Apocalypse 2.0 - A New Era of Fragmentation

Ryan Stewart cautions on Javascript fragmentation among web browsers in this ZDNet article. He speculates on the upcoming ECMAScript update (last edition was in 1999), with the following hypothetical scenario:
ECMA released the specifications for the fourth edition of ECMA Script, and JavaScript 2.0 was born. It added enhanced JavaScript functionality for developers, but FireFox was the only browser to fully support it. Worse than that, all of the Ajax applications written to fuel the Web 2.0 boom required major reworking. Microsoft decided that they were going to add some enhancements to JavaScript 2.0, but these enhancements only worked with IE7 and broke Mozilla browsers. A new browser, which had steadily gained market share because of its ability to keep the browsing history secret, decided to implement a more "secure" version of JavaScript. Developers of applications which were once the toast of the Web 2.0 world now got hundreds of emails a day from users saying "why doesn't your page work with my internet". Chaos ensued.
Realistically, most developers won't be able to rely on the new features for a long time; not many developers have the luxury of assuming a Firefox-only user base. If you're willing to commit to recent versions of Flash, you gain ECMAScript portability:
ActionScript 3 is based on the newest ECMA standards, and provides a look at what JavaScript 2.0 may look like. JavaScript developers who take a look at ActionScript will feel right at home and not be required to hack around browsers or worry whether or not their code is going to run for most people.
We've mentioned the upcoming threat to browser standards previously. Things have actually been pretty good for a while, compared to the "Works Best in IE/Works Best in Netscape" days of the mid-90s and the "Only works in IE" period that followed. But now we're at a crossroads. How much longer can we expect browsers to remain reasonably consistent, when there's so much more increased interest in web apps and the browsers that power them, when MS's core applications again under threat from the the web, when there's every chance of Safari share continuing to grow alongside that of Apple/OSX?

Apocalypse 2.0 - A New Era of Fragmentation

Ryan Stewart cautions on Javascript fragmentation among web browsers in this ZDNet article. He speculates on the upcoming ECMAScript update (last edition was in 1999), with the following hypothetical scenario:

ECMA released the specifications for the fourth edition of ECMA Script, and JavaScript 2.0 was born. It added enhanced JavaScript functionality for developers, but FireFox was the only browser to fully support it. Worse than that, all of the Ajax applications written to fuel the Web 2.0 boom required major reworking. Microsoft decided that they were going to add some enhancements to JavaScript 2.0, but these enhancements only worked with IE7 and broke Mozilla browsers. A new browser, which had steadily gained market share because of its ability to keep the browsing history secret, decided to implement a more "secure" version of JavaScript. Developers of applications which were once the toast of the Web 2.0 world now got hundreds of emails a day from users saying "why doesn't your page work with my internet". Chaos ensued.

Realistically, most developers won't be able to rely on the new features for a long time; not many developers have the luxury of assuming a Firefox-only user base. If you're willing to commit to recent versions of Flash, you gain ECMAScript portability:

ActionScript 3 is based on the newest ECMA standards, and provides a look at what JavaScript 2.0 may look like. JavaScript developers who take a look at ActionScript will feel right at home and not be required to hack around browsers or worry whether or not their code is going to run for most people.

We've mentioned the upcoming threat to browser standards previously. Things have actually been pretty good for a while, compared to the "Works Best in IE/Works Best in Netscape" days of the mid-90s and the "Only works in IE" period that followed. But now we're at a crossroads. How much longer can we expect browsers to remain reasonably consistent, when there's so much more increased interest in web apps and the browsers that power them, when MS's core applications again under threat from the the web, when there's every chance of Safari share continuing to grow alongside that of Apple/OSX?


September 5th, 2006

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