The long good-bye to the browser

I can’t believe I’m still using a Web browser. I spend as much time peering into its depths as I do reading and writing e-mail in Outlook — maybe more now that certain Google apps have become part of my daily routine. When I stop and think about it, I’m astounded that the basic metaphors established 15 years ago by Mosaic still rule today.

But as Contributing Editor Neil McAllister argues in “Do new Web tools spell doom for the browser?,” our familiar window on the Web may be closing, rendered obsolete by rich Internet applications whose functionality has outgrown Back, Forward, Favorites, and Refresh. Google, NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Zoho, and others are striving to deliver Web applications that look and feel like desktop software. Plus, Google Gears is giving rise to a new class of “usually connected” Web apps that work offline.

And the there’s Adobe AIR. As you may recall, InfoWorld Chief Technologist Tom Yager raved about AIR as soon as he got his hands on it, predicting that it would be “the standard platform for rich Internet applications.” Partly due to that ringing endorsement, Executive Editor Galen Gruman decided to use AIR to develop the widget versions of InfoWorld’s Windows Sentinel system performance monitoring app. (If you haven’t given Windows Sentinel a spin, I encourage you do so, either in its browser-based or Adobe AIR widget versions.)

Microsoft, which scuttled Netscape by bundling Internet Explorer, has always been uncomfortable with the browser and the hole it blows open in the Windows desktop. As the Web took off, at first Microsoft thought there had to be a way to make Windows and Office the gateways to the Internet. Now it appears to be trying a variation of that approach once again with its “software plus services” strategy.

Meanwhile, as Contributing Editor Peter Wayner reveals in “First look: Google App Engine,” Microsoft’s archrival is not standing still. Peter’s detailed yet philosophical look at Google’s one-of-kind development platform for rich Internet applications is sure to blow the minds of Web developers everywhere. This is the kind of article InfoWorld does best. Check it out — while you’re still using a browser.