Firefox to support offline applications
This is excellent news coming from New Zealand that Firefox3 will have support for offline applications. I’ve always clamored for applications like Gmail to have an extension version, so that we can spend all the lovely bits and bytes transferring data than the same UI elements all over again. It is nice to see some movement in that direction finally from the Mozilla guys, but there is not much by means of detail out there regarding what route they would take to achieve it. The current way of doing apps in Firefox — via extensions — has no data protection or encryption and I do not see many SaaS companies queuing up to use it, even if they introduce the feature in the same manner.
On the other hand, they could considerably overhaul the extensions spec and introduce all such features, but I am not sure if that would be a brilliant idea for any such overhaul would almost certainly bring out another round of compatibility nightmares for existing extensions. Another option would be to develop a fatter and fully-featured scripting component in the browser that will be an add-on than being a part of the core Firefox install. But communities don’t often react too well to such drastic changes and it also territory that’s not usually charted by your friendly neighbourhood browser. Firefox already has enough space for improvement without getting sidetracked by such developments.
In any case, most of this nothing more than idle speculation on my part. For now we just have to wait and watch out for more details.
Any reason why Firefox 2.0 ( with a few extensions added – nothing major ) is sluggish and heavier than IE7?
WillOTheWisp
February 13, 2007 at 11:27 am
It’s always been on the slightly sluggish side, IE7 behaves differently in different circumstances. I’ve seen it go like a rocket and crawl like a snail with the same configuration. With the new lappy, I’ve stuck to Ie6 for now. FF is like a munchy child when it comes to memory, keeps eating up more and more with time, but I do have a truckload of extensions. you can probably try disabling them one by one and see if it makes a difference.
shyam
February 13, 2007 at 11:47 am
What’s your take on the browser replacing the desktop?
Nikhil
February 14, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Browser replacing the desktop? Don’t think so, the security issues are just way too many to ignore, at least on the enterprise level. Possible probably on a personal level/SMB level.
I think the ideal solution will come in mobile devices, with full qwerty and decent app speeds. That should be the end of the desktop pc for most things.
shyam
February 16, 2007 at 7:50 am
qwerty on the mobile…I’m on the fence on that one – I use the T9 dictionary, and a qwerty keyboard just means more typing with the thumb for me.
Nikhil
February 17, 2007 at 1:40 am
I could never wrap my head around the dictionaries. Heh, you don’t need to type more with qwerty if you already use a T9, or am I missing something here?
shyam
February 17, 2007 at 6:55 pm
yeah. I got a little confused there. a qwerty is better for those who don’t use the T9. Saw the blackberry thumbathon at Fred Wilson’s blog? Heh…
Nikhil
March 3, 2007 at 8:55 am
[...] again brings in its own set of problems. And since Gears is now being talked about as the offline storage framework for Firefox 3, this has to be thought out very [...]
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