Comments on: Messina’s Mozifesto http://www.acidlabs.org/2007/05/12/messinas-mozifesto/ strategies, tools and processes to empower knowledge workers Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:29:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Chris Messina http://www.acidlabs.org/2007/05/12/messinas-mozifesto/#comment-2099 Chris Messina Fri, 11 May 2007 16:27:09 +0000 http://dev.acidlabs.org/2007/05/12/messinas-mozifesto/#comment-2099 I don't think they're doomed... I think I am simply more concerned by the growing threat imposed by Silverlight, Apollo and JavaFX... think about it this way: what are the next generation of college graduates coming out of schools in India and China going to know how to develop? Java apps? Apollo/Flex apps? Silverlight? Or XUL? Without a concerted effort to make XUL, or whatever the Mozilla Future Web Platform is, a more lucrative and easy to build -on and -for platform, I think that we're going to see a migration away from building Addons since you can build a full featured web application using web technologies and get out of browsers entirely -- and stop worrying about debugging your CSS for IE6 since you've chosen to move to a stack that works the same everywhere (see Flash for the past 6 years). Anyway, my message was not intended as doom and gloom, but more about trying to understand where Mozilla is with regards to a lot of these other new technologies. And, I might add, I'm usually about 6-8 months early in my criticisms and ideas... so a lot of folks can certainly shoot me down on technicalities, but I'm more interested in teasing out some sense of a vision for how we're going to promote and nurture the open web. And perhaps you're right -- the browser is not dead. But it's certainly changing. Does a Mozilla strategy that focuses 100% on entrenching in such a product make sense when all the majors seem to moving away from a single-app solution? Perhaps it does, if you believe that when the competition zigs, you should zag. If that's ultimately the strategy that the community supports, I'll end up getting behind it too, but for now, I think it's worth having an open debate about whether or not it is, indeed, the best way forward. I don’t think they’re doomed… I think I am simply more concerned by the growing threat imposed by Silverlight, Apollo and JavaFX… think about it this way: what are the next generation of college graduates coming out of schools in India and China going to know how to develop? Java apps? Apollo/Flex apps? Silverlight? Or XUL? Without a concerted effort to make XUL, or whatever the Mozilla Future Web Platform is, a more lucrative and easy to build -on and -for platform, I think that we’re going to see a migration away from building Addons since you can build a full featured web application using web technologies and get out of browsers entirely — and stop worrying about debugging your CSS for IE6 since you’ve chosen to move to a stack that works the same everywhere (see Flash for the past 6 years).

Anyway, my message was not intended as doom and gloom, but more about trying to understand where Mozilla is with regards to a lot of these other new technologies. And, I might add, I’m usually about 6-8 months early in my criticisms and ideas… so a lot of folks can certainly shoot me down on technicalities, but I’m more interested in teasing out some sense of a vision for how we’re going to promote and nurture the open web.

And perhaps you’re right — the browser is not dead. But it’s certainly changing. Does a Mozilla strategy that focuses 100% on entrenching in such a product make sense when all the majors seem to moving away from a single-app solution? Perhaps it does, if you believe that when the competition zigs, you should zag. If that’s ultimately the strategy that the community supports, I’ll end up getting behind it too, but for now, I think it’s worth having an open debate about whether or not it is, indeed, the best way forward.

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