Yes, the operating system is important

In response to the article by Jean-Louis Gassée , " the operating system does not matter "(in English), I only say that the winner of the browser war will be the one to be better integrated into the operating system. I took this sentence from my article in the Microsoft down the wood for its use of HTML lists shortcut IE9 (in English), which caused a lot of buzz. In these times of browsers, including more resources, the operating system will have more importance to web users than ever before.

Over the past fifteen years the world wide web has given rise to an interface document of such importance that comes to overshadow the traditional operating system. You can make purchases online, but you can not make purchases using an operating system without Internet. Can you go to bank online, but you can not go to the bank using an operating system without Internet.

The innocence of the web, it was just an exchange format documents for the design of the LHC particle accelerator, has protected it from the start. The web browser just had to show simple documents, without delving into the guts of the operating system (the first authoring tool for the web browser and first appeared in the NeXT). If HTML had tried to take the place of native applications in those days, his failure would have been booming, thanks to their failure and slowness.

The first web application only began to emerge with the popularization of language processing on the server side, especially ASP. Even if the browser could not do much, technically the server across the line could do everything at the push of a button, send an email, sound an alarm, launch a rocket. This model was different from that of the desktop software, which could not (and somehow still can not) assume that the computer was online for any task in the office. Even the phenomenon of shareware on the Internet required that you phone or send a mail to buy a product on a CD.

There gone by 1996, the laptops started to become popular, gaining the power of typical desktop and new levels of portability. The Internet dial-up had become fashionable, and Microsoft wanted to integrate this new portability in Exchange Server.

Jim Van Eaton: Outlook Web Access - a catalyst for the evolution of the web

The traditional web applications constantly update the document whenever any action occurs. During the development of Exchange 5.5 in 1996 and 1997, we used hidden frames to communicate with the server when sending messages. However, we still had many pictures being updated during navigation by the mailbox. We also developed a Java applet to control the choice of date in calendar view to improve the user experience, since the DHTML in browsers of the time barely existed. In the end, the applet did not meet our performance requirements, because the initialization of the virtual machine was very expensive. OWA 5.5 support was thicker than the previous versions, but still did not offer the kind of experience in a win32 application [...]

[...] The first prototype of OWA with DHTML was created based on a pre-beta version of IE5. IE5 was a huge advance. The IE4 was a great step forward, but the fifth had many other integrated technologies that allowed us to improve the user experience. He could handle XML, but it was impossible to make a DAV request by the browser, then include an ActiveX control to the prototype that made possible DAV requests such as SEARCH, PROPFIND and the like. It was a demonstration of the prototype of OWA, and Bill Gates loved it. This gave us morale to be installed in IE5 one component of which we needed, XMLHTTP. This component was designed and implemented by Shawn Bracewell, the team of OWA.Exchange played the work, putting the development team to create the OWA XMLHTTP in partnership with the team Webdata SQL Server.

(Which was a good idea, considering the lawsuit of Java at the end of 1997)

Although not integrated into the HTML document to the operating system more significantly than has already happened, it all laid the foundations of sites that were no longer a collection of interconnected documents. I always say that Microsoft does not understand the web, but from the perspective of developers and companies (not the users) but she understood, and rode the craziness of the Internet bubble that gained impetus at the time, reaching its peak in 2000. The bubble was when a lot of people who had not received a hell of a lot of talent to make big money sites. Most users still using dial-up long after the bubble (remember the time you pay monthly fees and per minute usage?), But the gaps in Flash, and tons of pictures were very common.

The result was a huge commercial investment and boost that to take anything modern banks do not want to risk payments on the Internet to open their arms to the "bosses" of the Internet and its rich buck. At the time I could not understand these things, but today I think that was the big deal that finally gave the web a more practical than their counterparts on the desktop. Even if the web could have the face and the smell of a desktop application (since the arrival of DHTML rained attempts to mimic the interface of the desktop), it is not going anywhere until we were able to do something better than what could be done on the desktop. Able to buy online has changed everything. It was easier to create, build and update a catalog of items by the browser to write an application to interact with a database cheesy C + + Windows, distribute it on a CD and require the user to telephone to make your request. This model was not even a little fun, and it was widely used by directories like Yellow Pages and B2B procurement systems.

Despite displays of fact, the HTML code Poorly and total lack of optimization techniques to the web at the time, we have to thank the dial-up for offering us a web in which we could buy everything in an instant, and check how much money we still had the comfort of our home, without having to make another phone call - the shops and banks were not innovative enough to create such systems. The necessity was the mother of invention. As we could not use the phone while using the dial-up internet, payment had to be done online. You could pay by mail or telephone, but that would throw a huge cucumber to system developers, who did not have much skill and had to deal with this information. The browser session was quick, simple and cheap, unlike the other model, which would leave shopping carts parked for a month waiting for a check arrived in the mail cloudy to pay the bill. If not for dialup internet and the internet bubble, online shopping would have only taken off iTunes in 2003 ... just thinking about it already feel chills!

It is worth noting that the mega-corporations do not have good taste, and it does not matter if the solution is horrible. If it fulfills its task, then it's worth.Design aficionados can writhe in disgust at the sight of a terrifying web application to replace a native and well finished, but during and after the Internet bubble, there was a big change in business that, internally, large firms were tied to poorly developed web applications that today are hell many institutions, including the British government. The intranet exclusive IE was born there. It was this change that made web applications were developed in place of native applications, beginning his career within the company, before the concept leaked to the end user in other ways.

Then there was silence.
We know well that five years of stagnation and web meteoric rise of Firefox.

The business plan was to offer Microsoft IE without intent to profit, to achieve two goals:

1. Increasing reliance on developers, linking to web to Windows, increasing sales of its operating system in the long term [...]

2. Sell more copies of Visual Studio for developers interests to take advantage of ActiveX, which offered everything that HTML can not offer.

The web got where he arrived in 2003, with 99% use IE, because it was not a business for Microsoft. For Microsoft, the Web was not to generate money. The web just selling copies of Windows and Visual Studio and more. This was evident with the complete lack of major updates to IE6 for five years.

Apple will embark on the wave of the web?

This is interesting because the integration of IE into Windows, the monopoly of the total IE and ActiveX are the exact opposite of integration of the operating system! Microsoft (and now Apple) wanted to continue being a web only web documents in a format focused, limited by the confines of your browser and never come close to replacing traditional applications, especially. NET, which was then the apple of the eye of Microsoft.

A site linked to a specific operating system is not operating system integration. You can not call for integration with the operating system the fact of not having Adobe versions of their products to Linux.

As the web started out as a format for documents, she did not have that concept of being a specific operating system (it was created to address the portability of documents in various operating systems used in scientific institutions of the time), and when the browser was hacked and expanded to become an interface for applications, it naturally decreased the differences between operating systems. I am telling you this mantra all because she is the reason we are saying so indifferent to the operating system does not really matter because now "everything is on the web."

We're playing corner for the fact that a web browser, due to several factors (desired or not), is not providing us with an excellent user experience, but only moderately satisfactory. As web users did not have to download and install software for each company visited on the web to take advantage of its services, the browser was hacked to take full advantage of this unique feature in which he triumphed over the software for desktops, but fail on attempt to make the most of conventions and operating system technologies to deliver an excellent user experience. But so what? Big companies do not give a damn about it.

Today, the launch of the web is offering a great user experience. With two billion people on the web, change the text of a button can double profits. If your site run 10% slower, you can lose millions. The design, experience and speed of web applications are now tangible factors, which generate revenue and arms against the competition. While many of the "advanced" techniques we have today to optimize sites could already be implemented ten years ago, today companies can smell the money, and it became important to listen to anyone who has talked about it since the beginning.

A good user experience goes hand in hand with the paradigm of expectations, resources and operating system interfaces. You can not get an interface for documents, made only to receive mouse clicks coming from the desktop, and throwing out controls via touch it. Apple abandoned the IOS in Flash not for technical reasons, but because it is terribly dull to radical change compared to the desktop that the iPhone supports. Because Flash has to live in prison for a plugin, the user would have to interact with it in a special way that avoids this behavior "reliable" designed to permeate the entire operating system.Being quite frank, Flash was a drug, and bad experiences offer is tantamount to loss of money, not only for the owner of the site as well for Apple in the promotion of your device. For Apple, in terms of sales and profits, it was better to ask and delete the Flash content creators would change the entire web to make it acceptable to experiment with Flash on the iPhone. Obviously, other portable devices using Flash, but he is a drug, that is. The best thing you can do to improve the operation of your phone and your web browsing experience is to disable this crap. Only Apple was able to say that a reasonably satisfactory experience was not enough.

In a surprising reversal of roles (over which we deal in the article , Apple will embark on the wave of the web? ), Microsoft has learned to stop fighting with the web and opened her arms to her. She was so behind compared to other browsers that lost the capacity to orchestrate the same way that technology has enabled the creation of AJAX. Internet Explorer 9 HTML5 should support and many advanced technologies and standards related to the extent that they can be implemented in an organized and reliable.

Of course, web applications very modern and very fast in HTML5 "steal" that developers could be programming specifically for Windows technologies, and prefer to concentrate on more than one browser (and consequently in more than one operating system). In the past, Microsoft ended up with this threat using commercial tactics to destroy competition and stagnating the web, but that option no longer exists. She is losing market share and has nothing to offer with IE8. This time, the solution adopted by Microsoft is to compete not only investing in sites that open in Windows, but to make sure that all websites work better with Windows.

Microsoft wants to offer better and faster web experience with IE9 and Windows. Open the same site in Firefox and IE9: the look will be identical, but Microsoft wants to be an option IE9 clearly better. This is where the hardware acceleration comes into play. The Microsoft browser is rooting for maximum capabilities of the operating system using APIs that are typically aimed at games and desktop applications. The resources of sites fixed (pinned sites) and lists of shortcuts (jump lists) of IE9 are attempts to make the web behave the way Windows, applying the benefits of user experience that she says that Windows 7 has the task the majority of users on the computer performs most: surf the web.

The interface of the operating system exists because there are many ways to manage multiple tasks simultaneously, and we are still perfecting the way we do this. The web is no different in this regard. Just look at the tabbed browsing, for example. Manage more than one task is a thing of the operating system, not the web, and the operating system has a chance to improve how we manage our vision of the web to the point of influence ... sales.

Whoever offers the best user experience will attract those users. Firefox was better than IE6, it was obvious. Today, the differences are minor and only support one standard will not sell hardware or software. Let's not kid ourselves: the standards are for developers. You can make a website using an image-mapped, and many users will not even notice the difference for an identical site done in HTML. What is important to Microsoft and Apple is no longer the content of these sites (as was the browser wars that came before this) but how that content is enjoyed within the experience of the operating system that spawned him. It would be hard to deny that the original iPhone has greatly increased the expectations that had a cell phone web browser.Have you tried using IE6 on a device with Windows Mobile? Opera Mini was good but had been designed with the expectations for the mobile Web in 2003 with cHTML3.2. See how Opera Mini has changed in versions 4 and 5 (zooming, page navigation, tabs). He's taking his ideas to a new kind of mobile web, brought to the fore by Apple.

Why the iPhone's browser was good? Because behaved and reacted in tune with the operating system and hardware. This is the operating system integration. This is the future.

Windows Mobile strove to be both a desktop environment that even had a horrendous right click. Opera Mini browser was trying to be the same on all phones, and thus could not provide the best experience offered by the phone (and the blame is not Opera, but the blind manufacturers of mobile devices and its implementations of Java disgusting).

With support for beginning to align standards in browsers, what I see today is that all browsers have the same look (tabs on top) and do the same thing (again, advance, research), then the only way to be different , win over users and make money is by offering the best web experience through integration with the operating system. Web applications need to be more like web applications, not web pages because their desktop counterparts enjoy all kinds of pampering offered by the desktop and that is not offered on the web. Microsoft saw this with IE9, and I think this is just the beginning of Microsoft's plan to win the competition by offering a better experience with the "wiring" Windows. The good thing is that it does not mean that most sites will only open in IE:)

Today, the operating system is more important than ever. He was completely ignored by the web for ten years, and has now become relevant.Increasingly people are using operating systems to access the Web. The quality of experience that these people have is important in real and tangible, that companies are able to understand.

The operating system is not yet dead, he was just waiting for time to really shine.