The Continued Mozilla Syndrome
Mozilla recently released an early version of a new project called “Prism”… not at catchy or anthropomorphic as their other projects… What does it do? It’s quite elementary, my dear Watson: it brings the internet home.
Explain, Please…
Until now, using the internet has been restricted to two methods: through a browser, or in a desktop-based widget. The futurists of technology love to say that the browser is the new OS, but here’s a newsflash: you can’t run the browser by itself. It does, and always will, need some sort of operating system to run on top of. Period.
Keep it up, Mozilla, and you’ll rule the world…
But with the release of Prism, desktop and web integration come one step closer… web applications that run and appear as if they are desktop applications.
Why Is This Important?
This is huge, not only because it’s ‘cool’, but also because of a certain technological wonder: threading. As Uncov loves to point out, the main problem with using a web browser to run applications (ignoring the obvious programming limitations) is process threading. For the uninitiated, the basic concept is that a computer processor allots memory/time/resources to every program… but if you’re trying to do things that step outside the bounds (say, edit video from within a browser), your video editing lags because it has to go through the browser before it gets to the processor. Long story short, if everything’s locked in a browser (especially if you’ve noticed Firefox’s memory leaks), you get screwed in the end because of memory issues.
Right, But…
You still don’t see it? How about this example…
[example]
Gideon Wanker (”Giddy” for short) users Gmail for all email, Google Calendar for his scheduling, Google Documents for his word processing, and Google Reader for news. Why? Because he likes that he can access all of this from anywhere with an internet connection, and avoid data storage/transfer problems. But the problem is that he has to keep a tab open for all of these if he wants to multitask, which probably creates noticeable lag time after a while.
And then Giddy installs Prism, which allows web applications to run independently. Suddenly each one of his favorite tools become separate entities, each running a different instance… response times are faster, it’s more akin to the “desktop environment” everyone is used to, and most importantly he can now Alt+Tab between the different windows!
[/example]
…Ok, that last one was a joke.
Yeah, this doesn’t really apply here.
The End Game
Do you see where this leaves the “future of the Internet”? Despite how much I hate the idea of doing stupid things like editing video through some web service, or other such nonsense… it gives the ability for people to actually create products that might have some impact because they can be used in the manner intended.
This is the point where you go “ahhh! I see!” and tell your buddies about how you realize that the OS will never go away, and that a “Web OS” is even more pointless… but you like the idea of using web applications in a desktop environment.
