What Do You Want On Future Browsers?

Coach Wei writes "An industry wishlist for future browsers has been collected and developed by OpenAjax Alliance. Using wiki as an open collaboration tool, the feature list now lists 37 separate feature requests, covering a wide range of technology areas, such as security, Comet, multimedia, CSS, interactivity, and performance. The goal is to inform the browser vendors about what the Ajax developer community feels are most important for the next round of browsers (i.e., FF4, IE9, Safari4, and Opera10) and to provide supplemental details relative to the feature requests. Currently, the top three voted features are: 2D Drawing/Vector Graphics, The Two HTTP Connection Limit Issue, and HTML DOM Operation Performance In General . OpenAjax Alliance is calling for everyone to vote for his/her favorite features. The alliance also strongly encourages people to comment on the wiki pages for each of the existing features and to add any important new features that are not yet on the list."

On a related note, an anonymous reader writes "The Tao of Mac has put up pretty interesting list of five things that are still wrong with browsers these days, and I have to wonder — with things like AIR starting to be accepted by developers, do we still need the browser at all?"

Personally I want...

[Verdatum (1257828)]

Laserbeams....oh yeah...and Ninjas!!!

Re:Personally I want...

[andrewd18 (989408)]

No, no, you want frickin' ninjas with frickin' laser beams on their heads. That's obviously superior to individual ninjas and laser beams.

Re:Personally I want...

[Zencyde (850968)]

Laser beams? Hell, I want porn! Porn with frickin' laser beams!

Not just support for SVG, but mixed SVG/XHTML

[mrchaotica (681592)]

So browsers other than IE support (to varying degrees) referencing SVG drawings using the <img> or <object> tags. But that doesn't go far enough, IMHO; since both SVG and XHTML are both XML, I'd like to be able to embed either within the other, e.g. by putting a SVG polygon or circle on a webpage (surrounded by HTML), with another field of HTML embedded inside it.

Re:Not just support for SVG, but mixed SVG/XHTML

[jesser (77961)]

Firefox 3 does support mixed SVG and XHTML. I think the other non-IE browsers do as well.

I want what most users want.

[Lumpy (12016)]

More speed and less bloat.

Make it launch in 1 second and run for years without consuming much ram as well as render the page and all text FIRST before loading graphics and other crap.

I am tired of the bloated dead fish that browsers have become.

Re:I want what most users want.

[Angostura (703910)]

You'll be wanting Lynx, my friend.

Re:I want what most users want.

[dgatwood (11270)]

So true. Heck, I'd be happy if we could just get rid of all the web designers who build bloated Flash-based websites when simple HTML and a handful of graphics would look just as good and work much better....

Re:I want what most users want.

[Ethanol-fueled (1125189)]

And, the option to open each instance in a seperate process, so one window's crash dosen't take down the rest.

Re:I want what most users want.

[eldepeche (854916)]

Basically, it would be really nice to never leave your web browser because all the functionality is there.

Have you considered Emacs?

What do _I_ want?

[dotancohen (1015143)]

What do _I_ want? HTML and CSS compliance. That's it. Get that done first then worry about the 'features'.

Re:What do _I_ want?

[hackstraw (262471)]

What about <MATH>

Re:What do _I_ want?

[hackstraw (262471)]

Shouldn't reply to myself, but also what about media besides images and text?

I don't mean plugins, but a standard.

Re:What do _I_ want?

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

What do _I_ want? HTML and CSS compliance. That's it. Get that done first then worry about the 'features'.

The problem with that equation is, the non-compliant crap still has major sway over the market since Average Joe Luser has it already installed on his new Windows box. You need to get the compliant browser into the average home, and the only way to do that is to give Average Joe the bells and whistles he wants and do it better than that pile of crap MSIE. The non-geeks need a reason to switch beyond "it follows some invisible rules you don't know or care about."

Force feedback

[nuzak (959558)]

Teledildonics. Mmm.

Re:Force feedback

[OzPeter (195038)]

I. Am. Now. Officially. Scared. I thought you were putting up a joke link. Ugggghhhh.

mathml support and full unicode

[WillAdams (45638)]

and a decent h&j algorithm --- if only TBL had taken a closer look at TeXview.app on his NeXT Cube before writing worldwideweb.app

William

Re:mathml support and full unicode

[WillAdams (45638)]

>What is an ``h&j algorithm''?

hyphenation and justification --- instead of just setting one line at a time, the system should consider the entire paragraph and set it so that all lines are as nice as possible w/ the best possible breaks.

See the Knuth and Plass paper on it:

http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SFCS.1979.46 [ieeecomputersociety.org]

Or look at Knuth's book _Digital Typography_

William

Stable plugins

[Chlorus (1146335)]

I want some degree of protection from the entire browser crashing when a plugin misbehaves(***cough*** flash ***cough***)

Why only 2D Vectors?

[StCredZero (169093)]

Give me 3D vector graphics, and let me play Battlezone in the browser!

Re:Why only 2D Vectors?

[TubeSteak (669689)]

Give me 3D vector graphics, and let me play Battlezone in the browser!

3D vector graphics sounds nice, but (and no offense) I'd rather there was less convergence of the browser and the desktop environment.

Browsers are inherently buggy and exploitable, or include technologies that are. Until security is locked down tight, IMHO, we should not be moving to a place where the browser does more.
 
/If it isn't clear, I'm also not a fan of browser based webapps.

FF3

[pla$+!k (1314047)]

Firefox 3 ought to be enough for everybody

An upload meter?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'd like an upload meter.

Upload progress bar

[Ignorant Aardvark (632408)]

I know what I want: an upload progress bar. We've had download progress bars for nearly two decades now, so why not the same for uploading? In this age of YouTube and such, users are uploading files in their browsers more often than ever before, and the addition of an upload progress bar in the browser (not implemented as a hackish AJAX/Flash application) would be very much appreciated.

Re:Upload progress bar

[Ignorant Aardvark (632408)]

Two more things I'd like to see: native support for vector graphics (in the form of SVG) and native support for video (in the form of the <video/> tag and a Free codec such as Ogg Theora). The latter is actually already written, but Mozilla isn't going live with it yet because of patent fears from certain large companies.

How nice it would be to have integrated video support directly in the browser, though. No need for all of the hackish solutions, such as anything Flash-based, that have grown up around this gaping capability hole in the original spec. Make embedding videos into a webpage as easy as embedding text. That would be an amazing feature for a future browser.

Re:Upload progress bar

[CastrTroy (595695)]

I think the problem with a <video> tag is that the sites hosting the video won't use it. I mean, if they really wanted you to be able to just download and watch the video, they would have just put a link to a .mpg, or .avi. Instead what they want to do, is to ensure, as much as they can, that you are watching it in your browser window, so that all the ads show up on the side, and so that you can't save a copy. By using tricks such as using flash, or storing the actual URL inside a playlist file, inside a playlist file, inside a playlist file, inside a playlist file, inside a playlist file, they can stop most casual users from downloading a copy of the file, or watching it in a program that is not their browser.

Re:Upload progress bar

[jesser (77961)]

Firefox had the progress bar working for uploads for a while, but then it broke [mozilla.org]. There is pretty much nobody working on Firefox's networking code, so minor bugs like that tend to pile up more so than in other components of Firefox :( If you know someone who enjoys working on C++ networking code, please send them our way!

Re:Upload progress bar

[garett_spencley (193892)]

I know that you probably realize this, but the reason for the lack of upload progress is because it's a limitation of the HTTP protocol itself. In order to upload you have to send the data in one big POST request and there's no way, via HTTP, to poll the results on the server.

That's why, currently, upload progress bars are implemented in HTML/javascript/server-side scripting. It requires a server side script to dump the current file size on the server and some javascript to poll the server-side script. In order to get upload progress bars standard in all browsers there would be have to be a standard way, via HTTP, to poll the status of the upload on the server.

So don't blame the browsers solely. To get this feature implemented would require modifications to the servers too. So the best way to get this feature implemented in all browsers (in a widely-accepted, standard fashion) is to call for an addition to the HTTP protocol.

Re:Upload progress bar

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Couldn't you just measure the amount of data sent out over the connection? If you only count the stuff that the server has sent back the ACK packets for, you could probably get a pretty good indication of the progress of the upload. It wouldn't represent the size of the file on the actual server, but it would be a really good indicator. I think part of the problem is that it requires going a little bit more low level than generic posting code that the browser would usually call, but there's no reason it couldn't be done.

Am I the only one who doesn't mind that much?

[gparent (1242548)]

I do enjoy a minimum browsing quality. However, personally, all of the competing browsers currently on the market do what I ask them to. Yes, this includes IE7. Microsoft has vastly improved their browser and I applaud them for it. However, I think there's a point where feature packing has its limit. I guess you could compare it to Microsoft adding tons of bloat to XP and making Vista instead of fixing the outstanding issues of XP. I believe there's a point where browsers are just fine, and extra features would be superfluous. I thought Firefox 2 had attained that point until Firefox 3 came out, with its many performance improvements. At this point I only think that bug fixes and even more performance improvements are necessary. Vector graphics? No thanks. My work computer already has enough trouble loading Toms hardware and slashdot properly as it is.

Boobies!

[DarthVain (724186)]

Seriously though how about some decent security for a change. It would be nice to have a browser that doesn't let malware pown you system with a million vulnerabilities or so. Integrate an adware/spyware protection system.

That and boobies.

and tabs, and decent memory management. Speed is good also. Sharks with frikin' lasers...

Make it possible to select multiple files

[siDDis (961791)]

and not just one single file when I want to upload. I really hate to go that java/activex way to solve this issue today.

a rich-text editing standard

[brunascle (994197)]

browser based rich-text editing is a huge mess. of the browsers that claim to support it, there's very few functions that work universally, and everything else has to be hacked together. one of the 4 major browsers, up until the latest version, couldnt even create hyperlinks!

we need a standard desperately, and we needed it years ago.

Henry Ford

[Lank (19922)]

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."

Maybe we should be thinking what do we want _beyond_ a web browser?

I want my broswer to well, browse the web.

[shypht (1267660)]

I don't want it to read my email, or be my RSS reader. I don't want it to be an image editor, or a word processor, or MP3 player or media library. I would like it to be standards compliant, render web pages quickly, not consume loads of ram, and be stable. If I want any of the various 'features' as above, I'll take them in a plugin-format, or through a web application programmed to standards that can accomplish that task. Or, use a stand alone program for it. I want my applications to specialize in a few things and do them VERY well, I dont want 'jack of all trades, master of none' applications that implement dozens of features (most I dont want/use anyways), that don't do them very well, and add to overall bloat/instability in the application.

Re:I want my broswer to well, browse the web.

[clang_jangle (975789)]

RSS, especially with Google's customizable news feeds, totally rocks. It is by far the very best and easiest way to scan news that matters to me -- at least, using Safari on OS X it is. (I've heard Safari on win sucks, but wouldn't know personally). For the uninitiated, Safari on OS X renders feeds just beautifully, like a web page of all your feeds. Very simple, usable, and obviously without need for some contrived "browser integration" scheme. I also use FF2 with a plugin called Brief on FBSD, that works very much like Safari's integrated reader (though unfortunately *much* slower). If they get that Brief add-on working well in FF3 and fix the crashing on OS X (for those of us using OS X and Shapeshifter) I would happily switch to FF3 for all my machines.

A Mute Button

[camperdave (969942)]

I would like firefox to have a "kill the sound" button like IE does. If I'm on a site that plays background music, I can press [esc] in Internet Explorer and get silence. In Firefox, I don't think there is such a keystroke.

SAFETY

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Kill 10% of the performance but bounds check everything.

I use "noscript" and flashblocker and I havn't gotten anything yet. but a friend using firefox was trashed by a link a friend sent her. A lot of "legit" sites (esp lyrics) now inject stuff into your computer.

I want safety first, then after that ,, safety. THEN maybe some new feature.

There are so many things I want

[mikael_j (106439)]

IMO the most important things for browsers in the near future is the following:

• XHTML and CSS compatibility - To save us all a lot of trouble.
• Memory footprint - It needs to be smaller.
• Stability - When I've got fifteen tabs open I don't want something in one of those tabs to crash the browser.
• Some form of page rendering where browsers are able to render page layout and text without waiting for larger images and such, perhaps by figuring out how to just fetch the dimensions of images from the server somehow.
• Properly sandboxed plugins - I want to be able to let flash run but limit the resources available to it, same for javscript and java applets..

If all this could be done then I'd be pretty happy with the state of web browsers and would stop complaining...

/Mikael

Back in the day....

[mark-t (151149)]

when I first heard of bittorrent, I always thought it would make an excellent addition to the http protocol to utilize bittorrent or something like it to share the content of a page, including embeded images and other media content, for as long as a browser window is open on that page, with the web site itself acting as an initial seed if nobody else is currently viewing the page. Instead of the data transfer load being placed entirely on the web server, the task could be delegated to other machines that are viewing that page, all of which ought to have the information readily available. This would have the upshot of keeping smaller websites from being crippled due to sudden surges in traffic, such as what is all too often caused by news stories on sites such as slashdot and numerous others on the web. Had things gone this way back in the day, I think I can safely say we would not be seeing P2P throttling happening the way it is today, because it would be too prevalently used by the mainstream population for general purpose browsing for the ISP's to pull it off without legitimate complaint from everyday users.

I have to say I'd still like to see something like that... although I suspect now it may be too late, because broadband ISP's are already throttling protocols like bittorrent, so most of its potential benefit may already be gone.

Sockets

[Jerf (17166)]

Sockets. Raw sockets. Stop pretending with AJAX, with Comet, and just cut to the chase. Why this isn't the first thing on the AJAX agenda beats me.

Forward / Back with branching

[FunkyELF (609131)]

Right now browsers are limited to linear forward and back. Branching would be nice to see graphically too. Then maybe I wouldn't need so many darn tabs open.

The user must be in charge

[Animats (122034)]

The user must be in charge. Not the remote site. Not any "toolbars". Specifically,

• All "toolbars", "branding", codecs, DRM keys, and other installed browser helper objects must show as clearly identified items that can be easily disabled, restored to their initial state, or removed completely.
• Nothing is ever downloaded to any place other than the browser cache without explicit interaction from the user. This specifically includes codecs and DRM code.
• Pages cannot disable menus or menu items. The "back" button always works, although pages are permitted to notice that they were reached via the "back" button.
• If the user chooses to disable popups, all popups must be disabled.
• All pop-ups must be on top. No "pop-unders".
• Pop-ups are treated as subordinate pages of the page from which they were launched. When the parent page closes, so must the pop-up.
• Ad-blocking support should conceal from the remote site that the ad is being blocked.
• Windows that are not on top should be limited in their resource consumption when they have active content running.

You get the idea. When it's user vs. website or user vs. toolbar, the user wins.

Re:stability?

[Victor_0x53h (1164907)]

I upgraded firefox and now it decides to crash every 15 minutes, when it used to only crash every half our. (...)

What could you possibly be doing to crash Firefox every 15 minutes? It sounds like you've got something else wrong to me. Time for a system reload.

Re:stability?

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Agree with sibling post. The only time any FF install I've got crashes it's the Linux one, whenever I try to kill a flash video before the system is done processing it.

Otherwise it never blips, and I'm a hardcore tab whore: if I can hit CTRL-T I will.

Re:stability?

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Wow I didn't.

*click*
*click*
*click*
*click**click**click**click**click**click**click**click**click**click*

Mmmmmmm. I need a moment...alone...

Re:stability?

[arth1 (260657)]

The important words there are web tasks. I don't want a browser that does e-mail, instant messaging, feed aggregation, balances my check book and feeds my dogs. I want a browser where the unnecessary features have been removed, and those who want them can add them themselves. No add-ons as default, thanks!

Seamonkey works best for me at present -- you can at least choose to install it without all the features, unlike Firefox with comes with the kitchen sink as standard. Which is kind of ironic, considering that Firefox was meant to be the leaner alternative to the Mozilla Suite, and Seamonkey is the continuation of the Mozilla Suite.

Re:stability?

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

This isn't 2002, browsers should be above that.

Sure the browser can be, but Flash is a plugin, not a browser and a poorly-written plugin for any platform other then Windows. So think of Flash as a program running in the background that display's the contents in your browser window. Can a program crash? Yep. So can Flash crash and make your browser slow? Yep.

Re:stability?

[Sloppy (14984)]

Sounds like a good wishlist item for future browser: have plugins run as separate process with very limited (or more importantly: well defined) IPC with the browser, probably running as user "nobody." If a plugin crashes, browser crash should not be an option.

In other words, have the browser treat plugins as just as dangerous as data from the 'net.

Re:Fast and clean

[Daimanta (1140543)]

"Fast and clean"

Guess what ideal webbrowser and ideal hookers have in common.