Monday Afternoon Session

Back! Very spotty connectivity here this afternoon, but here's some notes while I'm able to log-in. Ironic, too, as yesterday I was just thinking how cool it was that Adobe was sponsoring the free wi/fi, and all day yesterday it worked without a hitch. I guess it makes sense as the conference hit critical mass today (i.e., this place is awash with geeks and laptops).

Session Details

The Arrival of Web 2.0: The State of the Union on Browser Technology

Rael Dornfest, Founder and CEO, Values of n, Inc.
Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Mozilla, Mozilla Foundation
Charles McCathieNevile, Chief Standards Officer, Opera software
Chris Wetherell, Google, Inc.
Chris Wilson, Microsoft Corporation

Track: Design and User Experience
Date: Monday, April 16
Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 2003

The rise of modern, standards-based browsers like Firefox and Safari helped Web 2.0 achieve liftoff in 2004. Now that IE7 has joined the party, we've seen the emergence of a fairly stable assortment of capable browsers that can actually keep up with the state of the Web. So where are we with browsers? What new techniques can designers use with confidence? How will open standards evolve from here?

Jon's Quick Notes

- Question posed: What was the Tipping Point to Web 2.0?
- Moores Law
- Stagnation in desktop software
- Growth and availablity of content, services, natural progression to mash-ups
- Simply by giving it a name for people to rally around: JJG coining “Ajax”
- Proliferation of open source (reaction to stagnating desktop?)
- Firefox!
- Google showed the way?
- Simple: as older browsers disappeared, more capability/simple numbers
- Quesion posed: Loss of learning/no view source?
- Bar certainly raised (pics of me my mum and cat to applications/mash ups)
- Web built on vew source/copy/paste – achieved a measure of success
- APIs don’t offer undersanding of underpinnings
- Response to flash?
- No more browser wars/ w3c – no interest in proprietary advantage
- “Reboot computer replaced by Restart your browser”

All in all, a lively and entertaining discussion with some solid panelists.