A Web Without Browsers
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about buzzword web technologies such as AJAX and Ruby on Rails. These technologies, while exciting in comparison to the web of the recent past, are destined to become obsolete within the next 1-2 years. It’s not the fault of the creators of these innovative technologies that they are destined for extinction - it’s the HTML and HTTP technologies that are holding everything on the web firmly back to the early 90s roots of Lynx and NCSA Mosaic, with the notion of the Web Browser as the people’s terminal and the Internet itself in terms of hypertext pages.
The hypertext construct is hindering the ability to rapidly create and enjoy truly integrated software experiences that leverage the data strength of the cloud but provide the rich multimedia experience of a desktop app. Instead of zillions of Ruby On Rails apps, I propose what we’re going to see transform the whole notion of the Internet is more applications like Google Earth that are true to the spirit of using the hardware on your desk to its fullest - hell - the game industry is already fully embracing this kind of thinking with World of Warcraft - try doing that in a browser!
Some interesting further reading:
