bja888 — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 05:51:47 +0000

isnt that the purpose of firefox though?

popinsiteads — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:43:21 +0000

first time i run this thing i got an error

but it looks great! more for the 'simple' user who doesn't want a load of buttons and that.

bja888 — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:34:09 +0000

Consider your self lucky... you don't find it natural to start a argument when things get boring...
Thats just what I need another browser I need to install on my computer to make sure I'm compatable.

Megan — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:53:42 +0000

Flock is available of public download:

http://news.com.com/New+browser+gives+taste+of+Web+2.0/2100-1046_3-5905922.html?part=rss&tag=5905922&subj=news

(another thread full of Megan and Jeeves arguing amongst ourselves )

JeevesBond — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:21:04 +0000

Megan wrote: whether there's value in customizing a browser to that extent.

Ahhh, but are they customizing or genericizing?

And agreed on the Opera thing, they're cleverly providing the best method to use Web Applications instead of concentrating on superfluous functionality like extensions (and when you consider the potential of Web 2.0, having a weather feed in your toolbar and other such tricks pale in comparison). I like where Opera is going

Megan — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 19:20:07 +0000

Oh yeah, there's been a lot of stuff floating around about Gates and MS and how software should remain on the desktop etc. etc. Here's a better article on that:

http://news.com.com/Gates+on+Google+What%2C+me+worry/2008-1082_3-5863514.html?tag=nl
(had to go look it up because I couldn't remember what he was talking about exactly)

About browsers being generic - that sort of comes back to what Opera is doing too in making their product available to alternative devices as well. I don't know - we'll see what Flock is really like I guess and whether there's value in customizing a browser to that extent.

JeevesBond — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 19:03:09 +0000

Megan wrote: Like, I don't know, there could be one specifically for the financial sector or health sector or anything like that with specific tools for their work.

Well, I don't pretend to know much about Web 2.0 but I can't imagine there would be a purpose for diversity being built into desktop applications, the diversity would be within the Web application itself. The different permutations would manifest themselves in the useage of XML, DOM and CSS by the website (or should I say: Web Application) developer.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that the desktop applications we currently call browsers should become more generic, not more specific to a particular sector/task.

As Wired pointed out this is what MS have been trying to stop, if NS had won the browser wars we'd probably all be using similar applications to the AJAX stuff we're seeing now, although it would be under NS' terms not those of the W3C, so perhaps everything has turned out better for the Web

Megan — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 13:22:12 +0000

Or maybe we'll see all kinds of permutations of Mozilla for specific niche users. Like, I don't know, there could be one specifically for the financial sector or health sector or anything like that with specific tools for their work. Flock is for people who use the web as a communication tool. A lot of the experts have been talking more and more (again) about the internet on alternate devices as well; moving away from the traditional desktop applications.

What web 2.0 is all about, as far as I can tell, is moving away from information feeding and more into functionality. So you have services like flikr, for example, or gmail is another example of how the developers have just taken it to another level so it's more like a software application than a website. That's a pretty big shift.

Busy — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 12:04:18 +0000

Maybe it wont be so much a browser as a communcation tool, advanced ICQ or something

bja888 — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 09:17:18 +0000

I think the world needs less browsers. I also think html needs to go in a more advanced direction. But that's just my openion, no one cares