Cock blocking Microsoft
If you haven’t noticed, the web is currently experiencing some tremors of wars to come. By wars I mean things like the browser wars, search engine wars, and the CSS revolution. Interestingly, everyone thought the search engine wars were over before Google even hit the scene. In that same historical pattern, it looks as if the browser war is far from over as the newest rival, Firefox, continues to take market share from Intercrap Explorer. Digg.com, for example, has already reported that 70% of their users use Firefox. Adding to the Firefox arsenal, a new partnership between Adobe and Mozilla threatens to unseat HTML as the lone standard for built in browser support. If Adobe, through Firefox, can open source Flash and make it a default feature set in the fastest growing browser in the world, that allows them to expand the sales of Flash development products. But why only open Flash to Mozilla? Could it be because the 800 pound gorilla in Redmond may be preparing to step toe to toe with Adobe?
What’s fascinating is how the MicroFlash came to be. Apparently the huge delay in the release of Vista came from the fact that the whole OS was mocked-up in Shockwave and once it hit the engineers so did the veritable shit on the fan. Everything had to be reworked, which is why the huge delays occurred. Not wanting such a huge debacle to ever occur again, the M$ engineers got to work on their own version of Shockwave that lead to the development of Sparkle. (I read that and I’ll have to find the link later. Anyone know where that story is?)
It appears that since Adobe and Mozilla now have a common enemy, they are aligning to form a joint attack on the evil empire. I’m excited to see how it will all shake out. I also think this further accelerates the need for rich media development standards to alleviate the challenges facing modern web designers. I’d much rather see an open source team win than a corporation.
What say you on all of this?
wrong adobe is a corporation
From atomic1fire on December 13th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
It will be interesting to watch this situation play out.
Open source for me, thank you. :)
From LorriM on December 13th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
atomic1fire, good catch. I guess I was feeling like everyone but Microsoft was allowed to play and that was open source enough. Yet, that’s not true. Maybe Adobe will open it up to everyone. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll do it over time in order to position themselves for the competition. Maybe not. It’s uncommon for a corporation to offer something open source to an open source organization. What does it all mean?!?!?!?!? :)
From Justin on December 14th, 2006 at 1:17 am
ha ha i just thought the title was too much!
From nolawi on December 17th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Hmm… sounds like you have a preconceived opinion about MS. I’ve worked very closely with Adobe before and they have their own internal struggles as well as any other company. Netscape sold out to AOL. We love the underdog, but you have to admire Redmond’s tenacity and determination to get it right (usually by service pack 3). From a corporate standpoint, they are a great choice. I like them as a consumer too. My iMac and Adobe updater are downloading as many nightly patches as my PC. But I also allow that others can prefer another OS, browser, website, whatever. I’m glad that everyone doesn’t just pick one solution set, otherwise I’d be out of business.
BTW, have you tried IE7 yet? I love the Zoom feature.
cheers!
From Michael on January 6th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
The nice thing about HTML is that it is a single standard that everyone has a part in, not a proprietary format from one company.
On way or another, a battle between Adobe and Microsoft over proprietary platforms on the web is dangerous to the open standard philosophy that makes the web accessible to everyone. We already have another trouble with trying to keep users up to date with Flash so they can view all the Flash content on the web… now we are going to have even more trouble getting the same problems with Sparkle.
I hate to think so negative, but it’s entirely possible!
From Montoya on January 6th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Michael, I haven’t played with IE7 much. I did recently order Parallels so I can run Windows on my MacBook Pro, but I’ve yet to install it.
Montoya, I agree that HTML derives much of its value from being an open format. I’m wondering whether or not the move to open Flash to Mozilla foreshadows opening it to everyone.
From Justin on January 7th, 2007 at 1:11 pm