A former colleague of mine recently showed me a YouTube video which had been posted by Google. They posed the question "What is a browser?" to the general public in New York...
The results are very interesting - most of the respondants do not differentiate between the browser they use, and the applications they browse, with the majority of people having very little idea of the difference. A lot of people actually confused the Google search engine with the browser itself...
I'm sure others will have differing opinions, and I'm not sure this way the point exactly, but to me it says the browser needs to just get out of the way... As far as I'm concerned (and the people in the above video as well...), it's the applications and content ON the internet that I'm interested in - the browser is nothing more than a window into those applications. Loading it up with features, buttons and toolbars doesn't help me, it just gets in the way.
To be honest, I'm not surprised people don't really know what a browser is, because when it comes down to it, why the heck should I care? As long as it shows me the stuff I want, what's the difference?
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I agree, browsers are just a gateway to where you want to go end of story.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should come up with a blank browser with the option to add features as you need or want them. Firefox sort of acheived that but it still have far too many things that you just don't need.
One has to wonder if all of these features are blocking us from achieving what we are on the internet in the first place and that is to explore its content. Darnoc