What to Expect from Browsers in the Next Five Years: A Perspective

After an awesome, but tiny, lunch at City Lobster (blogging sure makes me hungry), I was lagging going into the next session.  Somehow, I managed to arrive later than I imagined, even though I rushed back.  (Tips on crossing the street in New York:  walk confidently, walk hurriedly, and don’t get red-rovered by those sauntering couples you encounter every now and then who hold hands).  So, I had to walk over about 11 feet to grab a seat.  Why doesn’t everyone just squish together in these packed sessions?  And, why were there an odd number of feet in there?

Anyway, I was so lunch-tired  at the beginning of this presentation that I just kept replaying the very not G-rated iPhone 4 vs. EVO YouTube video in my head.  Cue my best computer voice.  I want the one with the bigger GBs.  I need Wifis.

Ok, I was bored until  the Yahoo guy said that if he was king of the web, he would recall HTML5 until it was fixed.  Oh my.  This might be a good one.  This comment was promptly followed by sane arguments from the Google guy and the Mozilla Guy about why this really wasn’t logical at all.  Then the Opera Guy joined in and it was a ruckus.  At least a ruckus when it comes to panels.

By the way, I hope I referred to them all correctly.  I couldn’t see the names on their cards and had to ask the guy sitting to my left for help on the names.  Squint.

The HPalm guys (Dion is here) were having a blast with all of this.  Most of their humor was pointed at us and why we were even there when Katie Couric was in the next room.  The other large portion of humor was aimed directly at Microsoft, though it was much more lighthearted than the statements about IE that came from the panel.  HTML5 and Google were clearly under fire here, which probably means there’s something very cool afoot.  Just check out Remy Sharp’s HTML5 demos and see if you agree.

The summary of the panel doesn’t matter much, because there were no slides and they didn’t stick to a bunch of talking points, in true panel manner.  But, Microsoft’s lack of representation on the panel was odd.  Microsoft stopped dominating this market in 2008, but they still own a significant portion of the user experience.  In the enterprise, I bet Microsoft still dominates, as the “standard”.

I didn’t catch the slideware link.  Oh yeah, there was no slideware.  Just the Web 2.0 Expo advertisements flashing at me where the presentation should have been.  I promise, Web 2.0 Expo, that I’ll be a good wifi buddy and not download any large files over the wireless network.  I need WiFis.

An interesting quote from this panel:

XML is like violence.  If you’re not winning with it, you just need to keep using more of it.

HTML5 vs. Flash: Webocalypse Now?

Seeing the word Webocalypse reminds me that I’m still a bit perturbed at Engadget’s Laura June and her illogical rant at AMD’s Leslie Sobon.  I made a little time to go back through Leslie’s blog to try to figure out just what she had done to enrage someone at Engadget.

Let’s see.  She’s writes in her authentic voice.  She is courageous, considering her role at a well-known company.  She’s funny and her piece was obviously written with sarcastic jest.  Hmmm.  What’s going on here?  I don’t get it.

Talk amongst yourselves, because I digress.  Back to our current programming.

I’m squinting in another HTML5 presentation, where the guy next to me is having a problem with his iPad.  I have yet to see anyone blog on one of those.  Can you tell I can’t wait for the Slate?

First of all, Eric Meyer looks almost nothing like his media picture.  However, he began his presentation warning us he would overuse the words “web stack” and making fun of Steve Jobs talking about “open” technologies.  All right.  This could be good.  Here’s the summary:

It’s become somewhat fashionable of late to refer to HTML5 and the web stack as a “Flash killer”. The Flash/Flex community, understandably, has not suffered this kind of talk quietly. The ongoing absence of Flash from Apple’s wildly popular portable devices has only fueled the fire. Openness, stability, ubiquity, consistency, and security are all thrown around like the discs of Tron. So what’s going on? Is Flash dying out? Will the web choke on its own complexity? Will we ever stop arguing about all this? We’ll look at where things are and where they’re going, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each side while making some informed guesses about the future.

Bio:

Eric A. Meyer has been working with the web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and web standards. A widely read author, he is the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting, which counts among its clients America On-Line; Apple Computer, Inc.; Yahoo!; Wells Fargo Bank; EBSCO Publishing; and Macromedia.

Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the visual designer and campus web coordinator for the Case Western Reserve University website, where he also authored a widely acclaimed series of three HTML tutorials and was project coordinator for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History combined with the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, the first example of an encyclopedia of urban history being fully and freely published on the web.

Author of “Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly & Associates), “Eric Meyer on CSS” and “More Eric Meyer on CSS” (New Riders), “CSS Web Site Design” (Peachpit), and “CSS2.0 Programmer’s Reference” (Osborne/McGraw-Hill) as well as numerous articles for the O’Reilly Network, Web Techniques, and Web Review, Eric also created the seminal CSS Browser Compatibility Charts and coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C’s official CSS Test Suite. He has lectured to a wide variety of organizations including Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New York Public Library, Cornell University, and the National Association of Government Webmasters. Eric has also delivered addresses and technical presentations at numerous conferences, among them the IW3C2 WWW series, Web Design World, CMP, SXSW, TODCON, NOTACON, the User Interface conference series, and now the Web 2.0 series. In addition, he is co-founder and partner of An Event Apart, the conference for people who make web sites.

In his personal time, Eric acts as List Chaperone of the highly active css-discuss mailing list, which he co-founded with John Allsopp of Western Civilisation and is now supported by evolt.org. Eric lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you’ve been led to believe, with his wife and children. He loves music and hates chocolate. Yes, really.

I don’t hate chocolate, but I am allergic to it, so have to limit my exposure to it.  Sniffle.  Most people don’t understand that.  So, don’t be a hater.

As far as his Cleveland, Ohio assertion that it is “a much nicer city than you’ve been led to believe…”  Well, I’ll leave that to you to argue with.

Eric talks about the fundamental design of the Web being connective and consistent and showed early shots of Web browsers (completely unidentifiable according to modern standards).

His assertion midway was that we need to make Web apps simpler and smaller (he and Alex Russell probably get along very well).  He took us through some apps that were less than 10Kb of data.  Very impressive!

The crux of this is that Flash, HTML5 and the Web stack are intertwined.  Everyone will survive.  But, we need to know where to go next.  Again, the smaller and simpler stuff.

The most important call he made was one for a web app store.  Create this one Google!  He ended by calling for peace between the camps (fancy, shiny Web 2.0 peace).  Learn from each other.

Now, I’m trying not to think about what’s happening at UT in Austin as I rush to plug in my laptop and grab lunch.  3 more sessions this afternoon…and keynotes tonight.

HTML5~=HTML+CSS+JS APIs

Alex Russell takes his hands out of his pockets

Three hours, even with a smart guy from Google, is excruciating.  I left my glasses in Texas, so I chose a chair smack dab in the front of a ”pre-coffee” speaker.  I gave up caffeine about a month ago, so yawning is difficult NOT to do.  This has nothing to do with you or the topic, Alex!  I’m so glad he has plenty of water available.  ~squint~  YAWN!

I’m in my first workshop at the completely full Web 2.0 Expo, where I’ve been thoroughly warned not to lose my badge.  You might know the speaker, Alex Russell:

Alex serves on the Board of the Dojo Foundation and OSAF. He helped develop and lead the team that built the Dojo Toolkit, the JavaScript toolkit that organizations turn to when performance, accessibility, and internationalization concerns finally come home to roost.  He currently works at Google on Chrome, a Webkit-based browser that is helping the web evolve faster.

What you might not know is that he gets weird open letters from fans.

I’ve been interested in Chrome for a while, so I’m looking forward to this workshop, despite the very deep developer content — HTML5: Developing for the Desktop and Mobile.  The goal he shares?  Give the user UI faster by giving less UI.   How does that happen?  Less scripts, smarter scripts, and very smart browsers.  Kill the code, for Pete’s (or Alex’s) sake!

If you remember Wired’s recent story, “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet.”, you’ll probably recall that part of the argument of that debate was that the Web browser is being used less and less.  Think all the stuff you do on your iPad (HP Slate coming soon!) or smartphone.  It’s all done in the application, not the browser.  So, I’m opening my mind to what looks like the counter-argument (or even the evolution of the converstion).

This workshop steps you through building an HTML5/CSS3 application that’s free from legacy baggage yet still delivers compelling content everywhere. We re-think the tools and techniques you’ve been using to build desktop-web and Ajax applications and instead focus on modern JS/CSS/DOM to deliver rich graphics, smooth and responsive experiences across devices, and “upgradeable” (not degradable) experiences that help you reach multiple audiences at once.

In the browser world, what is ”in”, according to him?  IE 9+, Firefox, Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, etc.  What’s out?  IE <8.   Hmmm.  Did that offend anyone?  No one left the room.  Wait, hang on.  One person just left the room.  I’m a Microsoft fan, but I’m stayin’.

So, why is the Web so slow anyway?  Lately, I’ve been assuming bandwidth is the answer.  Especially with all the discussion about the implosion of the internet due to video.  Surprisingly, Alex says the problem isn’t bandwidth, it’s latency.  We have plenty of bandwidth.  Also, no matter how hard a plugin vendor tries, they’re always behind.  But, it’s javascript that really what makes the web so slow.  Here’s a more complete list:

• legacy browsers
• poorly constructed pages
• geography
• plugins
• topology
• DNS
• scripts (put CSS up front and scripts last!)

Alex takes us through all the new stuff in HTML5 (like cool semantic tags), CSS, and JS.  He edits the browser slides inline with the Web toolkit, with streamlined code that more people can understand.

Tools he shares:

1. html5boilerplate.com
2. fontsquirrel.com
3. TypeKit
4. Google Font API
5. Plexode – I’m not hyperlinking because the site gives me a Javascript error.  Not cool!

Notable Alex Russell quotes from this workshop:

• “loosey goosey”‘
• “squishy, so you’ll be able to make messes wherever you want”
• “There’s a couple of cords we really want to cut”
• “XML is really the ugly ex-girlfriend of the standards world” (Hope I got that one right!)
• “Browser developers are usually honest folks who are enamored with beer.”
• “the manifest destiny of the browser is to expose to developers, in a safe fast way, all the power of the underlying hardware”
• “the browser doesn’t want to think about that very hard today, so they just punted”
• “if you want silky, smooth, buttery, free stuff…use this hack”

Lab:  http://infrequently.org/10/lab.tar.gz

Slides:  http://infrequently.org/10/slides.tar.gz

Thanks for taking us through HTML5, Alex!