Monday night geek blogging

But all the recent attention paid to IE's security problems coupled with the fact that there are now mature, and in some ways technically superior, alternatives has finally had an impact, albeit still a small one. Even self-confessed IE junkies like Andrew at Bound By Gravity have switched to a different browser. According to a Guardian article folks like Andrew have contributed to a full one per cent drop in market share for IE. That may not seem like a lot but it's been a steady, daily change over the course of a month and that's a significant development in an area where Microsoft's dominance has been so complete.

And it becomes even more significant when you consider that the next major new version of IE isn't due out until 2006, with the latest scuttlebutt suggesting that even that deadline will slip. Windows XP's Service Pack 2, due in August, will include security enhancements and possibly popup blocking but that still leaves IE behind in other features. It leaves MS's competitors with another two years to make life difficult for Bill Gates and company.

The Guardian reports that MS has reformed their IE development team and sought submissions from users on features they would like to see in a new version.

These make for interesting reading, if only for the curious way all of the requested features - pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, compliance with the accepted W3C standards, for example - are all things that have been around for nearly two years in rival browsers. With only one major upgrade since 1999, IE is far behind the curve on web technology.

If you had asked me why MS allowed its browser to languish for a couple of years I would have answered that it was simply because they've enjoyed a virtual monopoly and they got lazy. Since they didn't see the competition bearing down on them, they didn't waste resources on sprucing up a product that they're essentially giving away for free. Instead they've concentrated on their cash cows: Windows itself and Office.

The Guardian suggests that it's a bit more complicated than that.

... what would happen if people's web browsers were capable of running complex applications, with code based on openly published specifications? Two things: first, the operating system would become irrelevant, so there would be no need to upgrade to the next version of Windows, and second, the playing field for everything else would be thus levelled. The majority of Microsoft's business, therefore, could have been threatened if the IE browser team had continued past 2001.

This suggests that MS purposely stalled the development of browser technology to protect those cash cows. And what have the developers of the other browsers on the market been up to in the meantime?

... the developers of alternative browsers have been concentrating on the support of openly developed standards. Instead of developing things in-house and dropping them on a previously unsuspecting opposition, Microsoft's rivals are working with each other to implement public standards from bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
...
When Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, demonstrated the new features of the 2.0 version of Safari to a developer's conference earlier this month, he wasn't demonstrating features closed to Apple. He was showing Apple's particular implementation of open standards that it is building with the rest of the browser community. Mozilla and the rest will be free to follow suit, not as copycats, but as equals within a standards process.

A publicly accountable working group was set up in June to manage one important aspect of this: the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, or WhatWG. Anyone can join in the development process, and all the major browser authors, bar Microsoft, are members. The standard it produces will be openly published, and thus can be supported by everyone equally. This is a way of thinking that goes against everything that Microsoft has done before.

This coming together to embrace open standards may not seem significant to the average end user, but it is. One of the complaints from web developers in the past has been that the different behaviour of different browsers made supporting all of them a pain. And since IE so dominated the market, why not just support IE and let the small, stubborn minority (like me) suffer? But if all the alternatives stick together on common standards, that argument is weakened over time and it's another factor that works against Microsoft's continued control of the market, as does the ability to add functionality that IE can't support.

As the article notes, the idea of running applications in the browser isn't new and hasn't been altogether successful in the past. What remains to be seen is whether improvements in bandwidth and other technology have made it practical enough for some applications to pose a threat to Microsoft. The Guardian seems to think we might be there.

... you would not want to build a version of Photoshop as a web-based application, for example. But for many of the most popular applications, and specifically many of the applications most used by the corporate community, a web browser would be perfectly good, especially given the addition of the abilities being developed in the open, by people such as WhatWG.

It's speculation at this point, but it's certainly interesting. On the one hand, I'd be pleased to see Microsoft challenged. They've enjoyed what amounts to a monopoly in a variety of ways for years and taken advantage of it at every turn. Competition will keep them honest and that's the way capitalism is supposed to work.

On the other hand, if you're a computer user your life may be about to change. Again. And if, like me, you've been developing Windows applications for some years but have only scratched the surface of web development, your life may be about to change even more. I may have to hit the books. Again.

Does anyone know where I stashed my amazon.ca password?