5 ms·

>Gates correctly recognized that browsers were the last app we’d learn how to use, that so much of the software to come would be browser-based SaaS. Is it real

by krige 5y ago

>Gates correctly recognized that browsers were the last app we’d learn how to use, that so much of the software to come would be browser-based SaaS. Is it really the correct context for Gates' statement of "You just learn one thing, and that’s the browser"? I really don't think browser-run software was a thing for long while yet. I thought he meant the initial internet hype as the source of -information-.

qwerty456127 5y ago
Whatever, browser-based apps still are apps, not necessarily easier than native apps. A browser essentially is a launcher with its own UI toolkit and discovery mechanism. Open GMail, Google Docs or whatever, hide the address bar and you essentially get an ordinary app you still have to learn.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  There are significantly more constraints within the browser than inside a general os environment, though. It's becoming less of a difference, but there are important contexts and operations lost by browser apps.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  An ordinary app with half the integration, third of features, twice the bugs and few supported formats.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    Sure, but this is irrelevant to the context. Mr. Gates said the browser is the last app to learn. Saying it's the last operating system would make much more sense. Apps are still there and not going away.
cztomsik 5y ago
Given how much MS was into developers I would say this was more about learning just one set of APIs.
kalleboo 5y ago
Windows 98 was when they turned the whole file explorer into some kind of pseudo webview integrated with IE. This was also when they were terrified of Java web applets making Windows as a platform obsolete so they were busy embrace and extending that (and pushing ActiveX in order to turn the web Windows proprietary). So I think it very much sounds like the correct context.
- thrashh 5y ago
  When we were in high school we played around with IE5 web applications made with .hta files that were basically Electron apps 15 years before Electron. And we used to screw with replacing the HTML of folders on shared drives in middle school with secret games and other stuff (the actual folder listing was some ActiveX you dropped into the page), until some folder war broke out and the sysadmins banned it.
- mst 5y ago
  Ah, yes, active desktop, crashy little bastard that it was. When I was doing desktop support for 9x I got very good at enumerating the things active desktop theoretically did, checking users weren't using any of them, and turning the flipping thing off. This was infinitely less painful for everybody than trying to coax it into actually working. (and before you say "but the users would just turn it back on again" ... yes, and then I'd turn it back off while explaining I'd warned them about that just loudly enough that the next time they turned it back on their colleagues would laugh at them before they got as far as contacting me and the problem then became self-solving)
Angostura 5y ago
Certainly back around 1996 when Frames became a thing on web pages, and Javascipt and Jaava were on the rise people in Microsoft were genuinely concerned that the broswer would eat the OS
- vetinari 5y ago
  Considering, that the objective was to reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers (as said by Marc Andreessen), their concern was justified.
bitwize 5y ago
Netscape was talking about making the browser the user's primary app platform even before Windows 98 came out. The irony was, their play in doing so was to make the Windows monopoly irrelevant. Same thing with Sun and Java. The glorious future was one in which applications were delivered to you from "the net" and ran without regard to CPU or OS platform, thus making Microsoft and Windows irrelevant. It was a last-ditch play from the Unix workstation vendors whose lunch was being eaten by Windows NT; Netscape was aboard because it was run by oldschool Unix people.
- tored 5y ago
  Happy that it failed. The critique against Microsoft of the 90s back then was in many ways correct, however I’m not convinced that net delivered applications with Netscape would be an improvement, even if it was executed by old school Unix people. And if we look how the web has evolved it is nothing but a nightmare. Java applets would probably be an even larger attack vector. Not really encouraging that we in the end got the better solution of the "net delivered applications", but here we are.
FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
Outlook Web Access was developed in 1995 and release with Exchange 5 in 1997. The invented XMLHttpRequest to do it and it later became the W3C standard and the cornerstone of AJAX.

by krige 5y ago

qwerty456127 5y ago

Whatever, browser-based apps still are apps, not necessarily easier than native apps. A browser essentially is a launcher with its own UI toolkit and discovery mechanism. Open GMail, Google Docs or whatever, hide the address bar and you essentially get an ordinary app you still have to learn.

robbedpeter 5y ago
There are significantly more constraints within the browser than inside a general os environment, though. It's becoming less of a difference, but there are important contexts and operations lost by browser apps.
AstralStorm 5y ago
An ordinary app with half the integration, third of features, twice the bugs and few supported formats.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  Sure, but this is irrelevant to the context. Mr. Gates said the browser is the last app to learn. Saying it's the last operating system would make much more sense. Apps are still there and not going away.

cztomsik 5y ago

Given how much MS was into developers I would say this was more about learning just one set of APIs.

kalleboo 5y ago

Windows 98 was when they turned the whole file explorer into some kind of pseudo webview integrated with IE. This was also when they were terrified of Java web applets making Windows as a platform obsolete so they were busy embrace and extending that (and pushing ActiveX in order to turn the web Windows proprietary). So I think it very much sounds like the correct context.

thrashh 5y ago
When we were in high school we played around with IE5 web applications made with .hta files that were basically Electron apps 15 years before Electron. And we used to screw with replacing the HTML of folders on shared drives in middle school with secret games and other stuff (the actual folder listing was some ActiveX you dropped into the page), until some folder war broke out and the sysadmins banned it.
mst 5y ago
Ah, yes, active desktop, crashy little bastard that it was. When I was doing desktop support for 9x I got very good at enumerating the things active desktop theoretically did, checking users weren't using any of them, and turning the flipping thing off. This was infinitely less painful for everybody than trying to coax it into actually working. (and before you say "but the users would just turn it back on again" ... yes, and then I'd turn it back off while explaining I'd warned them about that just loudly enough that the next time they turned it back on their colleagues would laugh at them before they got as far as contacting me and the problem then became self-solving)

Angostura 5y ago

Certainly back around 1996 when Frames became a thing on web pages, and Javascipt and Jaava were on the rise people in Microsoft were genuinely concerned that the broswer would eat the OS

vetinari 5y ago
Considering, that the objective was to reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers (as said by Marc Andreessen), their concern was justified.

bitwize 5y ago

Netscape was talking about making the browser the user's primary app platform even before Windows 98 came out. The irony was, their play in doing so was to make the Windows monopoly irrelevant. Same thing with Sun and Java. The glorious future was one in which applications were delivered to you from "the net" and ran without regard to CPU or OS platform, thus making Microsoft and Windows irrelevant. It was a last-ditch play from the Unix workstation vendors whose lunch was being eaten by Windows NT; Netscape was aboard because it was run by oldschool Unix people.

tored 5y ago
Happy that it failed. The critique against Microsoft of the 90s back then was in many ways correct, however I’m not convinced that net delivered applications with Netscape would be an improvement, even if it was executed by old school Unix people. And if we look how the web has evolved it is nothing but a nightmare. Java applets would probably be an even larger attack vector. Not really encouraging that we in the end got the better solution of the "net delivered applications", but here we are.

FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago

Outlook Web Access was developed in 1995 and release with Exchange 5 in 1997. The invented XMLHttpRequest to do it and it later became the W3C standard and the cornerstone of AJAX.