He Types She Talks

He Types

Matthew Levy

In this roundtable discussion, Chris Wilson of Microsoft, Brenden Eich of Mozilla and the lead developer of Javascript, and Ojan Vafai from Google discussed the state of browser technology and what we can expect to see implemented in the next versions of each browser. The conversation was moderated by Dion Almaer of Google and Ben Galbraith of Ajaxian, who then delivered the talk “State of AJAX” following the roundtable. The conversation was collegial, amusing, and informative as the three panelists took prepared questions and then fielded responses from the crowd.

As you might expect, there was a little tension between a room of developers and the IE representative. There was a collective chuckle as Wilson stated that there isn’t much communication between the IE and mobile IE teams at Microsoft. There was a bigger laugh as we all thought about debugging in IE toolsets (prior to IE8 that is; we’ve been assured the new toolset surpasses Firebug in some significant ways). The room erupted in applause as someone took the QA podium and begged for the implementation of standards across the browsers. (An aside, the funniest poster at Web 2.0 Expo was an IE8 ad that had a metatag with an IE7 emulation tag emblazoned across it. Hooray, we get a new browser that can be forced to operate like the old one. ).

Chrome is clearly Google’s attempt to take rich internet applications to a new level, as I blogged at the release. Vafai said nothing to alter that hypothesis. Chrome’s memory management, push for stability (no plugins allowed), and access to user data clearly move this browser into a light OS category. Combined with the other Google development tools, we are seeing the rise of a new total platform. It could be argued that Apple/Safari is there too. If Firefox had a mobile device to pair with the browser and its extensions, we’d have a total platform in that space too.

Though there isn’t a FirePhone in the works, Firefox is planning to invest heavily in Firebug and build out a full development suite. They are also looking at Chrome’s isolation techniques to bring a more stable experience to Firefox. I’ve heard rumors from other sources that mobile Firefox is in development, but delivery seems pretty far off.

I don’t know how to judge this right now, though I do wonder if we haven’t hit upon a phenomenon in computing. It looks to me like the three ingredients of personal computing are:

1. System kernel/core
2. Operating system + heavy data applications
3. Light information retrieval

Is it safe to say that each evolution in computing requires these three pieces to evolve in tandem? In the 1970s/80s we had a true kernel/OS/application relationship. In the 1990s we had GUIs replacing the command line (cmd/Windows/Netscape ). Now we have operating systems acting like kernels, browsers becoming light operating systems and mobile devices acting as the light information retrieval client. (I’m sure someone smarter than me can point out something wrong with this, so please feel free). Maybe there is something to this – like the evolution of developer skill set?

When Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith discussed some of the new AJAX tools available, it was clear that we are about to see applications built in Javascript that would have been only possible in Flash a year ago. dojo, jQuery, sproutCore, and extJS Javascript libraries make data management and GUI easy. HTML 5 is coming, and will change the way we manipulate the DOM – how does <video> sound? Canvas will allow graphics that are scalable and implementable in ways only hinted at in SVG.  Heck, Almaer and Galbraith even had an AJAX dart game that used a Wii controller. It took them 30 minutes to build.

The big takeaway is that Javascript skills are about to become incredibly relevant to every software development effort out there. Keep on getting your elements by ID and say thanks to Brenden Eich for giving you relevance in the developer landscape.

Another nice summary of this talk is available from Mitch Wagner of InformationWeek.