Briefly. With all this Chrome OS and HTML 5 talk, you’d think that we were already at the stage where we could run all apps in our browsers. Close, but one thing that I think is terrible about the current state of browsers is that they become so damn bloated the more you use them. Here’s Firefox, for instance, after just loading it and about 30 tabs:

My Macbook’s fans are running like crazy.

Apart from the obvious, that there needs to be better memory / processor management for tabs—optimally, unused tabs should use minimal percent of both—another big problem is the lack of visibility of what you have open in your browser. As soon as I have 10+ tabs open and a number disappear of the page or are in different browser-windows, I have no overview, not to mention little idea of what little flash- and other widgets are being opened in each page.

Some innovations, I’d like, are:

1. Grouping of tabs by domain-names, similarly to how Windows allows you to group windows by app.
2. The ability to control whether Flash is being loaded, what kind of flash, and what kind of other apps. Yes, I know about flash- and ad-blocking, but something more elaborate.
3. Better than 2, a common webpage standard for how much memory / processing a web-page should typically take. And perhaps a browser-imposed limit as to what pages get loaded or not.
4. An indication of where a tab is when I’m trying to load the same webpage or domain-page. E.g. I use Netvibes often, each of which has 5-15 widgets in each tab and thus consumes a fair amount of power. When I can’t find the right tab, I open multiple instances, which obviously slows down the browser some more.

All of this is relevant, I feel, both because of the “shift” we are seeing towards “Browser-OSs,” but also because there is a trend towards buying less powerful single-purpose machines often for use on the road. A bloated browser can use as much battery as running a game, the difference being that most mobile travellers know better than to run a game on the road.

Rant over. Would love to hear about Firefox extensions or Browser innovations that overcome some of these problems.

Vincent

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From the Official Google Blog:

Today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

I have nothing to say that I haven’t already said before.

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The browser market is looking a bit confused right now, with “true web” on smartphones and IE7 strenghtening IE’s dominance of web and other players shuffling around. All while Google hands money to all for having that search box there in the toolbar.

The next major version of Firefox, 3.0, will probably be released somewhere around November. Jeremy wrote about Firefox’s first alpha back in April here, where he pointed out some of its promised killer-features. The tech world changes quickly and now it seems that it’s the Firefox team that should watch out for the competitors.

In my opinion, Firefox 2.0 was a big let-down compared to 1.5, which was full of potential. The release of IE7 didn’t make things any easier - while still inferior, IE7 is almost “good enough”. The news that of those, who download Firefox, 50% don’t even try it and of the rest, 75% don’t stay on Firefox? Still, Firefox seems to be gaining some ground in some countries, f.e. having a respectable 45,4% market share in Finland (making Finland #2 adopter after Slovakia’s 47,9%) (Netherlands on the other hand is trailing last with 14,6%).

But, focusing on these numbers sounds like major change from the Firefox of yesterday, the rebel browser. Since when did Firefox’s goal change from making a good product to getting a higher market share? In my opinion, these tactics start to sound more evil and more like, well, Microsoft. Is Firefox getting too arrogant? Is the focus on dumbing down the browser for the masses affecting the project? With Firefox going for volume, the other players (except for IE, which needs to do nothing) are going for niches, like Opera is doing. This would seem to put Apple’s Safari between rock and a hard place. I mean, what’s Apple after with Safari’s Windows version?

Safari on Windows wasn’t the only surprise from Apple to the crowded browser market. It seems that practically out of nowhere, Apple’s open-sourced WebKit framework is becoming more and more popular where Firefox’s Gecko used to. First, WebKit came back to its roots after KDE decided to “unfork” WebKit and KHTML. Other notable players joined the WebKit lovefest as Nokia has used WebKit for a while on its mobile browsers and now even the guys at OLPC are planning to ditch Gecko in favour of less resource-intensive WebKit. I think this is a good example of what open-source is about, but not in the traditional sense (freedom). In my opinion that the power of open-source lies in the trend of abandoning the DIY-principle, which is deeply trenched in the traditional software engineering. There should be no reason to reinvent an inferior wheel.

Of course, Safari for Windows will probably stay as a niche product, but in course, Apple has pushed yet another framework on Windows ecosystem (QuickTime and Bonjour being other examples). On desktop Linux side, things get more interesting. Because WebKit is “just” a rendering engine, the developers of KDE and others can avoid another Firefox/IceWeasel-drama and yet get solid engine that’s gaining serious clout on the browser market. There are plans to make WebKit for Linux through Qt, for example. The day when you can download a plugin for Firefox to render pages instead with WebKit (like you can use IE’s renderer on Windows) are getting nearer. Is this a good sign for Firefox?

That WebKit seems to be more and more favoured in mobile and other low resource environments, like the OLPC, is something the developers are probably really proud about. This also pits it against Opera, who has tried to make a market by developing its browser for mobile phones (Opera Mobile and Mini ) and others, notably Wii. Of course, Opera offers a solid product for its markets, while WebKit is meant for developers. Of course, being a framework, WebKit doesn’t have to worry about what its icon label says and can so focus on things that really matter, like security and web standards.

Remember that tabbed browsing, pop-up blockers and rss readers have very little to do with the renderer and are just parts of the browser software. This means that while the current business model of search box revenue in Firefox, Opera and Safari seems to be viable solution for browsers, there’s no such thing for open-source framework. This is a real threat to Firefox’s future and also the reason why IE6′s legacy will ruin web experience for years to come. It’s really hard to justify investment into something that’s not visible and means very little to the end-user, who in IE’s and Firefox’s case are their users. So, why does Apple care?

This is something that I think is great about open source license and how they are not really “free”. By forking KHTML, Apple could rapidly build up a browser that was up to the web standards of its day and not reinvent a whell, but they could focus on what Apple is good at, designing the application. While they could get their hands on the code for free, it came with a cost, which was that they had to share their modifications to the world as KHTML is licensed under LGPL. Now that iPhone is out of the door and it too uses WebKit, it’s easy to see why Apple worked to make the engine as smooth and light as possible. As a side effect, other organizations interested in light browser framework adopted the code. WebKit’s open-sourceness and features are not driven by Apple’s good-will, but it’s features align with it’s own needs and by license-necessity it needs to redistribute the source. Of course, it can be argued that Apple goes a little bit further than expected by the license only, but still, it’s good keep in mind that corporations (not even Apple) are by definition only interested in their shareholder value.

Take for example Google’s open source manager, who said at a recent conference, ”We have enough engineering resources that, if the license has obligations we are not interested in, we can just not use it”. It’s a safe bet to say that KTHML’s license was something that suited Apple. The only upside for Apple for others adopting WebKit is the possibility that wider market reach equals to more websites that are coded so that Safari shows the correctly. While this is good for Safari’s users, I don’t think it’s any major concern for Apple – Safari is, after all, just the browser that ships with Mac OS X and the only profit-incentive are Google’s search revenues, by a long shot not an important source for Apple’s profits (unlike for Opera and especially for Mozilla Corp.).

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