Firefox is no longer the most secure?

This is horrible. A study has been carried out (it is worth noting that Google sponsored it, hence how Chrome obviously wins)  that shows Chrome as the most secure web browser followed by Internet Explorer and then Firefox. The main reason that Chrome wins is probably because security (and speed) was one of the key aims when Chrome was originally created and every single tab, app and extension are sandboxed very tightly so that they can’t do anything that they shouldn’t be allowed to do. Internet Explorer has been slowly gaining this feature over the last few versions and it is still quite bad implemented.

I would say that Firefox has quite a lot of security though and it does sandbox to a certain extent, although probably not as much as the other browsers. Plugin security has been something that has been included in all three browsers for a while and theoretically Microsoft would win this if only Silverlight were judged.

I think that the main reason that Firefox has fallen behind is because the security was the main reason that people downloaded it initially. Aside from being faster, Firefox 1 was what was bringing people away from IE because it wasn’t going to infect their computer and had relatively good reviews. Over time Firefox added new problems that led to security holes.

By the time that Chrome was released Firefox was getting quite clunky and Chrome, being built from scratch, was offering both security and speed. Firefox then had to catch up with Chrome’s speed which meant that security was ignored and even now the new releases are advertised as being faster rather than safer. It doesn’t really surprise me that IE has improved in the last few years and the main reason is probably also Chrome; it needed to be better because it had already had such bad press.

How HTML could have been

HTML is incredibly clever. A lot more clever than you might assume. It was designed by Tim Burners-Lee over twenty years ago (the original proposal was put forward on November 12th 1990) and has since evolved into one of the most known markup languages and has lead to the evolution of XML as well. I would be prepared to bet that most people reading this post understand the above bit of markup (and even if you don’t you can probably grasp the basics…).

HTML was designed so that it could be easily presented by a browser and easily edited by a human. The key part was that HTML files were documents originally rather than programs (this is of course changing now). Burners-Lee could have easily just designed the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is used for the transfer of data on the World Wide Web and said that programs would be transferred and run. This would have been a completely reasonable way of doing it but it would have meant that the web wouldn’t have been as accessible.

Programming is a lot harder than writing HTML. I would be prepared to bet I could teach thirty children aged ten HTML in two hours so that they could produce basic websites with simple color and links. I wouldn’t be prepared to bet I could teach the same students basic programming with something like Python in the same time. The fact that Tim Burners-Lee made a document format rather than a software format meant that the web was able to evolve a lot more quickly.

The problem that we have today, however, is that there is too much being added to HTML too quickly and that the people writing the browsers are loosing track. The best example of this is Microsoft and its Trident engine which interprets HTML and displays it on screen. The engine was designed in 90s when HTML was pretty simple and Microsoft could extend the engine as they pleased so that Internet Explorer could seemingly do more than other browsers which is probably why it remains popular used today. The problem was that as they kept adding features the engine became bloated and when HTML5 started to come up a few years ago Microsoft had a problem – the browser simply didn’t conform with existing standards that all other browsers used. So Microsoft have had to simply the engine to make it faster. Ultimately today there are two good engines: WebKit and Gecko. Gecko used to best, but WebKit is probably beating it at the moment.

After Flash

The internet seems to have come to the conclusion that Flash is dying. Which is interesting really, considering that Flash is used by 99% of the internet linked computers on the planet. I don’t use it much, but then again most of what I do involves coding. If you look at Adobe shares on Yahoo! Finance (the only thing I use Yahoo! for) you see that they have grown since 2000 – which is before they owned Macromedia, but have fallen since last year – perhaps suggesting that Flash is no longer as successful as it would like to be.

Adobe has been rolling out Flash since 2005, but it hasn’t been as easy as they might like. At first it was a success when they customised Macromedia’s tools into things that looked more like the other Adobe tools. Designers were thrilled. However, Flash would soon gain itself some enemies that would eventually lead it into the state that it is in today.

In early 2007 two things happened: Microsoft released Vista, no big deal because it turned out to be rubbish. Meanwhile, Apple pulled out all the stops and announced the iPhone. It was a device of beauty, something unlike anything either company had ever produced before. Adobe were keen to get in, but Steve Jobs wouldn’t let them: there would be no Flash on the iPhone. This lead to users wishing for Flash on their iPhones and iPod Touches.

Later the following year Flash had another announcement came to set back Flash: Google would be releasing a browser based on the open-source WebKit project called Chrome. This browser was different because it would be based on giving maximum HTML5 support for all users. Interestingly, it did include the Flash runtime, however it was the HTML5 support that was the main problem.

Adobe didn’t understand that HTML5 is the way forward. They didn’t understand that Flash would soon die thanks to the efforts of their competitors. At this point it is interesting to consider another competitor: Microsoft. Microsoft had not voiced any public opinion on HTML5, and had their own rival to Flash called Silverlight. Silverlight wasn’t particularly successful and has penetrated very little of the web. In early 2010 Microsoft began to drop Silverlight slightly to encourage more HTML5 with previews on their new browser: Internet Explorer 9. You could say that it was only Flash that kept IE users happy enough not to switch to something else.

Something else happened in early 2010 that probably got Adobe’s hopes up: the iPad. Perhaps now that Apple had developed a cross of the desktop and mobile they would be happy to have Flash on the device to continue having a more desktop experience? No. Apple had begun to realise, however, that it need to support HTML5, but perhaps a little to late. They began to develop tools to ship with Dreamweaver and Flash CS5 that would allow Flash projects to be exported, ready for iOS. However, in April 2010 they had their biggest drawback: a neat bit of revenge from Apple’s boss. If you click here you can read through Steve Job’s personal view on Flash: he hates it and there will be a blanket ban on all apps submitted to the App Store that have been created by ‘third party’ applications.. But he is basically right: Adobe has been wrong to continue to develop Flash when they should be looking onto to a more realistic future where Flash is not the market leader for Rich Media presentation on the web.

In the next few months iPad users began to discover something new. The HTML5 web experience. Websites were now building dedicated ‘iPad friendly’ versions of the site with new features that made it more dynamic and all without Flash. People were getting a better experience. After a few months Apple lifted this ban, perhaps because people were keen to use tools like C# (MonoTouch) and Java to develop apps – and they had no problem with that. By this point it was too late for CS5 because the feature to export to iPhone was quickly removed when Apple made the announcement, resulting in the feature being included in Flash Pro CS5.5.

Dreamweaver CS5.5 also purposely included extra HTML5 support with templates included to make iOS web design even better. This wasn’t done to support the HTML5 standard or to encourage developers to use it; they just wanted in on Apple. Perhaps Apple only began to realise a few weeks ago it needed to support HTML5 by announcing Adobe Edge. Edge is basically a design tool for HTML5 animation, however it is based off of a JavaScript library, and I would prefer it was more pure HTML5.

The problem with the future being HTML5 is Dreamweaver. HTML5 could be described as an open mix of Flash and Dreamweaver, but ultimately all design will be in Dreamweaver because it will be the only way that Adobe keep users. Dreamweaver is the world’s most popular web design tool (I handcode in NetBeans) and if it is to stay that way it will be extensively HTML5. There is, however, the possibility that Dreamweaver will be knocked from the podium by an open-project. I agree with this: there ultimately needs to be an open-source web design program that can take on Dreamweaver.

IE users have a lower IQ (Hilarious survey)

UPDATE: IT HAS SINCE EMERGED THAT THE STORY, AND COMPANY, WERE A FAKE

A consulting firm called AptiQuant has run some IQ surveys across 100,000 people. Pretty useful – though I’ve always found that websites that try and work out my IQ seem to get confused and give me really low scores (on the last one I get 160). This company ran the survey, but to be useful, also collected data on which browser the participants were using. The result was that users using Internet Explorer tended to have a lower IQ than those using better browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox and a browser based on Firefox called Camino. Opera and Camino users tended to have above average (>100) IQs whilst the other browsers’ users were generally average (100).

Reading through the article on BBC News – currently the second most read article – the firm suggests that rather than Internet Explorer actually lowering people’s IQ it was just that people with lower IQs tended to be using Internet Explorer in the first place. But what if it was the other way round, and IE did actually lower people’s IQs:

• The slow browsing experience means that there is less time to look up new interesting things
• The number of ads for better browsers confuses the audience and so lowers their IQ
• The already low IQs mean that people don’t understand they need to download a better browser

Of course, I don’t doubt that this is not necessarily true, however I thought it was fun anyway. My ultimate suggestion to get people off of Internet Explorer is for someone like Google to stop throwing ads everywhere but to setup an advertising campaign where there is a ‘Chrome day’ where you have to get a friend using Internet Explorer off of it and onto Google Chrome. People are more likely to listen to their friends than to ads on the internet, so it could be useful…

Browser Success

The above graph from Wikipedia shows the top six methods for browsing the internet: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Mobile Web. Roughly looking at these graphs we can see that there is a steady pattern: Internet Explorer is losing users, Firefox and Opera are staying steady, and Safari, Chrome and Mobile Web are gaining users, Chrome is gaining rapidly. By mid-2011 I see it as fairly likely that Internet Explorer usage will have probably dropped below 40%, and by mid-2012 Google Chrome will have over-taken both Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you’d asked me six months ago I would probably have said that by the end of 2011 IE will still be the most used, but Chrome will have more users than Firefox.

It is hardly a surprise that Internet Explorer is rapidly losing users, it is struggling to stay ahead and despite that desperate TV marketing campaigns, it is clear that Internet Explorer is on the demise, with Google sticking a Chrome ad on pretty much every Google owned site, including Google ads. Firefox is also now the most used browser in Europe, but I think one day Firefox will also die a death.

As for Safari getting more users, that can only be down to more Mac sales.

Windows 8: Another Vista? Another Disaster?

Microsoft do seem to have a worrying trend in their Windows products:

• Windows 95 was relatively successful
• But Windows 98 was far more successful
• (Won’t mention Windows 2000 because it was only around for a year and was only used by businesses)
• Windows ME wasn’t successful
• Windows XP was Microsoft’s most successful OS
• Windows Vista was a disaster
• Windows 7 has been really successful
• Windows 8?

To put it simply, Microsoft tends to plan out very big releases of Windows by adding hundreds of new ‘exciting’ features, Vista was an example of this. However, these big new features aren’t received well and so Microsoft is left to tidy everything up and release a polished version of what they had been working on before. It’s almost a ‘practice makes perfect’ approach. I do worry that Windows 8 is in the position to not be very successful because Microsoft are throwing up hundreds of new features and basically turning the whole thing upside down and taking the ‘Windows’ out of it and replacing them with ‘Apps’. A nice metaphor for apps is a house; a house with Windows allows the new in, allows you to see and explore the outside world, whereas take the Windows out and replace them with apps and you are blocked off from a whole world of potential.

My major concern about Windows 8 isn’t really that they are messing up the UI completely, but one sentence in the blog post that was posted: ‘compatibility with Windows 7 Logo PCs will continue’. This means that Windows 8 will most likely be compatible not only with Windows 7 machines, but also Windows Vista machines, because the requirements were almost identical. Considering that Windows Vista capable PCs began to be released in 2006, Windows 8 may well be able to run on six year old – potentially 32-bit – PCs. Consider that Windows 8 will need to run on tablets, this sort of makes sense.

Another concern about Windows 8 is that it is being marketed for touch quite a lot – the interface seems to have a lot to do with tablets and it is known that it will be running on ARM chips. However, this isn’t the first version of Windows to have touch support. Every version since Windows XP has marketed itself as being touch-friendly, and I’m getting a little bored of it. Microsoft still hasn’t got touch right in ten years.

From a developer’s point of view, I’m concerned that Windows 8 might be driving away from standard Windows applications towards HTML5 and JavaScript ones. We already know that applications written for Intel chips will have to be recompiled before they can be used on ARM-based tablets, and this suggests that Microsoft might be taking an easy approach and have everything running off of Internet Explorer, it saves them time and resources.

Furthermore, developers won’t actually know how applications should be coded until September with the Build conference. It may well be that everything we have seen so far with Windows 8 has been written entirely in JavaScript – which could be interesting. Internet Explorer is also a concern for Microsoft; they aren’t going to be releasing IE10 until 2012, however odds are that HTML5 will grow a lot before then, so Microsoft is going to have to be constantly updating IE9 to make sure it is up to standard.

Everyone’s making a browswer (really often)

In the past couple of days Microsoft has started to announce platform previews for Internet Explorer 10. There had already been rumors about IE10 following the release of some suspected Windows 8 screenshots, and it is thought that the browser will be designed with touch/tablet support – though that is hardly a surprise.

I think it could be said as a surprise that Microsoft is already releasing platform previews of IE10, considering that IE9 was barely released a few weeks ago and most of us haven’t even got round to installing it (I have managed to some how get away with the fact I have the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera on my computer, but no IE). The current IE10 test drive is just a platform preview and doesn’t show what the browser will be like in the future, it just shows what kind of features it will have. It seems to come with a very similar array of HTML5 capabilities to Firefox 4, which is fantastic, however it is the first browser to drop any support for Windows Vista, it only runs on Windows 7 at the moment.

Perhaps this is the first stage of Microsoft saying goodbye to Windows Vista, the devil OS. IE9 was not released for XP purely because XP doesn’t have support for some of the hardware requirements that IE9 has like DirectX 10 and Aero, however I find it a little non-nonsensical that Microsoft aren’t giving Vista support considering it is based on exactly the same architecture. I am not complaining of course, however I find it a very unusual decision by Microsoft, I get the feeling Microsoft are finally giving up on Vista at last.

I am not actually particularly worried about Microsoft releasing the IE10 preview, because they aren’t the only browser developers to be moving towards more frequent updates, and if Microsoft releases IE10 within about six months (which is what it took IE9 from platform preview to release) it will be one of the fasted IE releases ever. However, Firefox and Chrome both take this model. Chrome is now released about every month and a half, and the beta seems to updated every couple of weeks – though I can’t remember exactly how long it is. Mozilla is also considering a similar model, with Firefox 5, 6 and 7 potentially being released this year.

The advantage of frequent updates is that you are always guaranteed to get a secure product, but the only other benefit that I can see is that you are getting the best HTML5 support possible – which is useful from a competition point of view. I think that, ultimately, competition is at the heart of it because it is what has left Microsoft behind, IE simply doesn’t have the best support whereas Chrome does and it is released the most often. I think that once HTML5 is standardized, whenever that time comes, the frequent updates may slow slightly, but another situation could arise in which there is no standard specification, however there is an open – perhaps wiki based – standard that developers can contribute to, like the model W3C is using at the moment. The risk of this is having another Internet Explorer like browser where the developers just add more and more unnecessary features that are only supported in one browser.