over?
For Microsoft a war is over when they have already won. I think they would have candidly given that sentence away 3-5 years back in time when IE was it. At least that’s their track record so far.
Are they gonna change when they are the most attacked ever from every corner and seeing Windows lose all its “platform” power to the WEB? I personally find that laughable.
….WOPR suggests “a nice game of chess” to play instead.
When Leopard arrives I’d expect some headway with WebKit into Rich client apps.
…but this sounds as if the major web browser vendors are preparing their browsers to deliver content that we now have to install locally on our computers.
It seems to me that this is a momentary truce to get some standards established and then the war will be on again. But this time not for web browsing but for software as a service or saas.
I think Microsoft knows that Vista is doing poorly. I also believe that Microsoft thinks that its future is in the delivering of software and systems over the net for a fee. This way, their revenue stream will not be limited to a new release every five years or so but will net them revenue year after year.
This may also mean that the current computer’s days are numbered. As more apps and content are made to be delivered through a browser, a very light weight client will be all that is needed with the major part of the processing occurring on the back end.
This also begs the question as to what will happen with current operating systems as we know them? Will Sun Microsystems’ tag line–The Network is the Computer– become a reality?
This may be the start of something big…
I think Microsoft knows that Vista is doing poorly.
Do you realize that virtually every new desktop PC sold from now on will contain a copy of Vista? Ergo, Vista can’t “do poorly”. Doubt it? People said the same thing about XP when it came out, but it now has most of the market.
Talk to me when all browsers can view outlook web access like IE until then it is all fluff Microsoft’s so called premium browsers apparently only means IE. It is all fluff if MS wants to change start with that.
This is the typical Microsoft strategy they reserve for situations where they cannot win trying to get a break in the fight while they reconstruct their hidden agenda: They deny the war is ongoing in the first instance so they don't have to declare they lost.
It was the same when ODF standard got certified by ISO while Microsoft didn't even had their “me too” format finished:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Office_Format_War_Over/11…
Then they added “and the winner is…both”. Pathetic!
“Holy crapula, Brian Jones just committed a Fox News ploy: declare victory in the midst of stunning defeat and rejection, and go home. Nice little rhetorical trick if you can get away with it. But not so fast, Brian. Has anyone else noticed the moratorium on OXML blog posts by Microsoft employees recently? Now you get a flood of silly posts about “choice,” “compatibility,” and “no format wars.” A few of the ZDNet crowd is pushing OXML like crack dealers in their blogs, as if their jobs depended on Microsoft. (Oh wait, they do, don’t they?) Problem is, there never was a format war because OXML is and will never be a universal ISO-certified file format. Game over. Microsoft lost. Two-thirds of the JTC1 nations rejected OXML outright due to its innumerable contradictions that were found in the first 30 days. Fast-tracking via Ecma didn’t work as Microsoft planned. The review period was extended for an unprecedented 90 more days and so far Microsoft is flummoxed and silent in response to OXML’s inherent flaws and weaknesses.”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/m…eID=573775&start=-1
Groklaw: “The purpose of a standard is to have only one, so everyone can interoperate, so as to avoid two duplicative parallel tracks. Duh.”
Edited 2007-04-19 15:12
how have they lost? Last time I checked, Firefox was pushing 12%, and other was at like, 2%. 86% is not a loss…
How they have lost? Very easy: Since Firefox 1.0 launch, the percentage of msexplorer users has diminished from its former almost 100% dominance(remember that this is what forced MS to launch IE7(=tabbed browsing) for XP)
This is a major breach in MS strategy for the web: They cannot force feed their e.e.e’d-non-standards on the web anymore:
Now people are starting to realize they have choice: superior, cheaper, lighter and more secure alternatives to explorer (either firefox, safari (not that this is cheaper), opera, konqueror, camino, etc), W3C and CSS2 comliant, etc, and many websites that formerly only worked for explorer are being forced to adopt true interoperable standards now.
The figures in europe are much better: 25% of Firefox usage and rising: the competition has reached enough critical mass and MS knows firefox &friends are here to stay: thats why MS has been defeated.
http://www.xitimonitor.com/fr-fr/barometre-des-navigateurs/firefox-…
Edited 2007-04-19 16:11
even in europe, 75% is not exactly a loss. IE6 was a god awful browser, but IE7 is at least on par with FF, just without the sluggish UI and massive memory footprint. (you pay a price for an XML based interface)
The fact that there is another browser out there that has SOME marketshare is good for everyone, including IE users (competition means a better product every time). But 75% in the EU isnt exactly a loss…
“75% in the EU isnt exactly a loss…”
You miss the point. Microsoft may still have 75% of the market in the EU, but it is no longer a monopoly. They have lost the advantages a monopoly brings. They still hold the lion’s share, but now they have to compete which until now they really did not have to do. IE 7 is a direct result of this.
Microsoft may still have 75% of the market in the EU, but it is no longer a monopoly.
The fact that FF was able to take market share away from a so-called “monopolist” proves that MS never had a monopoly to begin with. Monopolies impose barriers to entry. FF clearly had no such constraints.
{Last time I checked, Firefox was pushing 12%, and other was at like, 2%. 86% is not a loss…}
I think you need to check again, since it depends on exactly what you count.
For example, I could claim that firefox share is at 25% :
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=9028
… and that IE7 is under 7% …
http://www.benjaminfabre.com/2006/11/23/ie7-share-market/
7% is indeed a loss.
In the pcadvisor article I linked you can find this very misleading quote:
“Most consumers find IE 7 adequate for their needs and are too lazy to change, he said.”
Most consumers don’t have IE7 (in fact, more consumers have firefox than IE7). If they do have IE7, then most likely that browser is not what came with their system, so they are not too lazy to change …
Edited 2007-04-20 04:16
If I were to make a wild stab in the dark, I would put FF at about 20%. Last time I saw something resembling trustworthy marketshare reporting, it was at around 12%.
I don’t have a problem with firefox, it is installed on my system, and I use it regularily for certain things (beyond testing). Like I said in an earlier post, competition is in everyones best interests, especially IE users.
What I also said is that even 25% (which seems a bit high), isnt exactly a victory. Its half way to being equal. If you look at posts earlier in this thread, you will see people claiming that MS has lost, and the MoFo has won, which is simply not the case, or even close to it.
If you ask me what would be ideal, it would be the most standards compliant browser (which would probably be safari) having a slight majority, but having relatively close marketshares all around. This would create a spirit of competition, which is good for everyone. The amount of cross-polination between IE and FF is scary, and they both rip Opera off shamelessly. The more of that we have going on, the better it is for the end user.
I guess they mean to say that an apparent browser war that started in 2005 shouldn’t be perceived as one anymore?
I think it will be over when nineMSN video actually works in IE7, obviously it doesn’t work in other browsers.
nineMSN is growing as a portal in Australia because channel nine is the most powerful tv channel, and the website has good content.
I just wish website developers would build for all browsers.
“All warfare is based on deception.”
— loose English translation, SunTzu, Art of War