It was difficult to even find a corner to squeeze into because there was standing-room only for the panel. Panelists came from Firefox, Microsoft, and Opera. Apple was a no-show. One of the panelists actually invented javascript.
Creating a great user experience is the key to the browser wars.
Opera has nothing that’s proprietary. IE has Silverlight and Firefox has Firefox extensions.
Opera-no iphone browser yet. Web standards that are open are needed to open up development on mobile and other devices.
Silverlight-C Sharp-cross-platform. Microsoft doesn’t want Javascript to expand, they want C sharp to take off.
Javascript 2.0 is on the way.
Opera puts browsers on all kinds of phones. Opera does get distribution deals, and its being shipped on products. The mobile space should be part of the browsing experience. Opera won’t be releasing a browser for the iphone. Windows mobiles is actually a more open platform.
The move is towards a complete web and not a mobile web and a regular web. In China and India people can’t really afford the desktop web experience; they have to have something cheap and mobile. Of course, their are huge amounts of potential growth in these markets
Firefox is going to mobile devices.
HTML 5 is the next generation.
There was a lot of good natured teasing among the different browser representatives which was good to see. The audience roared with laughter several times when the panelists picked on one another pointing out flaws in each browser.
Cooper Cherry
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This one sounds like it would have been fun to watch. I’m actually a bit disappointed in the Apple (non) presence this year at SXSW. I went to a panel yesterday with an Apple representative that was almost boring.
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I’m sorry I missed it too. I was just reading a blog about how few people in India really have internet access as it is generally too expensive for people to own. Creating a cheaper browser that could even be put in cell-phones, which is the major corner of the market in India according to the article, could potentially help raise the number of internet users there.