The Future of Web Apps: More Browsers
As broadband becomes ubiquitous it becomes more and more interesting to use online applications. Your data is safe and always available and you don’t have to worry about software versions and back-ups. Recently I have started to move my important documents to Google Docs. The fact that is is so easy to work together on stuff without emailing attachments, losing sight of versions and keeping everything safe makes it a huge improvement over the old application/document model. I also use Google Calendar for my appointments, some parts of Gmail (to filter out spam) and Plaxo to handle my addresses. My photos are on Flickr and my .Mac account syncs my bookmarks, passwords and some other important data.
All these applications live in my browser. On an average day I keep 5 to 10 browsers windows open with a range of tabs in every window showing different (30+) websites. I will be blogging, checking stats, reading feeds, managing photos, calendars, addresses and email.
In the old days there used to be a few weak links in this chain. My computer could crash and my applications could lock up and become unresponsive. The days of computer crashes are a thing of the past. My computer still needs a restart now and then but in general I don’t lose data and it might happen once every 2 months. But my browser is a different story. I will be browsing 30 sites at the same time which really puts a strain on my browser. Every now and then my browser simply quits and restarts. Firefox luckily remembers some of the sites I was visiting and will offer to open these. But the information I might have entered (that blog post I was writing) will likely be gone.
I think the future of Web Applications needs more browsers. And I don’t mean another browser developer like Firefox, Opera or Safari. What I want is application specific browsers that will open independenly from my regular ‘random purpose’ browser. It’s content will be completely web-based but it will be slightly different, on the outside, from a regular browser. It won’t need an Address-Bar and back buttons. It will simply open and immediately show me Google Calendar, Google Docs and Gmail in one window. Big buttons will allow me to switch from Calendar to Docs and back. In the settings I might want to add more Tabs with other Google Applications as, and when, I need them or they become available.
When I click a link in Gmail to a website out of the Google domain a different ‘Browsing Experience’ optimized Browser will open. There I will be able to browse blogs, play games and search the web. If some Flash or Javascript applet screws up my browser it will only quit that Browser and not mess with my Google Office Browser or my WordPress browser. Different tasks need different browsers.
All the browsers would work independent from each other but will share a common technology and libraries. I could just use a Firefox, an Opera and a Safari browser next to each other. I am actually doing that right now but the experience sucks. The different shortcuts, interface and browsing experience makes it too hard to switch between browsers.
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12 Responses to “The Future of Web Apps: More Browsers”
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I hope you’ve already seen these products, but if not: check out Prism and Fluid
I thing you want your online tools to be there as if they were offline tools. With Fluid on the Mac, that’s what happens. Gmail, GReader, GCalendar, etcetera have there own icon amidst the other applications as if they were stand alone apps. And in my normal browser i have sites in tabs open.
I can definately recommend Prism for achieving this functionality.
Thanks for the tips! I’ll check out Prism and Fluid…
Also have a look at Mailplane. (http://www.mailplaneapp.com) It’s basically a browser made for Gmail. Made by Dutch developer Ruben Bakker. It’s not free, although it’s worth paying for.
Mailplane rocks! It feels more natural than GMail in a browser.
As a few have mentioned, this is already somewhat available with Prism, Fluid and also Bubbles.
It would be nice to see these apps crop up from the parent company itself for better optimization though.
i boris
when will you present ‘the next Fleck’
I am starting to get really curious.
The previous version might have been launched slightly prematurely but the second and improved version takes looooooong
Hope to hear from ya
Danny
Hi Danny, don’t tell anyone else but if you visit http://beta3.fleck.com with password ‘friendz’ you will be able to test our new version. It has been in closed beta since about a month now. Let me know how it works for you…
What you describe already exists.
You have Fluid (Mac only) that uses the Safari engine and Prism which is a Mozilla product.
I love to use Fluid. I’ve got a facebook.app, googledocs.app, googlereader.app, flickr.app and a couple of others. Since a few days I also have a Bizner.app and now I also have an app for my banking.
For all online backup, file sharing and storage related info, I recommend this website:
http://www.BackupReview.info
A couple of people have mention Prism already, if you upgrade to Firefox 3 Beta there is a great little plugin for creating Prism applications from the page you are currently visiting.
I have a quick how-to here:
http://www.caolanmcmahon.com/b.....ogle-docs/