“Inside every browser is the core of the ideal client-side application environment, incorporating everything that I’d estimate half of commercial applications need. There’s the best dynamic, object-oriented, loosely typed programming language, bar none (JavaScript), transparently bound to an idiot simple yet extensible presentation layer (DHTML, CSS, XML, DOM, SVG…). Browser-based apps don’t require specialized development tools, or any tools at all. All that keeps your browser from being the perfect client app environment is speed, stability, strict adherence to standards, and offline capabilities. That is not too much to ask; it’s all within reach, right now. It’s a matter of adjusting our priorities and perspective,” Tom Yager writes for InfoWorld.
“It’s telling that the first thing an erstwhile Web application does is free itself from the trappings of a browser: It removes the navigation bar, the menu (when it can — OS X doesn’t allow it) and the status bar, redirects the right mouse button away from the default context menu and makes it impossible to resize the window. If you use the browser, the standard is to work like hell to hide it, and to solve performance problems by embedding Java or ActiveX objects,” Yager writes.
“It reads like a no-win deal until you realize that you don’t need a fat, clunky browser. You don’t need to host a browser in an application window. Just take the framework shared by multiple commercial browsers and bake it right into your project. That’s WebKit,” Yager writes. “At a total cost of nothing and with free lifetime updates, it’s as sweet a deal as you’ll find, and unlike many open source projects that you’d love to use but which vary in the quality of support, documentation, and maintenance, WebKit is driven by companies like Apple, Nokia, and most recently, Google, that rely on it for commerce.”
“WebKit is a framework that brings the benefits of a browser to all applications, across platforms, even ones that don’t use the network. It doesn’t hurt that WebKit is free and open source, that a Safari-workalike browser is included in the distribution, and that it uses middleware (HTTP) and object representation standards (XML) that bind it to all back-ends,” Yager writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Qka” for the heads up.]
Microsoft is once again on the outside looking in; stuck with proprietary, clunky code and an eroding, yet still dominant, market share generated mainly on the backs of the ignorant. Dominant for how much longer? Avalanches start slowly, but progress rapidly. Microsoft’s reliance on ignorance is effective only while ignorance remains. Tell your friends and family who may not understand to use any browser but Internet Explorer and, better yet, to Get a Mac the next time they’re in the market for a new computer.
