Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 available
Firefox 3 RC 2 is out now. Here are the release notes.
I am looking forward to the improvements this release brings.
A lot of web 2.0 stuff that has been worked out on web sites over the past half decade will soon be getting even more help from the web browser.
Web applications will become more powerful. More possibilities for developers and users will be opened. Firefox 3 will probably revolutionize web portals too.
The feature that makes this happen is web-based protocol-handlers. Mark Finkle description of web-based protocol handlers has a pretty illuminating example of how the familiar mailto: protocol handler could be redefined for a particular web site.
We have already seen how AJAX has revolutionized web user interfaces.
I have a hunch that after Firefox 3 final is released we will see web frameworks be released for managing data.
Personally, I would love to see users be able to match the best user interface to the best data/action service.
This is something desktop application programmers have been able to develop for years when they write SQL database applications.
One catch: for safety reasons, the web protocol handler must reside on the same server as the web page that uses it.
At first blush this sensible limitation will prevent decoupling UI+service that I claim will be possible.
However, in reality I think that operators of major portals will maintain some of the more popular free protocol handler enabled frameworks on their server.
Users will eventually be able to select which one to use for which applications - the native one, or one of the 3rd party ones.
These choices will wind up being just one more configuration item in the Settings page for web sites.
There they will join themes, content selection options, filters, signatures, and so forth that web users already have among their personalization options.
More than one organization will be able to contribute to the richness of a web application. This could really shake things up.
It could surprise a lot of people by expanding what web applications can do.
I predict when this happens, many folks will be impressed at how economically it can do these things from a software/design standpoint.
Hopefully, someday I will get this page to validate!
