The rebels and misfits of Web browsing
This article is part of Designing the New Web Browser publication, the previous post was Part 2: The Birth of a Web Browser, where I talked about early days of the Web. I mentioned some of the ancient browsers which are discontinued today. Before we jump into making a new browser, let's zoom-in the timeline and revise evolution of temporary browser designs. Think of it as a previous article was a visit to the gothic cathedral or Vatican Museums. Now we are in a modern art gallery.
The war is coming
I was born in 1995, so in 2019, I am 24 years old. But whereas I am good and healthy — thank you for asking — it seems that web browsers not enjoying such a long life as we do. The first web browser WorldWideWeb was discontinued four years after its release. NSCA Mosaic, so much glorified pioneer of web browsing haven't lived any longer and IBM's WebExplorer didn't make it to its third year's birthday party. We are not talking about group of friends developing software in their parent's garage here, but IBM and Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. Not naming dozens of other enthusiastic and talented programmers conquering the booming market of the Web. History of web browsers is paved with gravestones of browsers which had to accept that people won't be using them. Referred as Browser Wars, tales are spread over the internet and glorifying winners that smashed their enemies. Geeks are going emotional.
You can find more information about these Great Wars in the links below, so I won't be going much into the historical facts. Here is Wikipedia:
And one really nice project I just discovered:
In fact it contains great timeline of everything this series is about.
Also here is a nice video about Web browser market share development.
Much detailed overview can be found again on Wikipedia:
Another nice interactive infographic, although just till 2012 is at http://www.evolutionoftheweb.com, also containing another important milestones.
So what do I think?
Platform is everything
Going through the history it seems like for Web browser to suceed, being part of strong ecosystem of services is the key. Most of the users out there will prefer go with the flow rather then investing time and energy into searching for alternatives. That's what won the first Browser War for IE and the second one for Chrome.
Chrome is not the default web browser neither on a Mac, neither on Windows, and it still has majority of a market share in the time of writing this. But it is still the Google platform as a whole that makes it strong. Once Google put the download link for their new browser right under the search bar on google.com, the market share rocketed. Although Safari — macOS default browser — offers great experience for browsing content and has indisputable advantages, if you are a Google services user (like YouTube, Google Drive or Gmail), you will have better experience using Google Chrome and some of the features doesn't work in Safari at all.
That's where Mozilla was always suffering, because it is standalone solution for browsing, for which users have to reach to their website, download and get used to using. Too much work nowadays. Not even talking about dozens of other alternative browsers out there. The advantages of choosing a different browser are often too small and too risky. One feels safer knowing that majority of the peers are using the same browser and Google pays hundreds of engineers working on it. The same story from late 90’s, when Microsoft was paying over 100 million dollars per year for developing their IE with more then 1 000 people involved in the project.
Reasons to swim upstream
Since the day there were two web browsers, none of the web browsers had 100% market share. There have always been the rebels, the misfits who downloaded another browser immediately after fresh installing new PC, and preferably also on all other PCs around. Faithful followers of Firefox, wild Operians or even extremists like Vivaldians. Using an alternative always make sense for PRO users because of
- Customisation
- Advanced features like developer tools and audits
- Privacy
Newer browsers like Brave are not trying to reinvent the wheel anymore, but focus on niche of users who want to block ads and are interested in new sustainable models of content creation. Others like CryptoBrowser promise to earn money for you or Blisk, if you are a web developer. Those are build on top of Chromium, open-source project which provides base to majority of today's (not only) web browsers.
For the projects which aim to innovate UI, I've found just Opera Neon and Dot browser (Windows only). But UIs will be subject of the next article.
If you are ready to undergo the journey all the way from the birth of the Web technologies, through the depression of the current Web till up to the infinite where the Web is heading now, finally ending with a design and hopefully a working new web browser, hit the follow button.
This article is part of Designing the New Web Browser publication.
