Tim Bray: Call To Arms: Let's Build A Better Browser

Hi,

  Tim Bray has posted a blog story titled "The Door Is
Ajar" that is a call to arms for building a better
browser and leaving the Internet Exploder era behind
us.

  Microsoft has frozen Internet Exploder on purpose to
force everyone to upgrade to the upcoming next-gen
Windows OS codenamed Longhorn.

  Tim Bray writes:

Fear the Longhorn. Let's think about the future a bit.
Microsoft is making a big, big, big-time bet on
Longhorn; read Scoble for a while if you’re not
convinced. Nothing about it will be off-the-cuff or
by-default or anything but carefully crafted to
support Redhell’s business paradigm, which is total
control of the desktop and 100% market share. 

 Tim warns us not to sit and wait in defeat and watch
while Microsoft puts the internet into its trunk.

 The Free World needs you. Stand up and help build a
better browser using open royality-free standards such
as XUL, SVG and others for a brighter tomorrow
starting today. To quote Tim:

  I think that if we are so foolish as to sit here for
the next three to five years waiting for the Longhorn
Browsing Experience, we’ll really regret it; but we’ll
deserve what we get.

 [..]

 Twenty-Year-Old History. I can hear the scoffers from
here. Give up they say; we are locked in that trunk,
the browser wars are so over, go find somewhere else
to play.

 [..]

 What Can We Do? As the title says, the door is ajar:
the incumbent is vulnerable, the alternatives are good
and cheap. We just have to figure out how to get the
alternatives in front of enough of the right people,
and eventually just stand back and get out of the way.

 [..]

 When Do We Start? Today. Why not? 

  Full story @
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/17/BrowserDream

  - Gerald

PS: If you want to discuss Tim's blog story, I invite
you to join the xul-talk mailing list @
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk
and share your thoughts and comments for discussion.

PPS: Josh Segall has written a story titled "Use a
Better Browser: Why? What Are The Alternatives? and so
on" @ http://giantfightingrobots.com/betterbrowser.html


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: VM Ware
With VMware you can run multiple operating systems on a single machine.
WITHOUT REBOOTING! Mix Linux / Windows / Novell virtual machines at the
same time. Free trial click here: http://www.vmware.com/wl/offer/345/0