An annotated anthology of Arun Ranganathan's Web noise.
The medium is the message and all, but for a long time, my medium was the wallflower at the party. Basically, I’m saying I had an ugly looking blog. I’d frequently be too embarrassed by its sheer lack of graphical adroitness to do much writing on it. Now of course, smart designers will tell you that content is still king, and only a bad carpenter blames his tools. Who really cares about ugly fonts and the lack of pretty pictures, if I spun an engaging-enough yarn about the goings-on in my exciting web world? I was making excuses for my lack of blog updates, and Twitter was satisfying my need for public self-expression. But then, on a whim, I roped in my buddies Cindy Li and Matt Harris to fix things around the place.
It’s that time of the year again, and I’m back. I’m doing the Browser Wars Panel again for the third whopping time, and this time there are a few things that are different from the last two years.
For one, I now actually work for a browser company. Sure, some folks argued that I never really left (at least spiritually, since the last time around) but there’s a difference between just contributing and picking up a paycheck. And this time, we’ve got a fourth participant — Darin Fisher, who now works on Google Chrome, will join the discussion I moderate. This will be a fun session — we’ll have to break Darin in, but he’s been around the block, too, with past history working on Mozilla. It’ll be a spirited discussion (some of us will talk smack), and audience participation makes it all worth it. But really, we want to discuss where the web is going from here. The web is 20 years old now, and was feted where it was originally invented today, at a nuclear research institute (CERN) in Switzerland. With the JavaScript performance wars, escalation on the standards front about things like fonts and graphics, and the advent of a new entrant, where do these guys think it will all go?
Some things, however, don’t change much over the course of three years. Still no Apple — their PR machinery won’t allow it, given the publicity this thing has gotten. But Darin (who worked on Firefox and Chrome) will speak for Google’s use of WebKit, Charles McCathieNevile (worked on lots of W3C specifications; is Opera’s standards officer) will speak again for Opera, Chris Wilson will represent IE (worked on every single version of the thing, and is a CSS muckety-muck), and Brendan (invented JavaScript) will represent Firefox.
If you’re in Austin, say hi. If my voice holds up, you can also see me at Fray Cafe, telling a story.
Ryan Lobo: “Oho, how much this missile costs?”
Feb. 10, 2009
It’s about midnight, and a wedding party next door is boisterously dancing to loud drum beats, preventing us from drifting off to sleep. sethb gazes out at the shadows behind the curtain with wide open, sleep-addled eyes. Like me, he’s probably exhausted and jet-lagged, but he is curious and intrigued by what he is looking at. It dawns on me that sethb’s adventurous curiosity will make him a great travel buddy as we do a Mozilla trip through India, hitting the road lean and mean. It’s our first day in Delhi, and it’s set a high octane precedent for whatever else will happen. Twenty or so hours ago, Seth got in from Europe, after FOSDEM; I got in at the same time from California and we meet up at Indira Gandhi Airport, Delhi. We haven’t really slept much.
Earlier in the day, we attended an event at the Indian Social Institute called MozCampDelhi, put together by the inimitable Mohak Prince in just a few short days. Mohak (aka “~~~STigMaTa~~~ ~~~HaLLuCiNaTiNg AmBiGuiTy~~~” in all his emails) is a Mozilla Campus Rep in India, and has a real flair for organization. Along with a really sharp crew of open source enthusiasts that helped put the event together, Mohak brought together an impressive audience of professionals, students, and hobbyists. It was a great crowd for a Tuesday afternoon. It was also pretty illustrative of the use of Twitter, Wikis, and the blogosphere in India as instruments of event promotion and spontaneous UnConferencing. I sensed that this was going to be a really smart, savvy and interactive bunch of people, and I remember feeling really elated to be there.
Dear Chris, Chaals, and Brendan,
Thank you. For two years, you’ve put up with my jittery nagging a few hours before the panel, and for two years, it has rocked.
Dear Apple,
We really missed you. Our “Browser Wars” panel at SxSWi ’08 was standing room only, with people lining up outside who couldn’t get in. We discussed stuff that was really relevant to Safari, touching on mobility, standards, security, JavaScript, and stuff like that — PC Mag has a rough record of the conversation. People love your stuff — the MacBook Pro and the iPhone were ubiquitous at the Austin Convention Center. And while you are open in your standards participation (working groups like Web API and HTML conduct business in the open), and while you are candid on the Surfin’ Safari Weblog, it would be great if your PR / Marketing department could let you come out and play with us. Maybe next year?