The iOS Pro market

Since the iPad was released in 2010 the tablet market has grown so quickly that it is now almost as big as the PC market. Meanwhile the PC market is collapsing as people in developed markets sweat their existing devices longer, while those in developing markets skip straight to tablets. 

The natural question is, just how far into PC territory can tablets extend? Initially they were seen as for content consumption only, not for creation, and as for secondary work devices not primary ones. I don't believe either of these conditions will hold. 

However there is one problem that current tablets can't overcome - the screens are simply too small for much work. The type of detailed office-based work involving comparing multiple documents side by side, or editing masses of data, simply doesn't work on a 10 inch screen. This may be a smaller proportion of work that people would have guessed five years ago but there are tens of millions of people globally employed in jobs involving work like this - software developers, architects, accountants, and so on. 

I'm sure that Apple realise this, which makes their recent huge investment in iOS features for enterprise fascinating. If Apple are really targeting the enterprise, do they have plans for larger screen iOS devices?

There have been rumours for several months that Apple will release a 12-13 inch 'iPad Pro'. Such a device would surely help close the gap and extend the iOS ecosystem and applications further into enterprise territory for a few years. But I still don't think that this will be enough to take the enterprise market. 

Which brings me to 4k monitors. This year's CES tech fair introduced us to the first reasonably priced (sub $800) large screen monitors with quadruple HD resolution. 

Place this horizontally (or slightly banked) onto a desk, add a touchscreen and you have a much stronger contender for an office-based device. These desk tablets could range from 24 inches all the way up to 60 inches, which is about how far you can comfortably reach when sitting. 

These desk tablets would run a version of iOS, since that is Apple's operating system for touch screens. It would come with the same iOS App Store as iPads but would clearly need a revised user interface including window tiling. And it would be the first challenger to the PC with mouse/keyboard for 'real work'.

A true 'Pro' strategy for Apple has to consider bringing the benefits of touch screens to office based, not just mobile work. And to work by bringing more professionals and app developers to iOS with the iPad.

iPad Pro

For several months now rumours have spread that a new type of iPad will be released this year  - the iPad Pro. Variously sized at 12 or 13 inches, compared to the iPad Air's 10 inches, it would extend the iPad lineup further into larger dimensions. 

All the rumours have focused on size, but Apple integrates both hardware, software and services, and to me the really interesting areas are the latter. What software and services should a 'Pro' device come with?

Clearly Apple could tailor existing iOS apps such as the iWork and iLife suites to larger screen sizes. But other apps could be ported from MacOS too - most notably, software development tools such as XCode or a sandboxed, stripped back Terminal with tools for scripting apps. After all developers are one of the largest groups of 'Pros'. I'm not suggesting that Apple will open up root permissions directly to the iPad - instead each app is likely to be a containerized and perhaps only have access to other data via iCloud. 

iCloud itself could play a much larger role in a Pro device. It would enable each app to access a common document store, synced from iCloud. That enables a text document, image or video saved in one app to be opened up again in another one. 

iOS itself could see some changes. A 13 inch device has 70% more screen space than the iPad Air - so could we see a window manager, enabling apps to be worked side by side? Lack of tiling apps has to be one of the major outstanding barriers to productivity on iOS. One way to do this might be to require applications to work in both full screen and iPad mini sizes. 

An iPad Pro with the features above would be a great tool for professional use and a massive competitor to traditional PCs. It would also open up App Store to a new market and new possibilities. Much worthier of the Pro label than just a bigger iPad Air. 

Purchasing in the browser

One of the real benefits of App Stores versus the web is that purchases are so much easier - all you have to do is click on a link (and type your password to validate). Contrast that with the web, where every site has a detailed form to fill out - and sometimes you have to fill it out all over again, if "Verified by Visa" has anything to do with it.

Would it be possible to streamline procurement on the web? I think it could, using a browser-based "account store":

• Browser stores account details and exposes API for giving them to web page
• When web page calls API, the user is asked for confirmation (and can select which account to use). E.g. "This site wants to know your account details for a purchase - give them? If so, which account? Type your password to confirm"
• Account details are sent to page in standard format and used to automatically fill out form

This approach is simple and would work easily with existing sites, automatically populating all the fields. What's more, it allows the browser to help the user out - for example, listing all sites that have been granted access to their account details.

Unfortunately, once account details have been given out, it's difficult to control what the site does with it - they could be passed on to a bad guy, whether intentionally or not.

Here's a better approach:

• Banks could generate a new unique account number with each purchase. This account number would only work once and also has a brief expiry time, e.g. 1 hour.
• When a site requests your account details, the browser automatically requests your bank for a new account number, which is then given to the vendor. The vendor cannot then re-use the details or leak them to anyone else.

Mobile operating systems

We’ve gone from mobile operating systems not mattering, to everyone wanting one of their own: Google – Android; Samsung – Bada; Microsoft – Windows Phone; Nokia – Symbian, Meego; Intel – Meego; HP / Palm – WebOS; Apple – iOS. Compare that with the number of desktop operating systems!

This is a gold rush into the new markets opened up by the iPhone. There are two reasons to have your own mobile OS:

• Differentiation from other manufacturers – providing a unique interface and features to go with your hardware
• App Stores – make money by establishing your own App Store, selling apps along with the phones

So what happens next? Obviously, consolidation. In fact this is already happening in some areas – for example, Linux and Webkit are the foudation of many of the above operating systems.

Manufacturers will always have a need for software differentiation; they’ve learnt this through years of having to using Windows. But I don’t think they can all have App Stores with different development environments. Developers will simply not learn more than two or three.

The most obvious way to overcome this problem is to make the development platform be web standards (HTML, JS and CSS), which developers already know. This tactic is likely to be deployed by the weaker platforms, both to gain a foot up and also to undermine their more successful rivals with a common standard. It’s already been pursued by Palm with WebOS, and now Nokia are also using it with Symbian. I would expect only two or three development environments to survive that are not primarily focused on web standards: Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android (ironically, given that companies’ supposed focus on HTML5), and maybe one more.

This is likely to lead to even faster development of browser engines in the next couple of years, as mobile investment pours in. The net effect will be that the browser becomes as powerful as any native app – and, ironically, app stores will simply become websites that cost money.

One more prediction – Firefox on Mobile will be surprisingly successful. It’s had a very slow start; in fact it’s been written off in favour of webkit by almost everyone. What’s more, it will only be available on Android and Meego for the next year or two. But it’s got one major advantage: it’s not just a browser engine, it’s the chrome as well.

The current state of mobile browser chrome is terrible – features that are standard on the desktop (such as automatically remembering passwords, or auto-completing the address bar as you type based on browser history, or blocking adverts, or allowing add-ons) are completely missing on mobile, even though they should be even more important in that environment to help manage limited screen size. So I expect Firefox to take advantage of other’s complacency and inexperience and make a real impression, just as it did initially against Internet Explorer. This will likely happen over a period of two or more years as native browsers lag, then finally notice they must invest to catch up.

In a few years, then, the mobile market will have evolved substantially. Common standards based on the web will unite the weaker players against the top two or three platforms. App stores will become more like websites that cost money. And, after a hiatus, browser design will re-establish it’s importance.

Open source systems in government

In 2009 the UK government announced a new approach to open source. It ensures that open source is treated on a level playing field with proprietary solutions. But I think the government should go much further and use open source as the foundation for its core systems.

It's clear that our current approach to government IT is badly broken. Taxpayers have suffered £26bn of losses as a result of a string of computing disasters involving massively late, over-budget, and broken systems.

We must move to a new model that avoids the reasons behind this catastrophe: reliance on massive system revolutions rather than incremental improvement, lock-in to vendors, a lack of government understanding and control of IT, and the dominance of large suppliers at the expense of small and medium sized businesses.

Contrast this approach with open source groups such as the Linux Foundation or Mozilla. They also develop complex software used by millions of people around the world, following these principles:

• An army of developers, from huge corporates to individual developers in their spare time
• A community of developers, carefully cultivated and encouraged by the foundation, with shared values
• Total freedom from lock-in, using open source licenses
• Focus on steady evolution rather then complete revolution

In this approach, the major government departments should set up their own IT foundations, with carefully written missions and a budget to encourage community participation (via public prizes, conferences, and total openness in the technical approach). Individual workers, or small, medium and large businesses alike could volunteer to develop the code, as a charity or in the hope of being hired full time.

There would be two additional benefits to developing open source government systems. Firstly, governments around the world could share development costs by contributing together. This could save the UK government huge amounts in the long term. Secondly, building a community of government IT developers in the UK would provide a huge benefit to the economy - building the skills and experience of volunteers (including students) in just the areas likely to require staffing.

So I believe it's time to get much more ambitious about open source in government. We should be using it not just to purchase cheap infrastructure, but to actually lead the development of core systems. Doing so would help free us from many of the issues plaguing government IT, but also provide a real public benefit to the citizens of this country.

SVG can't be part of the web

Microsoft's announcement that IE9 will be supporting SVG brought rejoice to many web standards aficionados. SVG 1.1 was finalised in January 2003 but Internet Explorer's previous lack of support meant that it has never really taken off on the web, despite years of patient enhancement by open source advocates.

But although I'm also an open source and web standards advocate, I still don't think SVG can ever be part of the web, because it just doesn't fit. We need a better solution.

Consider the following points:

• SVG has a totally different coordinate system to HTML - you can translate SVG coordinates but not HTML ones, and vice versa. So SVG and HTML won't sit well in the same document
• SVG has a totally different layout model to HTML. It's incompatible with CSS floats, which are fundamental to laying out HTML web pages.
• SVG has a totally different version of CSS which overlaps at best with HTML. For example, it has a "fill" property (rather than "background-color"), and it can't be positioned using CSS.
• SVG introduces duplicates of many HTML features - most notably, the hyperlink!
• SVG has a different DOM to HTML.

If you only want a vector format for image files, SVG is ok (though HTML Canvas can do everything SVG can). But if you want to use SVG to layout and style web pages, it's a terrible kludge.

I believe there's a better way. Going through the SVG table of contents:

Coordinate systems, Transformations and Units

Already covered by CSS3 Units and CSS Transformations

Paths

Not possible in HTML

Basic Shapes

Rect, Oblong and Circle are possible in HTML using CSS border radius. Polylines and Polygons are not.

Text

HTML already does text better than SVG

Painting: Filling, Stroking and Marker Symbols

Filling and Stroking are possible in HTML using CSS background-color and color. Marker symbols are not.

Color

Already covered by CSS color

Gradients and Patterns

Covered by CSS3 gradients and CSS3 backgrounds

Clipping, Masking and Compositing

HTML allows clipping and opacity, but not masking or compositing.

Filter effects

Not possible using HTML

Animation

Covered by CSS3 transitions and CSS3 animations

Fonts

Covered by WOFF

So, much of what SVG does is actually already possible using advanced CSS and HTML. So why not just extend CSS a bit more and you'd get all the power of SVG inside HTML, but without needing a whole new markup language? What's more, you'd then be able to apply all these techniques to existing HTML elements, not just SVG ones.

For example, imagine a set of CSS properties which allowed you to modify the shape of any HTML element - not just rectangles, but any shape you could think of. That would be better than introducing new SVG markup for shapes, because you could modify existing HTML semantic elements such as headings.

That's why supporters of the open web should not put their hopes into SVG. To be frank, it doesn't do what you want it to do. A much better approach would be to continue to extend CSS so that it doesn't take new markup to achieve better presentational effects.

App Stores and iTunes versus the web

The app store or catalog (such as Apple's iTunes) is an alternative model to web apps. It's a closed platform where all the options are controlled by a central provider. However it's getting massively popular, to the extent that every mobile phone provider has to have one, and it's even seen as the saviour to several industries such as music (iTunes) and news (e-Readers or tablets).

I dislike this model. It's a way for corporations to increase their profits by creating artificial limits on what users can see and do. Even those app stores built with HTML and CSS (such as WebOS or Symbian3) remove the great power of the real web: the ability to hyperlink, search, aggregate, and mash-up.

So, why is the app store becoming so successful? A number of reasons:

• Higher performance apps, using the device's native hardware. Browsers are still slower in many cases than native software
• Access to the phone's full features such as camera, accelerometer, etc. Browsers still can't do much of this
• Great development and design tools that the web still can't match
• An easy way to get paid - compare the user experience of paying for an app versus registering on a new website and then typing in your credit card details

The only way the web can respond is to build on its strengths, and fix its weaknesses. In fact, some of this is already under way. Browser performance has improved hugely in the last few years, HTML5 is bringing new APIs including geolocation, native video and 3G graphics, and new developer frameworks such as Ruby on Rails are improving development practices.

There's a long way to go before the web can completely beat proprietary developer frameworks. Perhaps the most important gap is the bottom line: sorting out payments on the web, which are currently so frustratingly difficult.

Only with concerted effort among all parties - browser makers, web developers and service providers - can the web win against the app store.

Identity and the browser

Identity is a big problem on the web. People have to set up endless usernames and passwords for each website, type the same basic information (name, address etc) into each one, remember passwords and change them regularly, and a hundred other tasks.

Recently there have been some improvements. OpenID has emerged as a standard way to assert identity, and oAuth a secure way to share personal data from one website to another. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect have emerged as identity hubs to enable users to share basic information.

Despite these breakthroughs, the problems remain. In fact, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect raise the spectre of monolithic corporate control over people’s identities.

Instead, I think much of identity should belong in the browser itself. After all, the technical term for a browser is “user agent”. It knows exactly which websites you are logging on to, and how. It should be able to negotiate account details and passwords on the user’s behalf.

Here are some of the aspects of identity I think browsers should handle:

• Log on to websites automatically for you, managing passwords and automatically changing them regularly
• Managing basic account data e.g. name, address, bank details, etc, and which websites have access to it
• Presence & syndicating it to websites chosen by the user
• Incoming notifications & managing who can trigger them

Mozilla have recently begun work on several of these areas. I think that’s a great move; as a non-profit dedicated to improving the web, they have the right attitude and trust. This could go in two directions; either corporate control over people’s identities, or enabling users to get better control themselves over their online identity. I sincerely hope it’s the latter!

Chrome OS and Android

I was surprised when Android was announced, because it didn't seem to fit with Google's principles. Not only was it client software, not cloud software to which Google had previously confined themselves, but it also created a new platform, separate to the web.

Google's search and ads have tied its fortunes to the web, and their management knows it. They dominate their industry so much that the only way to increase their revenues is to get more people using the web all the time. To achieve this, they they need not only to innovate themselves with web apps such as Google Maps or Gmail, but to nurture an ecosystem of Silicon Valley startups to work on web applications rather than on any other platform. They do this using a combination of Google Ads (providing revenues to startups), funding browser developers such as Mozilla, web developer evangelisation (such as spreading the word about Ajax) and careful purchases of the best startups.

Since Android was announced, this focus on the web has increased. Recently Google announced it is putting all its energies behind HTML5, to bring new capabilities to the platform such as video, geolocation and graphics. They have created a new browser, Chrome, and promoted it hugely on the Google homepage.

So why on earth create a new mobile operating system? Now they have to build a new developer ecosystem using the Android Marketplace. These aren't web apps, therefore Google doesn't get the same search or ad revenue. And it takes the focus in Silicon Valley away from the web.

Of course, there were good reasons for Android at the time - fixing the lack of good competition for Apple, persuading the network operators to invest in data networks, and attempting to fix the broken industry structure especially in the US. And Android is increasingly successful. But I still believe that it's the wrong solution for Google to the original problem.

Now Chrome OS is about to be released. It's another client OS, but this time the operating system is simply a web browser. No distractions from the web, no separate platforms, but still a way to shakeup the computing industry in Google's favour.

For once, I think Steve Ballmer was correct about Chrome OS - "It’s incompatible with the one operating system they have shipped. To me, still, I don’t understand why they needed another one. They must have gotten the first one wrong."

Despite it's current success, I think they did get Android wrong. There must be some huge arguments within Google about the correct model, but Chrome OS is the one that fits with the rest of the company. Time only will tell how the two operating systems sit together, but I wouldn't bet on Android surviving for longer than it takes to get Chrome OS powerful enough to drive a phone.

Telephony and the web

In the last few weeks, the web has finally started to encroach on the last holdout communications medium: the telephone. One day soon, most telephone calls will take place via Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, instead of your phone's inbuilt address book.

Internet telephony has already been through one massive hype cycle without great results:

• Skype is only real global success with consumers. Not web-based. Proprietary.
• Back-end infrastructure has been converted to IP, especially for business use and internally in telcos. But from the consumer's perspective it's still a separate network.
• Endless Voice over IP start-ups have now failed. There was clearly a missing ingredient - they focused on back-end technology e.g. SIP, not the consumer side, and they couldn't take advantage of network effects. Also, what advantages did they provide from a consumer perspective except reduced cost?

Most revealing for me is the phrase 'unified communications' in the telephony industry - it's been a mirage because they never unified with the web, surely the most important communications medium of all!

A new wave of innovation has started in Silicon Valley and this time I think they're on the right lines. Recent news includes:

• Native browser support for audio and video, in Safari 4.0, Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 2.0 is coming very soon. This enables browser-based conversations without plugins such as Flash.
• Phweet - integrates phone calls with Twitter
• Mikz - web-based access to your mobile phone call data
• Twilio - web platform for making & receiving calls, suitable for integrating into websites.
• Google Voice - web-based call management tool, due to be integrated with Gmail

You can see where this is going. The web is taking over most other communications mediums (TV, newspapers, letters, email) and telephony is up next. Telcos were never able to deliver the vision of a unified suite, centered on the address book, where customers could communicate with each other. It's now the turn of the web and its social networks.

Browser competition

Of all applications, the browser is now by far the most competitively fought over. Four major organisations are each spending around $50-100 million annually on a free product, with regular upgrades due in the next few months:

• Microsoft: Internet Explorer 8 with a totally re-written browser engine
• Mozilla: Firefox 3.1 with fast performance and new functionality like native audio and video, plus the release of Firefox for Mobile.
• Apple: Safari 4 with new standards support such as a native database and fast performance
• Google: Chrome 2.0 with a streamlined interface and fast performance

Somehow the browser market has avoided the featuritis that burdened office applications with endless menu options. In fact, browsers have got much simpler; three of the those above don't even have menus. Instead the focus has been on turning the browser into a great platform for developers: javascript performance may soon approach Java in speed, and support for new developer features such as advanced CSS styling and APIs such as geo-location enable new applications.

Most of the browsers above are open source - the only exceptions are Internet Explorer and the user interface of Safari. Browser vendors have cooperated over the HTML5 and CSS3 standards. They also have common test suites and performance tests such as SunSpider. But they haven't cooperated as much as they could.

For example, Firefox and Safari have produced competing web developer tools (starting with Firebug for Firefox, and Web Inspector for Safari). They are writing competing javascript engines and debuggers.

Perhaps a bit more cooperation would help them both move forward faster. Why not agree on a standard tool for developer help (perhaps based on Mozilla's documentation), or a standard text editor (based on Mozilla's Bespin)? Perhaps Google could take the lead with process separation, and Apple with profiling tools. None of this would prevent further competition in the main browser engine, but it would ensure rapid progression for everyone.

Mozilla's web developer tools

Mozilla are best known for their browser Firefox but they're creating a steady stream of great web development tools, the latest of which was unveiled last week. Bespin is a new web-based extensible code editor with integrated command line. Although it's a very early version and lots of kinks remain (including too much inaccessible HTML5 Canvas usage), the team have already accomplished one of their first objectives, which is to prove how capable browsers now are. Could web development tools one day provide the second 'arm' of Mozilla?

Other development tools managed by Mozilla include:

• Firebug, for inspecting and editing CSS, javascript and HTML
• Bugzilla, for release planning and maintaining issues lists
• Mozilla Developer Center, for documenting web standards such as HTML and the DOM
• jQuery, a javascript library for cross-browser web development

Tools for web development fit naturally into Mozilla's goals for extending the reach of the open web. In fact it seems strange that Mozilla don't have more competition in this area - there is a surprising lack of offerings from Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and even Google, especially considering how tools can be used to bind developers towards vendors.

I hope that Mozilla's plans for Bespin are ambitious, because I see it as the centrepiece for all their development tools. Imagine if you while editing your code you could click once to find help in Mozilla Developer Center, again to visualise the results via Firebug, another time to track your bugs in Bugzilla and finally to resolve DOM issues using jQuery. In this way, Bespin can integrate all Mozilla's tools together.

I would also add additional tools to the slate, all of which should integrate back with Bespin. For example:

• Version Control System (e.g. hg, git) integration - create a fork or merge at the click of a hyperlink
• Validation / Best Practices - automatically check all your code against standards or best practices such as jslint
• Web design - online tool for visualising and editing site design
• Security - automatic checks for common flaws such as XSS

Such a suite would constitute a second 'arm' of Mozilla. It would perhaps also provide a second source of funding for the organisation, with the support of web companies that use the tools. It could certainly improve the productivity of hundreds of thousands of web developers, while spreading standards and best practices. It's a very ambitious goal, but Mozilla has already proven capable of delivering great tools like jQuery and Firebug that now dominate their markets.

I believe it's time for Mozilla to take a step up and treat development tools as a priority alongside Firefox itself.

Dell and smartphones

The latest rumours indicate that Dell are about to introduce a line of smartphones. Despite the incredible competition in this area, Dell's move makes great sense.

That's because of the convergence of computing to common standards. Smartphones are now mini computers, capable of running the same platform as desktops. Vendors should gain economies of scale by copying Apple, who use Mac OS across its product portfolio, from the iPhone to the iMac.

Dell has two choices for platform. It could choose the one it's worked on for the last twenty years - Windows. Or, as rumoured, it could choose Android.

If Dell chooses Android, this would be a reflection of Microsoft's weakness in the mobile space. But it could also be a harbinger of more to come; why couldn't Dell also use Android for netbooks, even eventually PCs?

I've already predicted further consolidation between the smartphone manufacturers and laptop manufacturers. Now the industries are converging, there are far too many companies around. Dell will struggle to achieve smartphone market share on its own before the market consolidates around it. If Dell is serious about becoming a major provider of smartphones, it should acquire to gain scale and expertise.

Firefox 3.2

Well, I know that Firefox 3.1 is still a month or two from shipping, but I've already got a wishlist for the next version.

Since last summer, Mozilla has been on a hiring spree and momentum has really picked up. So I've been ambitious and included some big improvements.

Firstly, user interface enhancements:

• Speed dial for the new tab page.
• Cleaning up history and bookmarks. There's the history sidebar, the bookmarks sidebar, the history menu, the bookmarks menu, the bookmarks toolbar, and places. And none of it integrates with Delicious or Digg.
• Get rid of the "file / edit / view ..." menu. Chrome did it, IE7 did it, surely Firefox can do it too.

Second, additional standards support:

• Support for OS-provided codecs in HTML5 video and audio (e.g. Quicktime, DirectShow) A great way to bring video closer to the web.
• HTML5 client database support. Another great tool for web application developers.
• Browser access to webcams and microphones. Extending the web to sensors.
• CSS transitions and animations.
• SVG Fonts, plus SVG via img tags and CSS
• Further support for the developing ECMAscript 3.1 standard, a.k.a. Javascript Harmony.

Finally, improvements to the browser:

• DOM & regexp speed improvements. Further extending the new-found speed of javascript.
• Native support for Weave, allowing us to share our history and preferences between computers and trusted websites.
• Native support for OpenID. What a great way to improve and simplify everyone's online lives.
• Process separation between tabs. Chrome and IE have reaped the benefits, including speed and security.

I told you it was ambitious!

Announcing about:history

Recently I've become convinced that desktop browser interfaces are too complex. Menus, options, tabs and sidebars are a legacy of browser wars, with each side adding many new features; it's also a reminder of how recently we've really started to understand the web. Now, with smartphones with tiny screens and fiddly keyboards finally gaining proper internet access, simplicity is even more important.

So I've developed a Firefox extension to remedy the situation - about:history (download).

It's the first of a series of extensions to fit a new set of principles I've come to believe in:

• Shrink the chrome

  The browser chrome - the menus, options, address bar and buttons around the actual content - should be as small as possible. After all, what users really want to see is their webpage.

• The browser as a website

  People are used to navigating websites. Clunky browser dialog boxes, sidebars and menus just don't work in the same way. We should replace all of them with webpages. For example, there shouldn't be a history sidebar - instead, there should be a history webpage that opens in a new tab, with a URI, built from HTML, CSS and javascript, and following normal web interfaces like Google search. In this view, the browser chrome is a website.

So, about:history replaces the current history sidebar in Firefox with a browser tab that works similar to a web search engine:

It's actually quite similar to Google Chrome's history page, with a few important differences. Most notably, it's got a URI (about:history). If the web has taught us anything, it should be the power of the URI. Also, of course, it enables you to selectively delete pages from your browser history.

There's an advanced search option too - see the screenshot:

All you need to do to open up this page is click on the history link on the bookmarks bar, or press Ctrl-H. Of course, since there is a URI, other sites can also link back to it.

Personally I think this interface is much better. It doesn't introduce any new visual features like the sidebar - instead, it works just like a normal page. It follows normal visual metaphors like web search pages. It's linkable, clickable, you can put it in your favourites or view the source or screenscrape it. And it doesn't require any space in the chrome!

Let me know what you think. If all goes well, I'm going to apply the same principles to other parts of the browser, all in the aim of reducing clutter.

Unexpected convergence: smartphones and TVs

CES this year was fascinating. The Palm Pre is the perfect example of where I see consumer devices heading. The whole phone is basically a browser; it's built using web standards (HTML, CSS and javascript) from top to bottom. As Tim Bray states, "Speaking personally, as a person who'd never thought I needed the Internet in my pocket, I find myself using my G1 to approve comments and check the weather and fetch maps and so on all the time." To create the Pre, Palm (like Apple and Google), has focused on creating a browser for small screens. They've had to get rid of all the menus, options and buttons that desktop browsers are infested with, while also removing much of the need for fiddly keyboard entry.

Which brings me to the following quote last week from the CEO of Netflix, commenting on new internet-enabled TVs: "Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. One view is that the Web, a browser like Firefox, Chrome or I.E., will be right on the television in the next couple years. Another view is, no, a PC-based Web is just too complex. The second one is the phase that we're in now."

I agree that the PC-based browser is just too complex to use while standing metres away with a remote control. But the smartphone-based browser might work perfectly on your TV!

After all, stripping out the menus, options, buttons and keyboard navigation is the first step to getting a working browser on the TV, too. And though you can't touch your TV from the sofa, you can imagine using a control like the Wii to navigate a pointer round the screen in much the same way. Download the Wii Opera browser to see what I mean. Or just imagine the Palm Pre interface on your TV!

It seems odd that smartphones and 50" TVs could share the same interface. But that's the lesson of this year's CES for me.

Mozilla futures

A great quote recently from Tristan Nitot, head of Mozilla Europe:

For years, the Mozilla goal was simple:

promote choice and innovation on the Internet

and the biggest lever we had to achieve this was Firefox. In 2003, there was a monopoly (which leads to lack of choice) and total lack of innovation (why would Microsoft invest in something that did not generate revenue and could threaten its business?). Making a modern, safer, easier to use, cross-platform and extensible browser made sense.

Fast forward 5 years or so. We're in a totally different place. The browser market is in much better shape than before. 2009 seems very promising with Safari 4, Chrome 1.0, IE8 and Firefox 3.1. There is absolutely no doubt that keeping on improving Firefox is the right thing to do, but in this new era, the old Mozilla goal sounds less relevant.

Tristan is right. Against all odds, Firefox has achieved their initial goal. Congratulations!

So, what's next for Mozilla and Firefox? Well, I believe they have to extend the web itself:

• Mobile: Create a full-power browser for mobile phones, even better than Apple's iPhone browser
• Sensors: Enable the browser to allow websites control over device hardware such as cameras, microphones, accelerometers, etc.
• Graphics: Enhance the browser to give it native control over video, vector graphics, plus 2D and 3D rendering.
• Security: Work to eliminate security issues from the web
• Performance: Make javascript as fast as C. Use hardware acceleration to speed up graphics until canvas is fast enough to enable modern video games. Take advantage of multi-core machines.
• Process: Mozilla has proved that a radically open development model works. All their development software, bugs, internal issues, team meeting notes and working designs are on the web for everyone to see and discuss publicly. That includes working very closely with standards bodies so the web doesn't dissolve into rival models. Their challenge is to ensure this approach beats the closed proprietary model. That means they need more market share!

Perhaps the last point is the most important ... Mozilla have set an example to us all by building a huge community for good around the world. Their task will be to expand it further and use it to influence the development of the web.

Nokia

Nokia is at a turning point. Long the dominant supplier of mobile phones worldwide, it faces new deep-pocketed competitors in Google & Apple, plus structural changes in the industry. Nokia is losing market share and needs a clear strategy.

The mobile phone industry has matured rapidly. Until very recently, companies competed by offering features - a better camera phone, more storage for music, a more colourful screen. The big manufacturers created vast portfolios of phones tailored to different market segments and geographies - camera phones, music phones, children's phones, smartphones, and economy phones.

Smartphones have now converged on a standard set of these features. The next battlefield is the software platform that ties it all together. Apple and Google have turned their phones into general purpose digital devices - in other words, personal computers. They are competing by attracting third party application developers to take advantage of the computing power in their phones. The Apple store, for example, is one of the key selling points behind the iPhone, with more than 5,000 applications already created.

To attract this kind of ecosystem, you need to develop a strong platform. Apple have done this by porting Mac OS to the phone. Google have developed Android. Various other vendors have combined forces to develop LiMo, using Linux. Unfortunately for Nokia, their operating system Symbian is not popular and needs significant investment. Nokia have taken control and will open source the OS. But by the time it's complete, it may be too late.

Nokia have pushed into software and services. "Comes with Music" is an innovative attempt to establish a new business model for digital music, but it's losing money. The purchase of Navteq enabled Nokia to move into location-based services. Neither has yet attracted much interest by the consumer. This is an uphill battle.

A new approach

Nokia is still a profitable company, and it still has marketshare dominance. It just needs to follow the principles below:

Device Convergence

Now the platform is all-important, simplify the device portfolio. Nokia should be offering no more then 3-5 phones in each country, each based off the same platform. After all, Apple have only got one phone, but they're still the second biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world!

Also, now phones are becoming general purpose computers, why not merge with a PC company such as Acer or Dell? The platform should work across all shapes and sizes, perhaps extending upwards from mobile through the Netbook format.

The web is your platform

Fighting against Windows, Mac OS and Linux is a fool's game. Instead, Nokia should align themselves to the biggest platform of all ... the web. Nokia should become a platinum sponsor of Firefox, who are writing an amazing-looking mobile browser, and make it the whole front end to their phones. Creating code for a Nokia phone would then be easy - any web designer could do it.

Nokia could create Firefox extensions to give the browser power over local features such as the microphone, camera and accelerometer. Nokia would instantly have the biggest group of developers and the most third-party innovation of any mobile platform, and they would have the future on their side.

Partner with Silicon Valley

The hotbed of software innovation is Silicon Valley. Writing applications is a totally different business to selling hardware, and Nokia is going to struggle with its services strategy. Nokia should partner, not compete, with Silicon Valley. Why create your own email application if you can just recommend GMail? Why create your own photo application if you can just recommend Flickr? Why not partner with Facebook and Twitter to provide the next level of communications?

Remember, the web is your platform, not the operating system. So please, no more do-it-yourself services after music and maps.

Each of these principles could be easily achieved in a year or so. But they would establish Nokia on the right side of the changes taking place in the mobile industry.

Web sensors

One of the big topics nowadays in client computing is sensors - from touch screens to GPS devices, webcams, microphones, proximity sensors, accelerometers, temperature sensors, etc. Now they are coming to the browser, which could radically change the web.

Sensors provide information about the environment around the computer, and can make the user experience more natural (e.g. "pinching" a touch screen) or open up new features such as GPS navigation.

Recently Microsoft, Google and of course Apple have improved their core support for sensors.

But consider the progress made recently by browsers:

• Apple create a multi-touch browser. Touch events can be handled by Safari automatically or handled by the web developer. Firefox is not far behind.
• A new W3C standard for geolocation with initial support by Apple Safari, Google Gears and Mozilla Firefox.
• Firefox and Google start work on camera and microphone support inside the browser.

Even without an overarching sensor framework, support for geolocation, audio and video should have an incredible effect on the web:

• Accessibility: dictate your search to Google, via a microphone
• Games: Play human pacman by watching on a map where your friends are in the city
• Communication: Make phone calls using your browser
• Market share: yet more reasons to use the web stack, rather than a client stack
• Security: We'll need strong security to prevent people from hacking in to your microphone

Web services

Tim O'Reilly has written another great essay explaining the three types of cloud computing: Utility Computing, Platform as a Service, and cloud-based end-user applications.

For now let's focus on just one consequence: "Web Services" finally get real. Let's go through the various services that are already emerging. Remember, these are not only services for consumers, but also a platform for developers.

Most obviously, identity. This includes authorisation, authentication, presence, and basic user data e.g. email address. OpenID and OAuth are the emerging standards in this space, with support already from Google, MySpace, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

Secondly, social networking basics : Friends & the Activity Stream. OpenSocial is the emerging standard here.

Third, basic content: Images, Videos, Audio, Blogs. The emerging standard here is Atom. However services will likely get enhancements; for example, the ability to manipulate the underlying files e.g. removing red-eye on photos or enhancing audio treble.

Fourth, various additional services:

• Location-based services e.g. Maps / GPS
• Time-based services e.g. calendars / tasklists / clocks
• Messaging (email, instant messaging, phone)
• Financial services (payments, credit checking, etc)

Finally, professional content:

• News
• Sport
• Financial

All of these services already exist on the web, but they are in silos and can't easily be accessed by developers. Finally now, web application providers are rushing to become platforms for developers, opening up their data using standard patterns like REST and OAuth.

For example, Paypal could offer to track your payments in Google Calendar. Or you could ask the BBC to enter any news items within 20 miles of your house into your Myspace Activity stream. Or you could put your phonecall history there. Or your project management system at work could put events into your personal calendar or task list.

From the consumer perspective, the web will become a lot more connected and personalised. From the developer perspective, there will be a huge number of web services making user data available securely (photos, videos, friend list). Writing a web application will involve plugging in to these standard services. Finally, the vision of web services will become real.