2. INTRODUCTION
Browsers have evolved far beyond their original mission of providing one-
way windows into the world wide webosphere. Indeed, as more services
migrate to the cloud, browsers only reinforce their new role as multi-
function boxes of digital magic thy have started to behave more like the
operating systems.
All the important Internet things are available in browser form—everything
from communication tools to productivity suits to disposable escapist
environment. It's almost like the browser has become an OS in and of
itself. In fact, you could say that's exactly where things are headed.
3. INTRODUCTION
As websites have come to look more and more like applications rather than
static pages, they've begun to bump up against the limits of what today's
web browsers can do. Developers have responded by using a variety of
proprietary plug-ins and workarounds to expand the browser's functionality.
One example of this is local storage. There aren't a lot of good options for
applications that want to store significant amounts of data client-side in a
way that will continue to be available if the Internet connection goes
away. Google has Google Gears, while Adobe has Flash. Each offers local
storage, but neither is compatible with the other, nor are their APIs likely to
be adopted by other browser vendors in the future.
4. HISTORY
The war for the first browser begun when the IE browser was launched by windows and
ultimately become the winner by defeating the pre existing world’s only and best
NETSCAPE’s web browser.
Netscape communications formerly known as (Netscape communications
corporation) found in 1994, is a US computer services company, best known
for Netscape navigator, its web browser. Netscape's web browser was once dominant
in terms of usage share, but lost most of that share to IE during the first browser war. The
usage share of Netscape had fallen from over 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than
one percent by the end of 2006.
Netscape is credited with developing the secure sockets layer
protocol (SSL) for securing online communication, which is still widely
used, as well as JavaScript, the most widely used language for client-
side scripting of web pages.
5. HISTORY
Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when it was acquired
by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth
US$10 billion. Shortly before its acquisition by AOL, Netscape
released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla
Organization to coordinate future development of its product. The
Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code
based on the Gecko rendering engine, all future Netscape
releases were based on this rewritten code. The Gecko engine
would later be used to power the Mozilla
Foundation's Firefox browser.
6. HISTORY
Marc Andreessen (the co founder of Netscape communications)
is credited with many bold and visionary ideas such as "Everyone Will Have the Web"
(ca. 1992), "Web Businesses Will Live in the Cloud" (1999), "Everything Will Be Social"
(2004, four years before joining Facebook's Board), and "Software Will Eat the World"
(2009).
But not all of Andreessen's predictions are as ringing and relevant. His 1995
proclamation that "The Browser Will Be the Operating System" still reverberates around
the web, despite the elusiveness of the concept.
The idea is that we can rid our computing devices of their bulky, buggy operating
systems by running apps in the Cloud and presenting the results in a Web browser. The
heavy lifting is performed by muscular servers while our lightweight devices do nothing
more than host simple input/output operations. As a result, our devices will become
more agile and reliable, they'll be less expensive to buy and maintain, and we'll never
again have to update their software.
7.
8. Basic difference between OS and Browser
Operating system
It has the ability of managing the running
programs intelligently
Operating system provides the basic interface
for data storage. The OS developers call it the
files syst.
The operating system dos not require external
APIs for the software components to interact
with ach other.
The operating system is intelligent enough to
equally distribute the cup usage to a specific
program so that on bad program can not
disturb the functionality of the whole system
Browser
The browser were meant for the sake of just
information getting, forms fillings and
viewing static web pages or images.
But now as more web applications are
being built the usability and functionality of
the web browsers is increasing dramatically.
In our daily life now we spend most of our
time on our browser rather than on desktop.
This is actually the belated fulfillment of
Netscape’s concept of Browser as the new
OS.
9.
10. Reasons why the browser is the next OS
1: The rise of vast, rich Web applications
2: Easy extensibility via plug-ins
3: Its open source foundation
4: Metaprogramming
5: Multiplatform simplicity and mutability
6: A clean abstraction layer
7: Better sharing models for libraries
8: Fertile, competitive marketplace
9: SVG, canvas, vector graphics, great user interfaces
10: Node.js
11. What’s the future ?
The browser vendors are in continuous efforts to make the difference fill
between OS and the Browser. The Firefox browser has already
introduced the APIs in its browsers which is actually there since the
Firefox version 2.0. the new version of Firefox (Mozilla Firefox 3.0) is
another step forward toward a better browser with advanced APIs and
built in plugins.
Now the point is that the browser do not have any consistent interface
for data storage like the OS have, the browser vendors are in continuous
efforts of making that happen and they call it the local data storage
system rather than the files system called by the OS developers but the
concept is same.
12.
13. Technical aspects
HTML is in efforts to make the web browser's vendors introduce the local
storage options in the browsers this the part of recent HTML5 efforts.
Now the point is that what about when the users go offline and has no
internet access. GOOGLE has Google Gears while adobe has flash these
plugins/ softwares provide us the ability to preform while offline.
The Google Gear plugin is available for all the browser as a plugin including
Microsoft’s IE but as Google is Microsoft’s biggest rival, Microsoft have to think
out of the box to b a part of the next generation computing.
