The reinvigorated web browser
At Workbooks we are very interested in the evolution of the web browser – it has only recently become possible to deliver a compelling rich User Interface like the Workbooks Desktop without requiring all manner of plugins. The good news is that the evolution is accelerating and with it the browser’s speed and capability.
Eighteen months ago Google launched Chrome which was dramatically faster than any other browser available at the time. A browser performance and functionality war has been underway since then. In those eighteen months, and despite some hiccups, Chrome has become the world’s third most popular browser – after Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox and ahead of Apple’s Safari and Opera’s eponymous browser. It’s well documented that Internet Explorer’s market share has been declining at an increasing pace since its peak in 2004 – that decline accelerating further since Google’s entrance into the market and likely further still with the advent of the European Union’s “browser ballot” screen. Google have also announced Google Chrome Frame, a plugin to Internet Explorer, which brings Chrome’s features and performance to Microsoft’s browsers for websites that are modified to use it. Finally there is now a proliferation of new ways of accessing the Internet using things other than PCs where there is nothing Microsoft in sight: from PS3s, iPhones and iPads for example.
Internet Explorer was first released nearly fifteen years ago; the other week Microsoft unveiled a “Platform Preview” of the next version, dubbed Internet Explorer 9. It’s not even “alpha” software – we have no idea when it will be ready – and yet it has excited a lot of commentary. My view is that it signals a radical departure for Microsoft and they should be applauded for it.
As is Microsoft’s way they are still a little picky about which open standards they embrace but IE9 includes much that other browsers are also adopting so eventually if you choose a modern browser from any mainstream vendor it will be capable of rendering video, storing data to work with while offline, and showing beautiful charts which scale smoothly as you zoom your browser – all without requiring any external software (“plugins”). As an added benefit it will get easier for developers to write web sites which work consistently across all major browsers without major compromise through a “lowest common denominator” approach: the lowest common denominator is now getting a lot higher.
IE9 is notable also for the speed it promises. It has become very fashionable – and easy – to criticise the performance of Microsoft’s browsers. It’s refreshing that with IE9 Microsoft has ditched its denial of there being a performance issue with IE and decided to address the issue: now it’s going to be “crazy fast“.
Depending on the benchmark IE9 shows upwards of a sixfold improvement over IE8 which itself is twice as fast as IE7. Although it’s unlikely IE9 will take the speed crown for most tasks from current leaders Opera and Chrome or overtake Safari it does at least mean we will be able to stop focusing quite so much on IE performance as an issue.
Prior to IE9’s announcement it was looking increasingly likely that Microsoft’s market share decline would only increase however now it’s clear that Microsoft have decided not to abdicate from the browser market; Chrome Frame will likely be marginalised to be a tool for those IE users who are unable or unwilling to migrate to the latest version of IE.
But more significant than any of the above is that I think IE9 is going to be fundamentally different from previous versions of IE: it delivers most of what it does using open standards. It’s well documented that many organisations are still stuck on IE6 – even though IE6 has had its funeral – because that browser included a raft of proprietary extensions that did not make it into IE7 or any subsequent browser. Open standards are easier for developers and allow users to avoid lockin.
This is all great news for the user: whichever browser you use it is getting faster, more stable and more functional.
Google Chrome – not as polished as we would like
As a vendor of web based applications, we take a very active interest in the development of web browsers.
Over the last couple of years we have seen Microsoft’s dominance of the browser market being challenged by the likes of Firefox, Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari.
This has been a very good thing indeed. When Microsoft dominated the landscape, little innovation was taking place. In particular IE6 and IE7 had very poor javascript engines. For those of you that don’t know, javascript is the underlying technology that enables us to develop rich User Interfaces (UIs) like Workbooks.com. Because the javascript engine in IE6/7 was slow, it meant that running and rendering more complex richer web pages took more time.
If you have ever used Workbooks CRM in IE7 and compared it with the performance in Google’s Chrome you will see Chrome is 10 – 20 times faster than IE7. The emergence of these new browsers has prompted Microsoft to raise their game and IE8 is a significant step forward, albeit still slower than the others. Competition really is good for the consumer.
So in general we have been a fan of these new browsers and Chrome in particular.
However our enthusiasm has been dented a little over the last week, because of Google’s strategy of automatically updating their browser without letting you know.
Google released Chrome 4 on the 25th of January, unfortunately the release also introduced a bug which stopped our users downloading attachments from Workbooks.com.
So we spent a whole day last week, developing a workaround, testing it and then releasing it to our servers.
As a software vendor I recognize that no software is perfect and dealing with bugs is part of life. However if Google took the same approach as Microsoft and actually asked you to upgrade rather forcing you, at least you could make an informed choice.
Clearly there is downside in allowing people to choose, because you need to support multiple versions for a longer period. However if Google is looking to replace Microsoft as the OS of choice, either their QA needs to get better and their release cycles a little longer, or they should move away from a strategy of automatically updating.
That said – in the round we still much prefer Google’s browsers to Microsoft’s and would still recommend it to customers over IE – until our view changes.
John