Andrei,

On the subject of the history of browsing web content and Blake Ross's post about web browser innovation--asking readers to comment on features that would take Firefox to a place that people couldn't have imagined--I wanted to get your take on web content, the client and what the future holds.

It's easy to look back and see the evolution, but what about looking forward? Where are we going?

One trend is that people working on web applications are becoming more cognizant of the client presence, a simple example being the various toolbar applications offered by Google, Yahoo! and others that you can add to the web browser. Then there's the iTunes store, which offers HTML content integrated with client controls. This creates a blurring of the distinction between music in your library and music that you, well, don't own, but Apple would like you to buy. The same Play button will work on both. If you own the song you hear the whole thing, and if you don't you just hear a 30 second clip. There are some sacrifices that need to be made in order for this to happen. One simple example is that if the store was in a web browser you wouldn't need to download and install iTunes just to take a look. But it would be hard to argue that Apple has made a mistake here from either a business or a design perspective.

Another trend is that people working on client applications are becoming more cognizant of the web enabled portion. Microsoft calls this "smart client applications" and has been touting it as the future of application design. Their technology like XAML + Avalon and Indigo are a key part of the strategy to make sure that Windows is the preferred platform for developing these applications. They have a demo of an Amazon web-enabled client application that uses the Longhorn capabilities to render a 3D interface for browsing products in the online catalog. It's hard to know exactly where Longhorn stands at this points with respect to the final feature set and capabilities, but Microsoft is making a big bet here.

An interesting variant here is the design of the Windows Media Player, which can link to the Microsoft Music Store and display it within the client, but the Music Store can also be accessed from a web browser. There is more flexibility here as a result, but less control over specifics. Another variant is Google Desktop Search which lives only within a web browser even though it is essentially a client application.

As with any other question about the right model for a product, it seems that the old rules will still apply: distillation; showing people what matters and no more; breaking away from a metaphor (back/forward), if it doesn't make sense; rethinking previously held assumptions based on metaphors that may no longer work as well as they used to.

That said, as a conclusion this seems a bit underwhelming and trite. If I were Blake Ross or a product designer at Google this conclusion is too ambiguous to be of much help.

Johnnie