Escaping the Browser (Was "Web programming tools")

[Dan Shafer]

Richard MacLemale's tale of teachers being apparently unwilling to "learn a new program" preferring a browser-based solution to an MC-based solution got me to thinking. He also mentioned iTunes from Apple as an example of a specialized browser-like application for a specific purpose as proof that people *are* willing to move outside the browser for a connected application.

I believe we are beginning to see the first tearing-away at the edges of the browser's dominance of connected apps. iTunes is one example but there are quite a few others, actually. And Macromedia has recently begun to move Flash apps out of the browser and onto the desktop, a move I think could greatly accelerate the process. The biggest example of this trend is instant messaging clients, which are really just UIs on online chat. And, of course, inside RR, there is Internet-connected stuff that we use to keep up to date, locate information, etc.

So to me, the issue of whether we can run our RR/MC apps inside the browser is of transient interest. That doesn't make it unimportant, particularly in situations where someone else (a client or a boss or even a marketplace) is driving that decision. But I've been finding it helpful lately to think of the apps I create as being specialized browsers rather than stand-alone apps. I told a client for whom I'm building an Internet-connected RR app, "I'm going to create a specialized Web browser that will focus on just getting that job done for you." You'd have thought I'd promised him a chest full of gold dubloons or some such.

I believe that we are within five years of the time when the general-purpose (which means no-purpose) Web browser, with its severely limited UI, will be as quaint as timesharing is to us. I've been saying this for a few years and the timeline is on target from what I can see. 

Ultimately, the browser's weak content UI (the UI on the skin itself is actually only partly bad) will be seen to have lowered user expectations for what a UI should be. In simplifying that expectation, perhaps it will have done all of us a favor.