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Have you ever paid attention to how you do your work? Whether you build Web sites for a living like we do here, or you have another sort of information-based occupation, chances are you're spending more and more of your time online in one way or another. It may be a quick hit to a search engine for that tidbit of information, a leisurely browse through the morning's news, or even a collaborative session with other co-workers on that quarterly report. Regardless, many of us spend our days up to our elbows in networked environments.
I've been studying my work habits lately - evaluating how I go about doing the things I need to do with my computer and noticing in particular how my browser plays a role in all of this. The truth is, almost all my time is devoted to a Web browser or email. And to be perfectly honest, I'd rather have them built directly into my operating system.
Microsoft has done this, of course, by integrating Internet Explorer 4.0 within Windows 95. The integration will go even deeper in Windows 98, and beyond that the lines get even fuzzier - rumor has it that a version of Microsoft Office in the near future will use XML as its native file format. Microsoft will take no small amount of criticism for this move, with anti-competitive arguments coming from as high up as the US Justice Department.
I won't argue the point here - there are plenty of other venues for that. However, integrating a browser into the very fabric of our day-to-day tasks is a good thing. The desktop metaphor we've been using with our computers for a decade or more is buckling fast under the load of 6-GB hard drives filled with thousands of files, and corporate networks filled with tens of thousands more. Some people, including Feed magazine's Steven Johnson, have suggested that a contextual, subject-based system of navigating large collections of data is a more realistic platform on which to build future interfaces. Just like the ones we use on the Web.
The question I'm left with, then, is why Internet Explorer? While it certainly excels at what it does, I may very well prefer another browser or even be required to use another by my MIS department. Shouldn't I have the choice of integrating any browser into my operating system? Couldn't Microsoft effectively dodge these monopolistic arguments by offering an open architecture in Windows 95 for HTML rendering and parsing, just like they offer for Postscript (your printer drivers) or digital video (QuickTime, AVI, or MPEG)?
The Microsoft marketing engine seems truly interested in competing on the virtues of the best browser. If that is, in fact, the case, then an open operating system offering a Web browser API is required. The choice truly will then be in the hands of us, the users. And that's exactly where it belongs.
This article appeared originally in HotWired.
