

Would you describe today's web browsers as “innovative?” - digitalcreate
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GGNnjS3yJtl_bHlLtTW_tjKMUJ26-sj6hYAgnq1sIeo/viewform?usp=send_form

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TuringTest
No, and they shouldn't be. Modern web browsers are "streamlined", which is
what they ought to be and how they best serve their users - by being a minimal
window to access the real protagonist, web content.

"Innovative" ideas should be tested in the form of separate applications or
plugins, not shoehorned into the core tool that people use for almost all
their access to Internet; experimenting with innovative ideas in this minimal
tool is likely to break some workflows for most people.

~~~
digitalcreate
So the concern about "innovation" within the context of a browser is that can
disrupt how they currently work. That being said, do you think that the
separate plugins and applications out there are innovative?

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TuringTest
Some of there are, some of them don't :-)

The good think is that there's a lot more of variety on apps and plugins than
there are different viable mainstream browsers, and I can use those for
specific functions at different times. Bundling everything within the same
application would force me to have them in my interface all the time.

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ChuckMcM
Where are you going with this? A "browser" is a delivery agent, sort of like
the paper and binding in a book. The _content_ of the book can be innovative
but who cares if the paper is?

Perhaps you are asking "Can you deliver the experience you want to deliver in
Today's browsers?" "If not, why not?" which might inform the question of
missing features, but such surveys tend to collect dreams rather than
requirements ("if only the browser could read aloud the page, I'd make a kids
book..." kind of thing where the thing holding back the requester is not the
browser but their own inability to write a kids book)

~~~
digitalcreate
So your feeling is that the browser is more of an invisible delivery
mechanism, and not intended to provide anything other than taking you to your
chosen web experience. Is that correct?

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TuringTest
I think that's a pretty common expectation nowadays.

Back in the day we already tried the monster do-everythin-and-the-kitchen-
sink[1][2] bundle with the original Netscape/Mozilla suite (currently known as
SeaMonkey), and it sucked. It's only with Phoenix/Firefox lean-and-streamlined
approach that a serious alternative to IE6 took shape.

The expectation of flexibility is covered by the idea of having specific tools
provided in the form of web applications, not part of the browser itself. The
browser should have all the features required to support those "innovative"
experiences, but those should be available as development platform APIs, not
in the browser's user interface.

[1]
[http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2919](http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2919)

[2] [http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/web-
developer/samples/ki...](http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/web-
developer/samples/kitchensink.xml)

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abathur
I think you might get less push-back on whether a browser should aspire to
being "innovative" if you draw finer distinctions about types of innovation.

There's a big difference between innovative idiomatic APIs, innovating the
first support for new specs/standards, innovative performance improvements,
innovative UI/X, innovative plugin/extension engines, and (unfortunately)
innovative interpretations of specs/standards.

~~~
digitalcreate
Actually, keeping the response open-ended has been very valuable in
understanding how people interpret "innovation" in this context. In the linked
survey, there is an open-ended comment box where you can explain your
definition.

~~~
abathur
Certainly; if understanding how people interpret "innovation" is the goal, a
broad question is a good way to draw that interpretation out of some subset of
'people'.

I left the survey without answering because I realized it'd require me to make
a broad binary generalization of some sort. Questions requiring
generalizations like this make me uncomfortable, so I usually avoid answering
them or dispute their usefulness. I came here to dispute its usefulness, but I
saw a few others had already done so in their own ways, and thought my time
might be better spent trying to give you context for this push-back, rather
than echoing it.

Perhaps I can unpack how I mean "uncomfortable." If you ask me an innocent
question like "what's your favorite movie/book/artist/album?", I have no good
prepared answer to give you without vastly more thought than I care to put to
the matter. I like a lot of things, but I don't maintain any sort of ranking,
and I have no fast+meaningful way of comparing the relative merits of a good
comedy with a good documentary, or a book of poems with a novel. I'm aware
that most of the time this is just a throwaway question for socializing and I
could probably grease the interaction with a little white lie--just pick
something and move on. But I also know some people live and die by questions
like this, and will mine my answer for what it says about me, whether we'll
get along, etc. I could state this as my answer to the question, but the asker
is either just making smalltalk and doesn't need a dissertation, or they
actually think the question is meaningful and won't appreciate my disdain. The
question makes me uncomfortable because it feels like a lose-lose. There's no
honest way for me to "answer" it, and all of the other options are undesirable
for social reasons.

In your case, I don't know what kind of parameters matter to you, and I lack a
fast+meaningful heuristic for weighing whether a browser is innovative on the
balance or deciding what definition/qualities of innovation I want to apply. I
also realize you have some purpose for asking the question, and that using a
cynical heuristic would undermine you.

HTH

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biot
It just seems a little odd asking people to share without any explanation of
who you are or what the purpose of this is. For example, are you being
compensated by some polling agency for collecting this data? What are you
hoping to accomplish with it? What's your privacy policy with respect to the
free-form comment field?

~~~
digitalcreate
Sure, I'm an entrepreneur and fellow Hacker News reader (not a polling agency)
looking to get people's thoughts about the state of the browser industry. All
responses are anonymous.

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digitalcreate
Thank you to everyone who contributed. There were 205 total responses to the
survey.

For "Would you describe today's DESKTOP browsers as 'Innovative'?": Yes = 29%
No = 71%

For "Would you describe today's MOBILE browsers as 'Innovative'?": Yes = 14%
No = 86%

However, the "No" category includes those who feel that the browser doesn't
need to be innovative, and is simply a viewing mechanism.

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evmar
By asking here your answers are so biased that they're unlikely to be useful.
If you're interested in getting a statistically significant sample of a larger
group, there are products that will find that group for you for relatively
cheap -- I know of at least Google Consumer Surveys and Survata. (Disclaimer:
I work on the former.)

~~~
digitalcreate
Thanks evmar, we're getting a really good response size here, and are focusing
on the moment on the developer/technophile type of users on this site.

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digitalcreate
Thanks for the survey responses everyone, and please keep them coming!

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goldfeld
Since you're asking the community, it would be nice to later make the results
public.

~~~
digitalcreate
Yes, they will be posted back to Hacker News.

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digitalcreate
Are you happy with your choice of browsers today? Do you feel that browser
innovation is moving forward quickly enough? Please sound off and take this
quick survey.

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digitalcreate
Someone asked what "innovative" means. It's purely up to your definition of
the word... but feel free to add comments to explain your thoughts.

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lkrubner
We think of the tech industry as "innovative" but in many ways it moves slow
as dirt.

Why do we still use IP/TCP when many of the same people who helped develop
IP/TCP learned important lessons from it and moved on to new ideas such as
RINA? We all know that including a port number in a network address violates
the principles that the levels in a network stack should be isolated, so why
have we allowed 40 years to go by, without doing anything to address this
mistake?

We know there is a need for structured documents, and we have endless
serialization formats for various ontololgies. We also know there is a need
for a GUI that works over networks. We all know what a struggle it has been,
for the last 26 years, to make HTML serve both purposes. Isn't it time we get
rid of HTML and replace it with different technologies that can specialize in
either being a GUI, or in delivering structured data?

Ethernet was introduced in 1980 and became the dominant wire for corporate and
data center networks, despite more efficient formats being possible. Why is
there such overwhelming conservatism in this area?

Polyglot programming has become the norm on servers, but the client has become
a monoculture where Javascript killed off the other competing technologies
(Flash, Swing, etc). An innovative browser would be one that gave us a virtual
machine in the client that could support polyglot programming on the client.
Instead, most "innovation" in 2015 is focused on making Javascript
incrementally better.

"Browser" has become almost synonymous with the HTTP protocol, plus WebSockets
(which still uses HTTP for the handshake). Wouldn't an innovative browser
merely grant us a shell for handling IP/TCP, into which we could drop whatever
runtime we wanted? That would enable polyglot programming on the client, and
open the door to new categories of software being handled by the "browser". In
fact, all software could then be handled by the "browser" as the "browser"
would then become the most obvious way to enable desktop software.

For decades now, at least since the 1960s, programmers have been seeking ways
to make their software multi-platform. Back in 1990 Patrick Naughton and James
Gosling started working on Java, guided by the slogan "Write once, run
anywhere". That slogan should still be our goal. What are we doing to move the
society forward to the era when that slogan can be true?

In the 1830s and 1840s it was common for the steam engines in locomotives to
explode. Early steel bridges sometimes collapsed, because engineers did not
know what strain the steel could take. Our society moves forward when
important technology becomes so mature and stable that the whole of society
can depend on it. At what moment will computers become as reliable as
locomotives and steel bridges? And what are we each doing to get us there?

