IT'S HERE...ALMOST
PC Magazine has a good article on what's under the hood in the next version of the popular Firefox browser, version 3.0, code-named Gran Paradiso.
The browser, expected in the second half of this year, could potentially be a game changer in terms of mainstream users view online vs. desktop applications. As the article points out, this is because of some fundamental underpinnings in the new browser:
"If development goes according to plan, this will be the first version of Firefox—or of any browser, for that matter—to have the three key components needed to support offline Web applications: DOM Storage; an offline execution model; and synchronization. That critical foundation will let free or low-cost Web suites compete with Microsoft software and possibly break the company's decades-long domination in office productivity apps."
While much of the debate over the last couple of years in the mainstream press has been on the "big battle" between the online application vision of Google vs. the off-line application reality of Microsoft, the reality is likely to be in between. Our applications and their related data will need to live and work seamlessly BOTH online and off, which means that each side in the current battle needs to architect towards that future reality.
The architectural foundations of the new Firefox browser are a baby step in that direction, and important to understand.
If anything, it serves to remind us that what we thought of as browsers over the last decade, are drastically evolving into much more robust frameworks for computing on a variety of platforms.
The full article, though a bit geeky in places, is a good primer on what's changing under the hood. Recommended.
I was playing with a nightly build a few weeks ago, it's not noticeably different yet, but the sqlite stuff is in place and that was what I was looking for. The history data in current firefox is this nasty format made up for Netscape Communicator.
Posted by: candice | Wednesday, April 04, 2007 at 03:04 AM