Dear Mozilla: Don’t give up on Windows RT

Yesterday, Mozilla product director Asa Dotzler posted yet another broadside about Microsoft preventing access to the Windows 32 API in Windows RT: “We know that Microsoft is shipping a powerful browser on Metro. Metro would be dead in the water without a really capable Microsoft browser. So how does Internet Explorer 10 provide a beautiful and powerful experience in the Metro environment? It’s easy. IE 10 cheats. We could build a beautiful Firefox that looked really nice on Metro, but Firefox would be so crippled in terms of power and speed that it’s probably not worth it to even bother. No sane user would want to surf today’s Web and use today’s modern websites with that kind of crippled browser.”

Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer reported on Dotzler’s statement, saying, “Although Dotzler’s ‘not worth it’ comment may hint at the likelihood that Mozilla will step away from Windows RT, it is not the company’s official position.”

Whew.

With Windows RT likely to be the harbinger of Windows to come, it’s more important than ever that Mozilla and Google keep up the pressure to allow Windows RT apps access to the Windows 32 API. If Microsoft can deploy Windows RT apps with full access to the Windows 32 API — Internet Explorer, yes, but also Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Windows Explorer, among others — it’s unconscionable that Microsoft would block access to the same tools to other software manufacturers. In the particular case of Web browsers, where Microsoft has already made an exception for Windows 8, the restraint is particularly galling.

Many analysts believe that Microsoft has a right to restrict access to features in Windows RT — specifically, the Win32 API — just as Apple has a right to restrict access to the innards of iOS. Both Windows RT and iOS effectively ban efficient JavaScript engines in their apps. In both cases, the ban is enforced in the name of security, stabililty, and system resource consumption. But there are many third-party browsers running on iOS. Windows followers have good reason to ask, “What makes iOS different?”

In fact, there are more than a dozen browser alternatives currently running on iPhones and iPads — the two best-known are Dolphin, from MoboTap, and Opera Mini, from Opera Software. They work in very different ways.

Dolphin uses the Safari WebKit, a JavaScript and HTML rendering engine that’s built into iOS and available to any iOS app through the UIWebView class. Opinions vary widely, but UIWebView is frequently criticized for its, uh, lethargy. Safari apparently runs much faster, using a JavaScript engine known as Nitro JavaScript. Other iOS apps that rely on UIWebView get stuck in the Apple-authorized mud.

Opera Mini, on the other hand, relies on a superserver in the cloud that processes every Web access, renders the pages on the server, then compresses and shoots the screen down to your iPhone or iPad. Thus, the speed of the browser is highly dependent on having a fast Internet connection — and your mobile data plan may groan under the weight of heftier traffic.

Google is rumored to have an iOS version of Chrome in the works, although the exact mechanism of the implementation isn’t known. Chrome could use UIWebView, possibly with Google grafting some of its speedy WebKit implementation into Apple’s UIWebView. Apple could allow Google to install Google’s fast rendering engine in iOS. Google could put all the rendering in the cloud, using the Opera Mini approach, to process and shoot the results to an iPhone or iPad, although that approach seems unlikely for performance reasons.

You have to wonder how closely Microsoft’s Windows RT restrictions mimic Apple’s hold on iOS. Many industry analysts have drawn parallels between Windows RT’s lockdown on Metro apps and Apple’s iron-fisted rules on App Store apps. I don’t think it’s a good comparison. Even given Apple’s iron heel, it has still put JavaScript and HTML rendering into the iOS core. I haven’t heard a hint about Microsoft doing the same thing on Windows RT. Quite the opposite, in fact: Microsoft seems hell-bent on keeping Windows RT locked in to IE.

This could be an academic discussion. If Windows RT does as well in the marketplace as, say, Windows Phone, nobody’s going to care much whether Firefox or Chrome can run on machines that nobody wants. But what happens if Windows RT is in fact the vanguard of Microsoft’s new operating system efforts? Paul Thurrott notes, “If Windows RT takes off and is truly successful, it becomes Windows. That is, it does what NT did decades ago, existing for a time side by side with what used to be Windows and then eventually supplanting the old Windows.”

That’s why we need Mozilla and Google to keep pushing for fair access. That fight goes beyond Windows RT. It reaches straight to the heart of Windows 9.

This story, “Dear Mozilla: Don’t give up on Windows RT,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.