On March 31, 1998, Netscape Communications released the source code to their web browser client, hoping that they could leverage the community of open source developers to fight off Microsoft in the browser wars.
This video is an excellent documentary of that time.
In the end, Netscape disappeared after an intense battle with Microsoft, and a series of bad decisions (such as a Java based browser, the Collabra acquisition). After a few years, that source code became the basis for the Firefox browser.
If Netscape Navigator was Ben Kenobi to Internet Explorer's Darth Vader, then Firefox, Chrome and the mobile WebKit browsers are the rag-tag bunch that blew up the Death Star.
It feels weird to agree with luddites AT&T that forcing them to maintain the land line infrastructure with ever decreasing margins is a bad idea.
I've been working on Google Chrome, our new open source web browser. I wrote the SafeBrowsing (anti-phishing and anti-malware) feature with another engineer, the download manager, and a bunch of random other bits. I'm currently working on the Mac and linux version. I guess I'm now a paid open source developer, which is cool.
Some of my favorite things:
- fast and minimal user interface
- fast rendering (via webkit) and javascript (via v8)
- resizable input text boxes (thanks to webkit)
- downloads don't prompt you 15 times
- multi-process architecture makes Google Chrome robust to crashy sites
- tabs are slick and easy to manage by popping in and out of windows
- search / address bar and the new tab page train themselves to my usage very fast
Since each tab can use its own process, looking in the Windows Task Manager might be a bit confusing. You'll see multiple chrome.exe instances and on XP, shared memory isn't accounted for properly so it'll look like we're using a ton of memory. So we built our own task manager: right click on the title bar and see what the tabs or plugins are doing. In any case, browsers are doing much, much more these days than rendering static pages, so the resource usage is going to more, too.
This is a beta launch, so there are likely to be missing features. Leave your wish lists here.
Quick read in the Guardian. He proclaims that the current comments that increasing online video will bring down the internet are nothing more than scare tactics. I agree. I remember when IPV4 wasn't going to have enough space to support the surge in users, yet no one is using IPV6. The problem was solved with creative partitioning. Skeptics have been saying that the earth's food supply cannot keep up with the populations growth much longer than I've been alive. Yet farming technology has managed to increase the crop yield per acre at a rate that has outpaced population growth. I think people have a tendency to underestimate man's ability for creative problem solving when the need is urgent.
Some predict that the future of applications lies not on the OS but rather on the web. To make that a reality however, we will need ubiquitous network access. Not content to wait for that day, several companies are looking to bridge the gap between online and offline application use. One of these companies is Google, and their first entry into the hybrid web app space is a technology they call Gears. You can read more about it here.
Attempting to download 2G TV shows and 6G movies puts a bit of pressure on your intarweb connection. I just found out that my cable company doubled the bandwidth in my area, to 6mbit, for free - over 1 month ago. Yet I am still only getting 3mb, even after several modem reboots. Hmm, that modem I am leasing is huge, old, and looks like someone drug it behind a car for a few miles. When they gave it to me last year, my first thought was "you've got to be kidding me". It is probably a 1st generation device made back in the mid 90s. Sure enough, a quick call to the cable company confirms that I need a newer modem, -one that goes to 11. Sometime next week I should have bandwidth, sweet bandwidth.
Google Image Labeler is a game where you are matched with a random person on the intardweb, and you have to guess words that describe the picture you are shown within a time limit. When you and your partner agree on a word, you move on to the next image. It's weirdly addictive.
The rumors of a Google Office just won't die. Now Google has apparently snatched up Writely an Axax based word processor that I've mentioned here before. Combine that with the leaked info about Gdrive and I guess we might see a web based office suite after all. -Maybe all that hoopla over Google and Sun working together was just a distraction after all.
I don't normally announce every Google release here, but this one is different 'cause I worked on the PageRank feature in my 20% time. You can get it here.
[ Works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux ]
What would you like your headstone to read? Here are some choices:
Here is the network diagram for the first version of the internet:
I do. Two reasons: 1 land line is cheaper than two cell phones and the phone audio quality is superior.