All the eggs in one basket [LWN.net]

All the eggs in one basket

Posted Jul 27, 2007 6:22 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: All the eggs in one basket by muwlgr
Parent article: Thunderbird to find new home as Mozilla Foundation focuses on Firefox (MozillaZine)

It's not a silver bullet, and it is a hammer only for those who view every problem as nail. Its deficiencies are too well known, and strange, more and more stuff tends to be done "over http".

Nope. More and more stuff is done "in browser", not "over http". Sure, sometimes http is used as replacement for ftp - but there are no problems: it works well for that. In most other cases the goal is not to do something "via http", it's to do something "in browser".

What's the reason ? Firewall/proxy piercing ? False and unfounded sense of security ?

Nope. Usability. When you have something "in browser" (your mail, your news, your documents and so on) you can always access them. If you try to use something else (SMTP, IMAP, NNTP, etc) - you need client. And quite often you just can not install that client (corporate policy) or you just have not done it due to laziness.

We have the whole IPv4, why limit ourselves to mere http ?

Because it's easier. It's logical next step: very few are installing OS today (that's Windows is king and Linux is lagging), the next step is that few people want to install anything unless they absolutely need to. If web-based solution works - it's preferable to client-based solution. Netscape creator were right in a sense when they said that in the future web-browser will be the king and OS will be significantly less relevant - they just said it 15-20 years too early...

The fact is: people are scared by client solutions. They know that installation of something on Windows can easily screw your system and on Linux you can only easily install something if it's in your distribution repository. Cleanup (if you don't like something) is often incomplete (both in Windows and Linux). But with Web - it's easy: visit web-site, try the thing, if it does not work adequately - forget about it.

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All the eggs in one basket

Posted Jul 27, 2007 6:45 UTC (Fri) by xanni (subscriber, #361) [Link] (4 responses)

Except that many of the "Web 2.0" applications actually require client-side browser plugins like Java, Flash, Quicktime, etc. and they are not always available, secure or easy to clean up.

All the eggs in one basket

Posted Jul 27, 2007 9:33 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

Flash is pretty much part of browser today. Or so people believe: when Opera DS was released the first question was not "does it include flash-support" but "how well flesh is supported". And when they got the answer "flash is not supported" the reaction was "how can you call it browser then ?". Java and QuickTime are significantly less popular. And anyway: if you'll compare number of required plugins (half-dozen or so) and number of available web-sites (hundreds if not thousands) it's still a win.

All the eggs in one basket

Posted Jul 27, 2007 12:31 UTC (Fri) by xanni (subscriber, #361) [Link]

Flash is pretty much part of browser today.

Not for my wife, running PowerPC Linux on a Mac Mini. She has to run MacOS X Firefox under MacOnLinux to use Flash sites like YouTube.

All the eggs in one basket

Posted Jul 27, 2007 13:45 UTC (Fri) by marduk (guest, #3831) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't agree with this at all. Flash is still effectively only usable by those running 32-bit x86 browsers and/or those willing to run non-free software.

All the eggs in one basket

Posted Jul 27, 2007 16:17 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I don't agree with this at all. Flash is still effectively only usable by those running 32-bit x86 browsers and/or those willing to run non-free software.

Translation from English to English: while 90% of users see Flash as part of browser I know it's not true. I know this too, but does it really change anything ? 1% of users who stubbornly use 64-bit browsers and/or use only free software can't change the trend.