On Sep 3, 2008, at 2:27 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:
True. But the entire web has been like that up to this point. What
people make for Chrome by nature works for the other browsers. So
there'll be nothing inherently unique for it near as I can tell. The
question will seem to ride on pure performance: Is something fast
enough to make it worth switching? I mean... outside of that, what
the compelling reason for normal users to change? Seriously?
This isn't a user switchover play. It's a developer play. That's clear
from the comic book which was aimed only at people who could
appreciated segmented process management, fast garbage collection, and
an integrated real-time compiling virtual machine.
Yes, all these things have been around for years. Hell, I had them on
my Symbolics 3600 in 1985.
What made them cool then and what makes them cool now is that these
are grown-up tools for serious development, something that has not
been present in the browser space before. And developers *will* do
something with them.
If we're talking about loading CNN.com 1 second faster than it
already does, I'm just not sure. Maybe that's enough? I honestly
don't know. (And yes, when I hit CNN.com, the site renders on my
MacBook Pro in less than 2 seconds generally speaking.)
We're not talking about CNN loading 1 second faster. We're talking
about applications more sophisticated than Gapminder (http://tinyurl.com/5o5jsp
) loading and running as fast as CNN.com, not running out of memory,
and being stable for days on end.
So, whether people migrate to Chrome or not, every browser
developer is going to pay attention to how Chrome works and we'll
see the good parts go forward.
How so? For speed only? Again, what does Chrome provide that is
inherently unique? It's very premise is that what you make for it
works for other things since it's standards and opensource based,
right?
The world of sophisticated web app development right now is full of
hacks. Some of these are because of browser incompatibility (which
Chrome, because it's based on webkit, fixes a little, but not
completely). But many of these are because of performance.
Hacks take time to implement, debug, and maintain. That's time away
from more important activities. Eliminate the need for hacks and you
can apply the resources to innovative interactions and technologies.
Now, if Google decided to take purposefully *away* from being just
another browser, I'd get excited. In this regard, things that you'd
need in Chrome would be:
* Multiple window support
* Sme form of clipboard data transport support, with the ability to
go to the OS, other windows, drag and drop to desktop, etc.
* Ability to let devs to completely take over all keyboard
interaction, no matter what defaults to the browser itself are
* OS services that give you access to the hardware; file save, etc.
(I don't know enough about Gears, so I admittedly need to catch up
on that)
* Palette windows and other OS windows like alerts and print
dialogs, etc.
You need to read up on Chrome and AIR. Between the two, you now have
all of these things in some form. (This spring, Adobe was demoing drag
& drop to/from the desktop, cut & paste (using the OS pasteboard
servers), file save, local resource utilization (like print dialogs),
etc.) It's there. And folks like Nasdaq and Fedex are already
developing apps that make use of it.
I think this is a key point. I expect that AIR and Chrome are
signaling a major change in capabilities for developers. Interaction
designers need to be on top of this, so they can be there to help make
great designs. Otherwise, we'll be back in the world of "we
implemented it because we could" experiences.
Then I'd get excited. Then you can do things that are even more app
like while also having a lot of web technologies available to you to
round out what you can build from stuff you're already developing
for the web (which is lot more than it used to be these days). The
trick here that Google has to play is how to make it divergent but
not so much, right? How can it move away from normal web browser
experiences while still letting people do enough of what they want
with a browser?
Again, doesn't matter. The fact is that MS won't let the critical
features in chrome be absent from IE9. Nor will Mozilla.
Doesn't matter if Chrome gets any serious marketshare here. What
matters is the proved the underlying tech could be done. And that's
how they are selling it.
If you know anything about how operating systems work, you'll
recognize that they've put all the essential components into the
browser. Years ago, someone (was is Marc Andreeson? Maybe Steve
Gillmor?) said that the browser will become the next operating
system. Chrome seems to have all the essential components of an
operating system built in.
And yet, they made basically a "web browser." Not excited yet, but I
could get there...
Andrei: You know I love you dearly. However, there are few things I
care about less than whether Chrome excites you or not.
It excites me a lot and that's what *I* care about.
One of us will be right about this. Tell ya what. In 10 years, let's
meet in the bar at the Bellaggio and the loser will buy the winner a
drink. (Personally, I like my girly drinks. I'll take a Tropical
Breeze http://tinyurl.com/58hs8s please.)
:)
Jared
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