Monday, March 16th at 11:30 AM
Presenters:
Arun Ranganathan – Mozilla
Chris Wilson – Microsoft
Brendan Eich – Mozilla Foundation
Charles McCathieNevile – Opera Software
Darin Fisher – Google
Exciting year – 20th anniversary of the web this year (celebrated last Fri in Switzerland)
There is no Apple on this panel, but there is a representative from Webkit. Google Chrome is the new guy on this panel this year. Mozilla, Google, Opera, Microsoft represented.
What’s in it for Google in the browser game? Explain…
Google started to help make Firefox more successful, they just wanted to make browsers better. They see competition as a way to improve the browser marketplace. Chose Webkit because they didn’t want to create another rendering engine – wanted open source. You’re left with Gecko and Webkit – looked at both. Webkit was very fast at laying out pages, but the JS engine wasn’t as fast. Mobile were using Webkit in many areas, and ultimately went that route. They also didn’t want the full platform (like gecko), just wanted a rendering engine. Google cooperates with Apple on the code (involved in the Webkit community).
With IE 6 disappearing, and potentially being replaced with IE 7/8, there is no single majority browser – how do we work together? Standards! Silverlight has a huge presence here – many of the features are in HTML 5. What’s going on with Silverlight?
Chris doesn’t work on the Silverlight team. There are a set of scenarios where it makes sense, and Chris does what he can to move the standards-based platform forward, which is what IE tries to do outside of non-standard software (flash, silverlight).
You can try to get a standards-based platform, but there will always be theses separate marketplaces and platforms. These provide competition, or something to aim for that can be done with standards. It is a lot of companies competing in a marketplace to do the same thing. They push each other. In the end (hopefully) the standards win.
People still build websites, but many still pull out their hair because of browser differences.
The web is likely to move in a direction where you won’t be able to tell between silverlight and flash from the standards based web. There won’t be stable landscape (IE 7/8, Webkit, Moazilla engines).
How are standards actually made?
“Like sausages… you don’t want to know!”
HTML 5 has many more extended elements for multimedia content. How is the actual spec licensed? The actual spec should/could be Open source. Could a company take the spec and change it and use it? The HTML 5 spec discussions are about HTML spec being too restrictive previously. Can you say, “do what ever you want with it, including forking?” Or is it better if a group looking at everything (property rights) handle this better? Ultimately it doesn’t matter because people will use the spec however they want, or implement it however they want. A license won’t solve this.
If there is competition or a war, it’s about javascript. JS performance, and how standards are set is a possible issue. It is no longer a toy language on the web, and is moving into a performance wars.
Many people are using different techniques and performance techniques to build/use tools in JS. It has moved faster than thought – the important thing is moving the spec forward, and ignoring the politics.
What can IE 8 developers expect in JS?
We are absolutely taking JS seriously! IE 8 focuses not just on JS performance, but also holistic (navigation) performance. The real-world performance is more important to get right at the moment. We still need to move JS as a language forward.
Are the JS tests for performance fair?
Some people set some benchmarks, but they may not be the entire story – but benchmarks are necessary. They are valuable tools, and we need more of them. We need applications that really take advantage of the newer JS engines. The response to Chrome’s JS engine has been great, and has encouraged others to do the same.
Opera has always had a fast JS engine, but for a long time nobody cared. Now they are starting to care, which is good. It’s getting better and faster across the board, and that is good for everyone. In the mobile world it’s even more important (battery life). Being in a world where we’re taking that seriously is great in taking the web as a platform forward.
Security: If there is no single browser with dominance, we can take it more seriously. IE 8 has certain measures, and it’s totaly on their own… why?
When looking at security in general, cross-domain requests or clickjacking, you need to respond very quickly. It is on the set of users you have. Users ignore the auto-update box. Clickjacking became a real problem, and IE couldn’t wait for another product cycle to address the issues.
Chrome – 2 parts, web security (between websites), and protecting the user’s operating system. Sandbox the rendering engine.
Audience Questions:
HTML 5 will be great, all of this was in Java applets 10 years ago. Why did they fail, and why has it taken this long for browsers to catch up?
Class loading took too long, and you had to be a top level programmer to get it to compile correctly. Didn’t grow like the web. It was a way different model. The ecosystem has changed – many factors.
Web Developers like to hijack browsers, as a user it is very annoying, can this be solved at the browser level?
It’s an escalating battle, and a cat and mouse game. There is a definite tradeoff for features and security.
Mobile Devices – How are companies are moving desktop class browsing to mobile devices?
User experience has come a long way, but the full desktop experience may not be totally what you want (size/power/etc). Giving users that experience in a way that developers can take advantage of that experience is what we want. There shouldn’t be two paths for developers mobile vs. desktop. It is very interesting what the iPhone has done, and people are trying to find ways to get web on a small screen usable.
IE 8 vs. Corporate using IE 6 and ActiveX – Consumers also using. As 6 dwindles, IE 7 is more likely to get replaced by 8 (since those folks get the roll-outs) How does MS handle this?
MS can’t do anything about the folks who don’t get things pushed. These people using 6 can’t necessarily be forced out of it but encouraged to IE 8.
W3C Widget Standards – Besides Opera, what are the plans from the other groups?
Widgets are fairly low priority at the moment (more important things to focus on). MS has a similar story. Many things would probably show up above widgets in priority.
CSS Support of font-face rights vs. image rights. Is it the job of a browser maker to protect business models (font IP)?
Image/sound scenario vs font – the image folks give you rights for those images. The problem with font files is there is a limited set of fonts that allow you to do this, or rights to allow you to put it up on a server.
More notes from this session at:
Jeffreybarke.net
Torgo.com
Socialgraphpaper.com
Who has people doing user research? Most of the audience does.
EFF is a legal firm with a technological arm and activism arm. Their goal is to create precedence to guide what we feel the law should be. They often view their job as updating what the law applies to in the digital age.
Perhaps, this will be good for non-traditional students.