David Herron's Blog

Internet OS living in a browser?

Yesterday I wrote a rant about the usability of web applications that depend on AJAX between stuff in a browser and stuff on a backend. It seems to have struck a chord with several others chiming in with concerns about the usability and reliability of this model.

Dreaming in the "Cloud" with the XIOS web operating system covers what someone is trying to claim is an "Internet Operating System" implemented in javascript and living inside a web browser. Okay, this means a new twist on what we mean by "operating system" .. so let's accept that phrase for the sake of argument.

The idea is to have full applications running in some kind of javascript interpreted container that lives inside a web browser.

It would mean reimplementing the whole world of applications .. in Javascript .. fighting with cross-browser inconsistencies in Javascript .. Oh, and javascript today is always interpreted so it's not going to be terribly speedy. And I understand javascript in browsers has a poor multi-threading model, so is that going to interfere with usability when multiple applications are executing side by side?

This raises some ideas ...

First, this sounds like some existing application environments. Whittling it down to its essentials, it's a container for launching applications, right? Hmm, I was playing with AB5K earlier today and it's a pure Java container for launching applications .. that is in an early development stage. JNode also does the same sort of thing, and they too try to call it an "operating system", and they've been at this for a long time. I think in a way Dashboard (Mac OS X) is along these lines.

Next I'm thinking about stability of the environment. I dunno about you, but my experience of web browsers is they aren't exactly the most robust pieces of software. Sure, they're better today than they used to be. But, really, would you want to trust your critical data to this?

Contrasting the stability of web browsers with something I see in my daily work ... the level of stability we offer with Sun's Java SE implementation comes from a lot of testing. Lots of testing. 24/7, with testing and other quality related activities occurring in multiple models in parallel. We have customers who are expected to build ultra-reliable systems for whom we have gone to long lengths to build this quality system.

If I was the quality lead for a web browser I'd think the main use-case would be Aunt Millie browsing the web and doing online shopping. While she would be put off by a browser crash or malfunction she wouldn't be expecting the same level of reliability as someone who's using it for their whole user environment.

Comments

• JNode _is_ an operating system. Boots and runs all its own code. Has hardware drivers (written in Java) It's not just an app launcher.

  Posted by: tompalmer on April 11, 2007 at 08:13 AM

• Hi David.

  I too have misgivings about javascript as the next application development platform. However, I think we need to look closely at why javascript is gaining popularity. I am sure that there are real reasons (in addition to the usual "newer is better" thing) for this.

  In my own experiments with js I've found that it is much simpler to write and deploy GUI apps this way than with traditional means. You don't even have to write a JNLP descriptor to deploy, and many aspects of the app itself are handled very easily (in my little game I manipulate the UI by setting the "innerHTML" field on various objects -- it doesn't get simpler than that). Also, with GWT, you don't even have to give up static typing, if that is your preference.

  Sure, maybe this won't scale well. But "worse is better"... the applications may drive the platform; or in other words, java once was slow as well.
  

  Posted by: tromey on April 13, 2007 at 03:18 PM

• @tromey, And I read recently that Adobe has donated some code to the Mozilla foundation so future javascript interpreters (in firefox anyway) can have a JIT. Oh I agree that js running in a browser can help improve the usability of sites considerably. I really think when you take it to writing fullblown applications in the context of a web browser, that someone has taken the concept too far.

  Posted by: robogeek on April 13, 2007 at 04:06 PM

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