Monday, March 16, 2009

Browser Wars III: The Platform Wins

Arun Ranganathan  Mozilla 
Chris Wilson   Web Platform Architect,   Microsoft 
Brendan Eich   CTO,   Mozilla Foundation 
Charles McCathieNevile   Chief Standards Officer,   Opera Software 
Darin Fisher   Software Engineer,   Google

What's in it for Google in the browser game (to Google). You chose webkit. 
  • Initially, focus was "how to make Firefox more successful"
  • 2006, looking at other opps to radically improve browsers (multi-process, rending engines, make it faster). 
  • Gecko vs webkit - webkit was fast (surprisingly, fast). Code base was simpler and was adopted by mobile. Smaller footprint. 
  • Gecko is a full platform for app dev, webkit is only a rending engine. 
With the declining marketshare of IE6 (cheers), potential adoption of IE8 - there is no real majority rendering engine. Where to collab, where to compete? Chris (MSFT) Standards in the context of silverlight - you're the chair of the HTML working-group. 
  • Doesn't work, or evangelize siverlight, but there are scenarios where it makes sense. 
Standardization of web APIs - opera has a lot of skin in the game. 
  • There are some scenarios, but limits reach. If you want broad reach, you'll need to rely on standards. 
People still have to pull hair out to dev for web. What gives? (Mozilla)
  • Silverlight isn't taking over the web. A lot less worried this year, than last. 
How standards are actually made. HTML5 discussions: APIs, video, 2/3d graphics. Modifying the spec license. 
  • (MSFT) Distiguish between open source licenses: do whatever vs do and contribute back. 
Javascript performance wars: 
  • IE8 seriously by MSFT? Yes. Performance, though, not just focused on JS (holistic approach).
Battery dying...

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