What Will the Browser Look Like In Five Years? 201
macslocum writes "Opera's Charles McCathieNevile examines the most significant web browser innovations of the last few years, and he looks ahead to the browser's near-term future."
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What Will the Browser Look Like In Five Years?
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
Well (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope it will have migrated off the desktop, off the smartphone, and onto some contact lenses.
*sigh* am I thinking a little too distant?
In five years... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Who? What now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, opposed to Firefox, IE, Chrome, and pretty much any other browser out there, which you have to pay for. Oh, wait....
The way things are going (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm worried that it will simply display the MOTD about being a good citizen, reminding us not to violate copyright and then pointing us to our assigned task for the day. Oh and it will have ads for entertainment content, mountain dew and viagra. Mandatory ads that is (as in no need to click here, we will simply deduct it from your account, thanks).
Re:In five years... (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are saying that it can be dumbed down more?
Your comment actually makes no sense. It's only been since Firefox* came out that there has been any innovation in browsers. Before Firefox became popular the web browser was as dumbed down as it gets. Forward, back, home, and a place to enter in a url. Now we have tabs, we have ad blockers, we have good functional add-ons.
The browser has been getting more complex with new functionality and Joe Sixpack has been loving it.
* I'm sure someone will point out the innovation came out in other browsers and Firefox was just the first one that got wide appeal**.
** As in you would recommend it to even your non-technical friends.
Re:I guess (Score:3, Insightful)
True, and I was being a bit facetious. But that said I am concerned that the problems they had in house are indicative of a particular attitude on security. I'm not writing them off just yet. :-) But I will watch them now for while as I have been doing to MS for, um, well it feels like forever with MS.
Chrome (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox and Safari and Chrome seem to be meeting in the middle in a basic design with one entry field and very few buttons. Whether tabs are on the bottom or top, people want a streamlined experience.
As for the rest, well I remember in 1996 when people were suggested VRML and 3D web was the next big thing. I imagine the web is largely going to look the same in 5 years except for ads. Pop-ups, pop-unders, peel-away ads and such will be joined by even more annoying ads of the future. Thankfully I block all of them.
Re:Come on moderators (Score:3, Insightful)
I predict same old same old. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, let me see, I predict that 5 years from now, browsers are going to be about the freaking same. Perhaps, as usual, with a few more useless bells and whistles nobody really needs but some PHB though would be cool.
Why? Well, a browser is an application that retrieves web documents, renders them on your screen, and enables you to navigate through them using hyper links. Nothing more, nothing less. It won't make your toast and it won't replace your operating system. People may try things like that but then it's not just a browser any more, and it is usually a bad idea.
The basic functionality of a browser really hasn't changed much since Tim Berners-Lee released his "World Wide Web" browser in 1991. Feel free to try and come up with something new that meets the needs of the world better. I dare say there is room for improvement, but I just don't that kind of innovation happening much any more - people just keep trying to shoehorn "applications" in to something that is only meant to render documents and keep scratching their head as to why that doesn't work very well.
Re:Even more interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
My Guess is that idiots that don't understand what a browser is or what a computer operating system is, or think there is nothing else you can do with a computer than browse the web, will keep spewing this kind of mumbo jumbo.
The computing universe does not revolve around web browsing. There is a significant design and implementation benefit by keeping the OS, shell, and browser separate. IE and Windows has proven why merging these a bad idea.
I often don't have a web browser window open, because I'm working on databases, word processing, graphics, file management, or playing video games - all of which *gasp* don't need a web browser window! And when I am doing those I don't want one!
Re:Firefox from 2015... (Score:1, Insightful)