Traditional browsers now include so much new technology that their mission has changed. The question is: Changed to what?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” wrote Shakespeare. “A rose is a rose is a rose,” was Gertrude Stein’s version. Today, with literary deconstructionism and politically correct speech, words still have meaning. Their meaning, though, is temporal in nature. “The Gay ’90s,” for example, had a different meaning when it was coined a century ago than it may have today. Times change and frequently the meaning of words must change with them.
The Internet fosters a compression of time, and, with Internet concepts changing more quickly than the words associated with them, a tremendous emphasis is put on the words that mark its evolution. A year or two ago — a century in Internet time — everyone knew what a “browser” was: a lightweight, highly graphical software tool used for the amusement and occasional enlightenment of networked persons.
Time flies, and with it, the nomenclature of the Web. Sadly perhaps, the (relatively) carefree act of browsing has been replaced by something nearly indistinguishable from real work.
The time has come to ask two simple but important questions. Is the browser dead? What will replace it?
Is the browser dead?
In a word, yes — the browser is dead. The term
browser
no longer accurately describes a product. It describes a feature of many products. Browser genes live on in a host of progeny ranging from second-generation Internet access products to completely integrated desktops like Netscape’s Communicator. In the software industry, form follows function (for example, individual products are often packaged in such a way as to emphasize their use with other products as a unit), and in the Internet world many functions must be handled at the same time. Bundling functionality into what used to be a browser is continuing at an accelerating rate.
What was once a browser is now your office
In the networked economy, people make decisions, and software manages time, appointments, communications, and correspondence. As a result, scheduling and electronic mail are becoming a standard part of Internet access software.
In 1997, most people’s e-mail messages are alphanumeric exchanges. Images, charts, and graphics typically are still exchanged as attachments. The chances of losing or being unable to read such attachments is directly proportional to their importance to you. The benefits of using browser technology in mail clients is compelling, and Internet Explorer, Navigator, and Communicator are rapidly becoming the standard mail viewers for more than just the technology-astute. As the transition from alphanumeric to HTML mail clients takes place, some strange anomalies occur. Indeed, technological backwardness is now measured by how many messages with unrendered HTML tags you are willing to endure before switching to a browser-based mail client. (More than five and you are officially an exhibit in Jurassic Park.)
What was once a browser is now your boss
“Browsing” implies you are in control of an interaction — and not particularly serious about its consequences. Push technology is entering the browser domain, and you are not the pusher. You are rapidly becoming the
pushee
. Push entered the browser space as a mechanism for delivering customized channels of information to specific users. You were in command of what was presented and when.
This state of being in command changes markedly as push technology enters the corporate world, and your management decides what gets delivered to your desktop. The advantage is obvious: If you can deliver to individuals timely information tailored to who they are and what they do, there can be an immediate impact on productivity. The ultimate benefit of push inside the firewall is that the company can dynamically “narrowcast” information to individuals and groups to help them perform their jobs more efficiently. Browsers were fun; their replacement is all business.
What was once a browser is now your business
In an information economy, software applications are the business. As the descendents of browsers become the standard mechanism for delivering software applications to the desktop, they will become the focus of your business. Browsers were about hyperlinked documents and cool graphics. Their replacements will be all about delivering software.
Standard interfaces like IIOP and DCOM promise to deliver existing client/server and mainframe applications to the new Internet client. Similarly, database interfaces like JDBC and JSQL will enable developers to easily construct transactional applications for existing databases. Whether it’s an MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) system or a payroll application, businesses will transact increasingly with the browser’s replacement.
What was once a browser is now your window to the world
CNN promises you the world in thirty minutes. The replacement for your browser will deliver the world 24 hours a day to anything with a screen. In North America, network television has seen a dramatic decline in viewers. Cable networks and the proliferation of channels is only one of the causes. Accessing information from the Internet is having a dramatic impact on the broadcast and cable industry.
The reason for this is simple. If you have been logged onto your standard home page on MSNBC or attached to a channel that is pushing live news feeds to your computer all day, what need do you have for an overpaid, human newsreader?
Television is still the preferred mechanism, though, for whiling away those ever-declining hours between work and sleep. While the broadcast media have high hopes for the new digital transmission protocol that will phase in over the next three years in North America, their avarice will remain unsatisfied when they realize digital television is just another word for specialized computer service. The much-promised convergence of television and computing is at hand, and the result looks suspiciously like a networked computer.
What was once a browser is now your only friend
It is said that your true friends are found in your address book, not in your neighborhood. As everyone’s life becomes organized on the Internet, you will be more likely to gather your friends together in an electronic community than at a backyard barbecue.
Electronic communities are no longer the exclusive domain of the socially challenged. The new Internet client will manage relationships as well as it manages business — well, at least most relationships.
What was once a browser is now unavoidable
Four terms will define the browser’s replacement: multimedia, ubiquitous, cross-platform, and agent-driven. Netscape’s Communicator is an early glimpse into the future of the universal client. Netscape calls its product the universal desktop, but the company underestimates its own technology. Desktops are for computers. Universal clients are, well, universal.
One of the challenges of a ubiquitous interface is allowing for variations in the underlying hardware of the client device. Configurable products, like Communicator, provide some level of comfort that a common subset of functionality will be available on the personal computer and wristwatch of the future. Users will be able to add any additional functionality that their hardware can handle.
What was once a browser is no longer thin
In providing a richly functional universal client, besides the challenge posed by variations in client-device hardware, the other major challenge is the client’s tendency to put on weight. Network computers promise applications will reside on a server and only be downloaded to the client as required. However, the client will still have to be able to render the information that is passed to it.
One of the major selling points of browsers has been the economic advantage of using a thin-client architecture to replace the fat-client environment of personal computers and servers. The economic advantage is maintained, however, even when the clients gain weight. Ubiquity has its own cost advantages, and over time they will dominate any short-term hardware costs.
Conclusion
The browser is dead, but a universal client is in everyone’s future. Netscape’s Communicator is an early indication of what the universal client will become. However, as computers, televisions, and other networked devices are increasingly integrated, the demands on software will increase at roughly the same rate as the quality of the user interaction.
