This is the future Web
Since then, the Web grew and had a phenomenal impact on our culture and the way we communicate, inform, entertain ourselves and how we work. It’s just one of the many services offered by the Internet, but its weight is so great that many users use the Web to access the rest (e-mail, chat, video calls, file transfers, etc.).
Be the vehicle for access to the Web is very attractive for any company. In the 90′s Netscape and Microsoft fought for that position, as they do today, Firefox and Chrome, at least in terms of innovation.
“But when he was born was very simple, a tool for sharing information. When I was in my first browser I used NeXT and was very primitive, if you clicked a link open a window, and you had to go back close, “says Linus Upson, Google engineering vice president, who is responsible for the development of Chrome (chrome.google.com), who worked on early versions of Netscape.
“The success of the Web gave three properties that have from the beginning he explains. The first is that everything is a URL, a Web address, which means that you can prove anything with a click, without installing anything. The second is that you can do web searches and quickly get what you want, without friction. It is a universal mechanism to access information. The third is that you can embed something from another site on your own, create a new combination. Are the three elements that allowed the mass of the Web. In fact, I can not think what application can be as important today as a PC browser.”
According to Upson, these three qualities are still key, but even so, the Web is changing. The difference is what makes the Web, says Hakon Wium Lie, chief technology officer at Opera, the company that developed the browser of the same name (www.opera.com), and author of the standard CSS (cascading style sheets , according to its acronym in English), which allows you to define how content is presented on a Web page to the navigator.
“When born, the Web was a means to exchange documents and text. But over time evolved from a library to become a platform for everything. So we need to change how the Web, so now the key is to HTML5, “he said.
HTML is the primary language with which Web pages are written, you define its structure and content, and that’s what browsers interpret to display the page in the user’s screen. “But we need the new HTML is no longer a language for creating documents and becomes one that allows each site to behave like an application. This is HTML5-Lie-states, allows programmers to do things that previously could not be done in one place.”
This change in the Web and we live every day with sites that behave like applications: webmail, online photo album, virtual disk, the music or video player, the office suite and other sites Web 2.0 we discussed in www.lanacion.com.ar/1060027.
What they look for developers of browsers and Web pages is to enhance further its capacity, adding 3D graphics, greater flexibility in content presentation, access to other computer components, and availability while the computer is not connected to the Internet . The latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari are compatible with HTML5, JavaScript, WebGL and other languages that are changing the Web, and most smartphone browsers are in part. In demos.mozilla.org
www.chromeexperiments.com and you can see some experiments that explore what can be done from a browser.
“The wealth of graphics and interactive capabilities that were once associated exclusively with a native application for the PC is moving to the Web, says Roger Capriotti, director of Microsoft Internet Explorer (it is unloading www.labellezadeinternet.com) -. But no one opens the browser for its own sake, but want to get online content that interests them. So the browser should be transparent and allow those sites and Web applications show the best.”
But this change is not yet a reality, need to define exactly what is HTML5, which is still in development, and ensure that all browsers interpret those directives in the same way.
“We’re just seeing what role does the browser on a desktop computer. We like the automotive industry in the sixties, competing to be the fastest and most powerful, but that’s not enough, we have much to do, especially in security and privacy issues, “admits Chris Hofmann, engineering director at the Foundation Mozilla, who participated in the entire development of Netscape and Firefox.
Respondents agreed that the type Flash plugins run its course and, ideally, in the future will no longer be relevant, precisely because of the flexibility of HTML5, but this will not happen overnight.
According to Hofmann, “will spend at least two or three years until HTML5 is the standard and Web sites adopt it completely. The good thing is that it is an open standard and is not controlled by anyone, and that is critical to the future of the Web. But we should be improving little by little, it is impossible to discuss the future and make it happen just like that.”
The virtue of a computing world where the tools are web-based (rather than relying on a computer or download an application store) is that they are always up to date, are safer and allow more freedom of action the user because, says Upson, “ends the intermediary.” It refers both to the app store and the entire interface of the PC. Upson also leads the development of Chrome OS, Google’s operating system, which has no support applications: everything is done through the browser. Mozilla also discuss this alternative with your project To Boot Gecko.
“In the future all the pixels of the computer, whatever, they will be controlled by the browser, which will be transparent to the user-indica Lie. I think the Web will have a historical impact similar to the Gutenberg press, or even higher. So we believe it is essential that a solid base among all, and that is open, so that no single company that decides how things should be done on the Web.”
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