Firefox 3.1 & Google Chrome: Javascript Wins, Flash/Silverlight Lose
Sridhar September 2, 2008 11: 32 am
We work closely with Google Gears and other open source teams in Google. On multiple occasions, I have joked with them “Web apps like us need a really good Javascript engine, I hope you guys are working on it”. Well, now I know they had been working on it :)
Being heavily invested in web standards and Javascript, we love the recent announcement of a new JIT based Javascript VM in Firefox 3.1, and today’s news of Google Chrome. These developments are a huge win for the entire ecosystem of web application developers. But the impact of this goes beyond the browser, as important as the browser itself has become.
The biggest losers in Google’s announcement are not really competing browsers, but competing rich client engines like Flash and Silverlight. As Javascript advances rapidly, it inevitably encroaches on the territory currently held by Flash. Native browser video is likely the last nail in the coffin - and Google needs native browser based video for its own YouTube, so we can be confident Google Chrome and Firefox will both have native video support, with Javascript-accessible VOM (video object model) APIs for web applications to manipuate video. As for Silverlight, let me just say that if Silverlight is the future of web computing, companies like us might as well find another line of work - and I suspect Google and Yahoo probably see it the same way too.
More speculatively, I believe we will witness the emergence of Javascript as the dominant language of computing, as it sweeps the client side and starts encroaching on the server. The server landscape today is split between “enterprise” platforms like Java and .NET on the one side (we ourselves are in the Java camp on the server side), and “scripting” languages like PHP, Python, Ruby on the other, with Javascript firmly entrenched on the client. Languages like Ruby promise tremendous dynamism and flexibility to the developer, but their relatively weak execution environments have held them back. It is telling that both Java and .NET come with state of the art just-in-time compilers, while none of the major scripting languages do.
With Firefox & Google Chrome announcments, and the recent developments on WebKit (which power Safari), now there are 3 compelling VMs for Javascript. These VMs promise a 10-fold speed up in Javascript execution. Combined with the rapid evolution of Javascript libraries, I believe the time has come for Javascript to start encroaching on the server landscape.
Popularity: 14% [?]
“We are so, so happy with Google Chrome,” mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. “That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement.” - http://notnews.today.com/?p=57
Nice input on client relevance but I’m guessing you have never done any coding since you think a loosely typed scripting language like JS has some relevance on the server side. As JS involves so does it’s abilities and maybe it’s relevance in other areas but these next-gen VMs have managed to make up for the main shortcomings of JS on the client.
I think you’re misreading this.
Many browser makers are rushing to announce fast JIT script engines. Together, all these make less than 20% of the browsers out there.
Microsoft is not announcing a fast script engine. They make the vast majority of browser engines.
Meanwhile, Adobe Flash Player 9 already includes fast scripting, and is installed on over 95% of the computers out there. Today. Regardless of browser brand.
A more realistic take: In order to maintain the illusion of browser-supremacy, most browser makers are scrambling to announce improvements to their scripting engines, but the only browser vendor which matters has not.
Charles Mackay offered a good perspective on the social aspects, back in 1841:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24518
jd/adobe
Stefan,
Loosely typed, dynamic features are the reason Ruby & Python are becoming popular on the server side. So I stand by my prediction: Javascript is going to the server!
John,
What is your argument? That Microsoft’s crippled browser is the reason Flash would win? That is an awfully weak foundation on which to erect a strategy for Adobe - let’s not forget the minor fact that the very same crippled browser vendor is also intent on force-feeding Silverlight to the world. Good luck with AIR - you are going to need it.
Sridhar
quote:
“What is your argument? That Microsoft’s crippled browser is the reason Flash would win?”
umm most of the ppl are not interested in what browser they are using so aslong as windows retains popularity IE will too.
80% of the ppl dont care about what browser theyre using.
Sridhar,
I am very happy to see Chromium and Google Chrome out in the open, so we can talk more about it now and get you as part of the community
Cheers,
Dion Almaer
Open Web Advocate, Google
As someone who has spent the last two years exclusively developing client-side JavaScript for a rich internet application, all I can say is I sincerely hope that client-side JavaScript is NOT the future of web development. Developing an application with JS takes at least 3 times longer than developing a roughly equivalent desktop app and it will almost certainly be inferior in terms of both stability and usability. It’s not just the fact that the language is loosely typed and has nothing resembling a compiler to catch simple mistakes, it’s also that you’re basically developing for 5 different operating systems if you want to support the major browsers (IE6, IE7, FF/Gecko, Safari, and Opera). It’s like the old Java applet days of “write once, debug everywhere” and boy does that debugging take some time. Even using a rich widget library like EXT or YUI to level the playing field a bit, if you’ve developed any type of reasonably complex interface, you will inevitably run into tons of nitpicky little cross browser rendering issues (and it’s not just IE). Hell, even getting things to render properly inside of a single browser can be a time suck. Recently I started playing with Flex and I literally put together an interface prototype of the application that has taken us 6 months to build in under 8 hours. And that was with maybe 16 hours of training time on Flex. There is no conceivable way that I EVER could have built that interface with EXT or YUI in 8 hours. I doubt I could accomplish the same feat in two weeks with EXT or YUI. Sorry, but I just don’t buy that pure JavaScript is the future of web development - barring some massive (and I do mean massive) improvements in cross-browser standardization, DOM performance, and some type of JS compiler to at least catch simple errors like fat-fingering a function name, we would be taking a massive step backwards in terms of developer productivity and the cost to product software.
Dion,
We are already testing Zoho apps on Chrome. Definitely very impressed with the speed, and only minor glitches. This is a huge win for the web developer ecosystem!
Now, I hope you guys are working on in-browser, Javascriptable video
Sridhar
I completely agree with Mike - building in Flash (or Flex) is a delight in terms of productivity vs. JavaScript. We’ve built 100% Flash websites (including our own above), and not only do we have enormous control on the appearance and behavior of the app, but we’ve also never had any real cross browser/OS issues. The only reason we continue to test cross browser/OS is because of the problems we get even with the little JS we have.
Sridhar is right though that this is a big step forward for JS (Chrome is blazingly fast), but I just don’t see JS UI as a ready substitute for Flash.
John Dowdell wrote: “A more realistic take: In order to maintain the illusion of browser-supremacy, most browser makers are scrambling to announce improvements to their scripting engines, but the only browser vendor which matters has not.”
The only browser vendor which matters to whom? Isn’t this a ZOHO blog? To ZOHO users? I don’t think so.
I agree: Google doesn’t really care about winning the “browser wars”. They care about making the web a platform, and Chrome is a forcing function for other browsers to invest in that - you can bet MS will beef up their js interpreter once more and more js webapps start running slower on IE.
However, js still has a long way to go before it becomes a client platform of choice. Compilation for starters - I wouldn’t be willing to invest a large portion of my IP in javascript that can be easily copied. .NET / Silveright still have an (if only perceived) edge there. Library support is still clearly in its infancy (despite great efforts like prototype). A dominant app sandbox like Gears still needs to emerge.
That said, my money is on js / ajax. It’s a matter of time.
[...] Firefox 3.1 %26 Google Chrome: Javascript Wins, Flash/Silverlight Lose We work closely with Google Gears and other open source teams in Google. On multiple occasions, I have joked with them “Web apps like us need a really good Javascript engine, I hope you guys are working on it”. … [...]
Just try http://research.sun.com/projects/lively/ in Chrome
vs. Firefox.
[...] browser then coupled with Google's Gears, a collection of web widgets, clearly puts in competition with Adobe's Air and Microsoft's Silverlight. As JavaScript engines become faster and if a standard HTML video element was adopted, the future [...]
i’m willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox… if it’s faster than Firefox and isn’t IE, then i’ll use it
There is no doubt chrome is superior vis-a-vis firefox for javascript applications. It should get interesting when Firefox 3.1 comes out in a couple of months with its beefed up Javascript VM.
How is Chrome going to get installed on millions of computers? E.G. your mother’s computer?
Maybe if Google starts making a lot of computers or providing the standard operating system for them.
Maybe if Google comes out with such a “killer” Chrome-based app that everybody needs to get it.
I think Adobe’s own Buzzword is already much better than whatever Javascript-based word processor out there. Now imagine someone implements the whole Office suite in SilverLight after it ships. It’s going to blow everyone else away.
But then again what else remarks do you expect from Zoho folks who build their business on HTML/JAVASCRIPT. It would surprise me if it doesn’t dis Flash/SilverLight/JavaFX from time to time.
[...] Vembu, directeur van ZoHo, schetst de volgens hem nieuwe marktverhoudingen: “(…) The biggest losers in Google’s [...]
[...] má notícia para a Adobe. JavaScript ganha, Flash/Silverlight perdem. A Liberdade de Expressão é uma dádiva que aflora na web. Também por isto aqui estou eu para [...]
Limited Life Experiences + Overgeneralization - Paul Buchheit
http://bubblemark.com/silverlight2.html and http://bubblemark.com/dhtml.htm. Run them both at 16 balls. Good luck google, you still have a lot of work to do
[...] http://blogs.zoho.com/uncategorized/firefox-31-google-chrome-javascript-wins-flashsilverlight-lose/ [...]
hi…
usefull…