A Call for Browser Neutrality

“Conform. Or you’re an idiot.”

This is the message I hear more and more from HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript (“HTML5+” for short) standardistas. Their claim is that the capabilities of their technology triumvirate have removed the need for any other web technologies. Their favorite target for death is of course Flash which they describe as either the Beelzebub of plug-in hell or the screw of plug-in jail. Ah, what joys will attend that funeral day.

But that day is not coming any time soon! Flash is the best…

Psych. This is not a defense of Flash or another HTML5 vs. Flash article.

No, what’s got me writing is a discomfort around this concept that there is one set of technologies that should serve the world and no other. Conform? Why should I? Who is that really good for?

Here’s the state of the web world. The Internet is a general communications platform. The most visible and used way to access that platform is with a web browser. And the mother tongue of a modern web browser is HTML5+.

I’m pretty happy with that except for that last part. Why is it that HTML5+ has become the language of the web? No, that’s not quite it. Rather, why is there a single language of the web?

Okay, that’s being simple-minded because there is not a single language for the web. There are also plug-ins like Flash. You see, somewhere along the way, it was decided that there are times when the needs of the Internet will outstrip the capabilities of the web browser’s language and to handle those cases, browsers will have plug-ins.

That sounds pretty good, right? Well, no, not really. This approach still assumes that the language of the web must be HTML5+ and that other languages must be satisfied with a plug-in architecture that is penalized at every turn. Installing a plug-in into a browser involves error messages about it being missing, downloads to mysterious folders, warnings about running things downloaded from the web, installation scripts that require user names and passwords and browser restarts. And then the plug-in’s capabilities are limited by the plug-in architecture. That’s even if the browser allows the plug-in. (Mr. Jobs?) It’s a minor miracle in these circumstances that Flash enjoys the install base that it does.

What’s the effect of this? Well, it certainly makes a lot of people proponents of HTML5+. That is, I don’t believe that all the people who claim a love of HTML5+ would necessarily choose it in a blind taste test against some other technology. Are CSS3 selectors really the best way to write queries into an HTML document? You are truly a masochist if you think they are.

So what do I propose? Browser neutrality. Much like network neutrality says that network traffic should not be discriminated against based on its content, browser neutrality says that a web site’s content should not be discriminated against based on the language that it’s written in. I propose a browser that truly treats the Internet as the general communications platform that it is. I propose a browser that doesn’t impose itself on the web but rather promotes a diversity of technologies.

The neutral browser would work by asking a website what client-side technologies are needed to understand the language it is written in. Then if these technologies weren’t already available to the browser and if the website were trusted by the client then they would be automatically downloaded and installed without any need for user intervention. Next, the neutral browser would download the website’s contents in the language they were written in be it HTML, Processing, Java, Frontal (my personal favorite) or whatever. And finally it would process and display the web site’s contents.

“What?! Allow executables to be downloaded and run off the web without a million user warnings and jumping hoops? What about viruses, malware and resource hogs? Are you trying to burn down the Internet?”

That’s an understandable reaction until you realize it’s what we’re doing today. It’s just that we trust the companies that are delivering the programs. We trust Apple, Microsoft, Google, Firefox, Opera, etc. to deliver safe and stable implementations of HTML5+ and thank goodness they do a decent if imperfect job of it. But guess what? There are a lot of other companies I would be as likely to trust. Why can’t the web of trust be extended beyond those companies rich and powerful enough to build web browsers? I know the rich and powerful always have our best interests in mind since that’s usually how they got to be rich and powerful but there are some other entities I think I can trust like IBM, Amazon (since I don’t have a Kindle), Pixar, EA, the Smithsonian Institute and myself.

So would it be messy and would there be missteps and mistakes and corruption and evil? Of course there would be but imagine the benefits. Imagine the innovation. Now a rival language to HTML5+ is actually a viable proposal. If you think the language of the web stinks, then rewrite it! Get enough people to see the benefit and trust your efforts and it will be supported!

And if you chose to describe your content in HTML5+ that would be just fine. A great decision as a matter of fact because so many services have been built around that language like searching. (Oh by the way, do you think HTML5+ is really the best way to describe information for search purposes? I don’t think anyone would say it is.)

What’s a better approach for improving a solution: competition among diverse proposals or conformity and iteration on a single proposal? My money’s on diversity. So me conform? I’d rather not. My motto?

Vive la difference!