Hi all, I wrote this article, and I'm wanting to hear thoughts from the developer community about interactive email, and Google's AMP for Email as I write part 2 of the article.
Actually, keeping the response open-ended has been very valuable in understanding how people interpret "innovation" in this context. In the linked survey, there is an open-ended comment box where you can explain your definition.
Certainly; if understanding how people interpret "innovation" is the goal, a broad question is a good way to draw that interpretation out of some subset of 'people'.
I left the survey without answering because I realized it'd require me to make a broad binary generalization of some sort. Questions requiring generalizations like this make me uncomfortable, so I usually avoid answering them or dispute their usefulness. I came here to dispute its usefulness, but I saw a few others had already done so in their own ways, and thought my time might be better spent trying to give you context for this push-back, rather than echoing it.
Perhaps I can unpack how I mean "uncomfortable." If you ask me an innocent question like "what's your favorite movie/book/artist/album?", I have no good prepared answer to give you without vastly more thought than I care to put to the matter. I like a lot of things, but I don't maintain any sort of ranking, and I have no fast+meaningful way of comparing the relative merits of a good comedy with a good documentary, or a book of poems with a novel. I'm aware that most of the time this is just a throwaway question for socializing and I could probably grease the interaction with a little white lie--just pick something and move on. But I also know some people live and die by questions like this, and will mine my answer for what it says about me, whether we'll get along, etc. I could state this as my answer to the question, but the asker is either just making smalltalk and doesn't need a dissertation, or they actually think the question is meaningful and won't appreciate my disdain. The question makes me uncomfortable because it feels like a lose-lose. There's no honest way for me to "answer" it, and all of the other options are undesirable for social reasons.
In your case, I don't know what kind of parameters matter to you, and I lack a fast+meaningful heuristic for weighing whether a browser is innovative on the balance or deciding what definition/qualities of innovation I want to apply. I also realize you have some purpose for asking the question, and that using a cynical heuristic would undermine you.
Sure, I'm an entrepreneur and fellow Hacker News reader (not a polling agency) looking to get people's thoughts about the state of the browser industry. All responses are anonymous.
So the concern about "innovation" within the context of a browser is that can disrupt how they currently work. That being said, do you think that the separate plugins and applications out there are innovative?
The good think is that there's a lot more of variety on apps and plugins than there are different viable mainstream browsers, and I can use those for specific functions at different times. Bundling everything within the same application would force me to have them in my interface all the time.
So the concern about "innovation" within the context of a browser is that can disrupt how they currently work.
That seems to be a nice-sounding way of saying "breaking something that used to work", which is a significant problem with far too much "innovation" in modern browsers.
So your feeling is that the browser is more of an invisible delivery mechanism, and not intended to provide anything other than taking you to your chosen web experience. Is that correct?
I think that's a pretty common expectation nowadays.
Back in the day we already tried the monster do-everythin-and-the-kitchen-sink[1][2] bundle with the original Netscape/Mozilla suite (currently known as SeaMonkey), and it sucked. It's only with Phoenix/Firefox lean-and-streamlined approach that a serious alternative to IE6 took shape.
The expectation of flexibility is covered by the idea of having specific tools provided in the form of web applications, not part of the browser itself. The browser should have all the features required to support those "innovative" experiences, but those should be available as development platform APIs, not in the browser's user interface.
At some point I expect a "browser" to be a piece of fixed hardware that renders the current Markup standards into a combination of screen and audio outputs. Perhaps with the option to 'spool to archival'.
We're going to get there because "innovations" in the browser space have increasingly put our personal information, and financial lives at risk. Nobody ever had to worry that answering the phone might suddenly drain their bank account, or install a surveillance device surreptitiously. And yet we have those issues now with "browsing a web site". As Pwn2Own has shown its a really hard problem to make a secure browser and the logical conclusion (for me at least) is to air gap the browser feature from everything else.
Are you happy with your choice of browsers today? Do you feel that browser innovation is moving forward quickly enough? Please sound off and take this quick survey.
