Just before Christmas,
Mozilla designer Alex Faaborg published some introductory posts on his
blog about where Mozilla is headed with microformats. Quick background: Mozilla is of
course the developer of the popular open source browser Firefox; and microformats are (in
Alex's words) "adding semantics to markup to take it from being machine
readable to being machine understandable."
So what use would microformats be in a web browser?
Alex explains that microformats will make the Web Browser into an "Information Broker" and suggests that this could happen in Firefox 3. He writes:
"Much in the same way that operating systems currently associate particular file types with specific applications, future Web browsers are likely going to associate semantically marked up data you encounter on the Web with specific applications, either on your system or online. This means the contact information you see on a Web site will be associated with your favorite contacts application, events will be associated with your favorite calendar application, locations will be associated with your favorite mapping application, phone numbers will be associated with your favorite VOIP application, etc."
(emphasis mine)
This is an excellent vision and fits perfectly into the 'best of breed' web apps world that we advocate on R/WW. Instead of using the entire product suite of a Google or an MSN or a Yahoo, you can instead use the particular apps you like most from not only big players - but small startups too. So say I use the 30Boxes online calendar - Firefox 3 would automagically transfer any (microformatted) events data I come across while browsing, into my 30Boxes account. And it could likewise put all my contacts into Gmail, locations into Yahoo Maps, phone numbers into Skype, etc.
Mitchell Baker from Mozilla calls this "data-browsing" in another post. And Alex has links to more info on Mozilla's microformats project on this page. I particularly enjoyed this discussion of which microformats Firefox 3 might support. Alex noted in that post:
"Detecting information in Web pages and handing that information off to other applications changes the role of the Web browser from being solely a HTML renderer to being an information broker."
As of now, there is a Firefox addon called Operator, a microformat detection extension developed by Michael Kaply at IBM. So the seeds have started to be sowed.
If Mozilla proceeds with this goal for Firefox 3 to be a broker of information, then that will significantly raise the stakes in the browser war again. Microsoft will surely follow and the smaller browsers will innovate around microformats to keep ahead. And it makes perfect sense for the web browser to do brokering, because information is so fluid and 'small pieces loosely joined' these days. There's a best of breed app for every data type - so why not use the best app where possible?
Here's an image from Mozilla illustrating the idea:
What do you think - is this going to change the browser game significantly?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Mozilla Does Microformats: Firefox 3 as Information Broker.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2925
Offenbar planen Firefox-Entwickler sogenannte "Microformate" in Firefox 3.0 einzuführen. Ähnlich wie der Browser bestimmten Dateieindungen bestimmte Anwendungen zuordnet, lassen sich dann in die Webseite eingebettete Informationen - wie Adressen - an... Read More
Richard MacManus reports that Firefox 3 will allow semantic markups that connects your web apps together. This is a great idea, one that seems to merge the web 2.0 paradigm with the semantic web paradigm. However, I can think of ways this could be us... Read More
Alex Faaborg, a User Experience Designer at Mozilla, recently blogged about microformats and their impact on Firefox 3. His thoughts were picked up by Read/WriteWeb and Ajaxian, yielding a good deal of attention. After giving an excellent overview of ... Read More
Mozilla has published a wiki page detailing its plans for the next version of Firefox, codenamed "Gran Paradiso". The target release date is sometime in the third quarter this year and it hopes to release a major version of Firefox... Read More
Reading through my feeds, an article about how Microformats might be integrated into the next release of Firefox caught my eye today. If you remember, Microformats is present in the current latest sta... Read More
By John Milan. This is the second in a two-part series. Part 1 is here. What will the software solutions of tomorrow look like? They will be forged by four powerful elements: The Internet, Open Source, Mobile Devices and Web... Read More
John Milan wrote an excellent two-part article for R/WW this week, about the future of software. Because it was a very long article - and filled with John's trademark nature metaphors - I thought I'd pull out a few of... Read More
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
My take is that in the long run browser will be in the face of the users but all the different apps that will be running on the browsers will belong to third parties.
I believe the future belongs to the third party extensions to the browsers. Whether you look at microformants, RSS or widgets I see third party tools as the real winner and they have the potential to push the envelope in terms of how well is the user experience with the browser.
It doesn't mean that browsers do not manner. In fact they matter most since the real winner in this browser war is not the browser which has sleek interface and tries to do all things itself. In fact the browser is slowly becoming and will become an data broker + application broker + a mini OS.
Posted by: Neeraj Kumar | January 2, 2007 2:31 AMThis is very interesting reading. We are also looking at how to best work with Microformats and turning Maxthon into a "information broker". Will be interesting to see how this develops.
Posted by: Netanel Jacobsson | January 2, 2007 2:41 AMKumar - I totally agree with you on: the browser becoming a databroker + application broker + mini OS.
Posted by: Netanel Jacobsson | January 2, 2007 3:26 AMThe more that microformats becomes seamlessly integrated into the browser experience the more people are actually going to use it. It turns microformats from being a geek movement into something that my mom can utilize.
I hope that the operating system will utilize microformats as well. There are many desktop applications like outlook that could use them. Maybe this will be a part of the new version of mac os x.
Posted by: Justin Thorp | January 2, 2007 7:27 AMThe browser has always been destined to become the OS. More than that it becomes just a 'window on the world'. The need for even a GUI or title bars begins to diminish.
If you use any form of online bookmarking site, are handy with keyboard shortcuts and have a history/caching tool like Google Desktop, the basic browser controls become irrelevant. Hit F11 and you're free of them.
Somehow the F11 thing never really caught on though. It must have been a conflict of interest for the browser developers and for that reason it's never really been perfected or promoted. After all, if the GUI goes, there becomes very little left to distinguish between the browsers, assuming they all do a basic job of rendering, tabbed browsing etc. Their last real estate or opportunity to shout their identity or brand becomes the default home page (their desktop), and like most desktops, people change that to something else!
I guess the idea of thin client computing is finally catching on...
Posted by: Alx Klive | January 2, 2007 7:32 AMNeeraj is right. The 'Start' button is in the browser window in the years to come. I have been writing about this eventuality for months. With Microformats, RSS, Widgets, OpenID, FOAF and other semantic web tools, it will be a seamless data extraction + distribution via the browser. I am not saying, browser is the only way for these change.
Developments like Clear Forest's Genois and MIT's Piggy Bank are important steps towards a more semantic web, with distributed data/information and accessible for more audience. This needs to be done seamless, and for an average Joe, there should not be any difference in porting his data / information across application /services without any complicated process.
I am with Jacobsson on his take on Maxathon. It makes the scene all the more interesting ;) to watch for.
Posted by: Narain | January 2, 2007 7:56 AMThis is an exciting development. Plus, because its a passive operation the user doesn't need to be involved with, it might actually work!
I have to read up on it all, but what I hope for is the more you browse, the more your browser will know about you with Microformats, which means the more things (web sites, mobile?) will be able to respond to you, individually. Sort of like MyBlogLog on steroids :)
One thing that comes to mind is how exportable the microformat data will be. You can imagine once I've built up a healthy browser database about me, I'd be loathe to recreate it on another browser. Seems like information about you should be readily portable by you as well.
Posted by: John Milan | January 2, 2007 9:39 AMAutodetect of RSS feeds, click to add in application of your choice functionality seems like the best way to demonstrate this type of thing in action already. FF support is a great example of how microformats could move from idealistic and unhelpful to widely used and appreciated.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | January 2, 2007 10:13 AMThis will be glorious. Eventful uses microformats too, which is awesome. They make it easy enough to add things to my calendar, but it'd be great if my browser could autodetect the event info and make it one-click-addable or e-mailable or whatever.
Posted by: Jed | January 2, 2007 10:23 AMThe other thing that came to mind, looking at that image of Firefox feeding web sites with Microformat info is: what about the applications on your computer?
This data FF is collecting would be useful not only for web sites but desktop applications as well. I would love for FF to expose this database via some sort of local-only API. Perhaps provide the option for disabling it, but it could be just as powerful for your local apps to reference this information as your web apps.
I see a Thunderbird icon in the graphic, hopefully this represents *any* desktop app.
Posted by: John Milan | January 2, 2007 12:06 PMI already use the Operator add-on for Firefox which is a great demo of how future generations of browsers could manage data. Very impressive to say the least.
Posted by: Carsten | January 2, 2007 12:50 PMwow pretty cool:)(: also kinda bad go reaserch!
Posted by: Yash | January 2, 2007 12:58 PMTwo words. Protocol Handlers.
tel:3175551212
skype:SkypeName?action
calendar:eventName?startdate=12/13/07:1530
photoalbum:Flickr/Yahoo Photos/AOL
Maybe even, im:identifier?protocol=sip/oscar
Standardized protocol handlers for next gen applications.
Posted by: Johnny Fry | January 2, 2007 1:35 PMI don't know if this is really about the browser "becoming an os" but instead just breaking down barriers between the web and personal computer. Basically allowing the os to recognize and handle data from the web as if it came from the hard drive?
Posted by: Nate Glenn | January 2, 2007 1:54 PMHas FF3 been released yet? How come I don't know this...?
Posted by: Keith | January 2, 2007 1:57 PMThis is great news, making websites work together more seamlessly is something we obviously care about quite a
bit at Flock and we will be excited to inherit this from Firefox 3.0 when it comes out.
-Evan Hamilton
Posted by: Evan Hamilton | January 2, 2007 5:05 PMFlock Community Ambassador
You should all check out Adobe's Apollo project as it converges neatly with the visions in this article and the comments.
http://www.talkcrunch.com/2006/12/16/here-comes-adobe-apollo/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/16/preparing-for-apollo/
It seems to me that
a.) The web browser/Apollo will become a framework linking application-like functionality, the data on your computer, intelligence in the document, and finally the Web, in a device agnostic way (e.g. PC, mobile, and everything in between)
b.) The OS becomes unimportant. Very unimportant.
Cheers
Posted by: Alex Kerr | January 2, 2007 5:13 PMAlex
http://www.phonething.com
Thanks Alx for comment #5. I didn't realize what hiting F11 in my browser would do.
Posted by: Hashim | January 2, 2007 11:02 PMGreat news, I am looking forward to the final release. Btw, I use F11 all the time, I love the extra screen real estate (however, everyone else I know hates it, I can't understand why though).
Posted by: George Moschovitis | January 3, 2007 1:03 AMThese developments are great, although it's worth considering what's actually new here. For a long time now it's been possible for a browser to hand over material to external applications - if you click on a link and the server returns something with media type "application/pdf", chances are it'll be opened in your pdf viewer. But microformats (and applications which support them) are a great route into a whole different dimension than the web of documents, i.e. a web of data. Check out these slides (single web page) of Tim Berners-Lee's from 1994.
One obvious difference with microformats over using data in other formats other is that that it's expressed in a dialect of HTML, which makes it a lot more transparent in publishing. But perhaps more significantly, the data is expressed in common, unambiguous languages with a level of granularity that makes it available for reuse by a *variety* of applications. If you have a person's contact page, that information may be of use to not only an address book app, but also to an email client, a feed reader (snag their feed). Mixed in with the same page there may be calendar information - useful for a range of other applications. There's huge potential for the browser to act as a personal knowledge store, I hope the Moz folks take note of the work being done with PiggyBank.
A big advantage of expressing things in HTML is that hyperlinking is available. Microformats only say a little about the relations between different pieces of information (i.e. using rel="..."), and the individual microformats are generally fairly domain-specific. But the Semantic Web technologies can be used to bring data logic into the linking (moving link relations to something close to the relations of databases), and provide cross-domain integration.
Once more from timbl : "[it] is necessary to connect the data we have into a web, a serious, unbounded web in which one can find all kinds of things, just as on the hypertext web we have managed to build.". One obvious tool for navigating a web of linked data is the browser (assuming a bit of work on features ;-)
Posted by: Danny | January 3, 2007 7:32 AMIf it is that browsers do get to this point, then just like with RSS, microformats will have to get past the point of just being a nice do-dad to a website in order for people to realize the power that is within it. For example, if you sell RSS as being akin to a newspaper, then the mental gap for mainstream users is bridged and then the power of RSS can be tapped.
In the same way, microformats is extremely useful for the mainstream user who does want to take advantage of online calendaring and information management, but is disturbed with having to type things from one app to another, from one form to another. If the usability end of using microformats can be easily tacked for this kind of use, then it is a no brainer to add it to a browser, and even less of an issue to teach people how to use it.
Posted by: Antoine of MMM | January 3, 2007 7:48 AMThis is the most exciting feature I've heard for the upcoming Firefox 3.0!
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | January 3, 2007 2:55 PM>These developments are great, although it's worth
>considering what's actually new here.
What's new is that some of the great work coming out of the Semantic Web research community is now on the verge of going mainstream.
>Check out these slides (single web page) of
>Tim Berners-Lee's from 1994.
I haven't seen those particular slides before, thanks for the link.
>I hope the Moz folks take note of the work being
>done with PiggyBank.
We have, and we are fans of PiggyBank. I personally think it is one of the best research projects built on top of Firefox.
Posted by: Faaborg | January 3, 2007 5:56 PMThere are security implications galore.
Posted by: robin | January 3, 2007 10:49 PMThere are security implications galore.
Posted by: Igor | January 4, 2007 1:34 PM[A little OT] If now somebody could develop a beautiful microformat editor with self defined templates ...
Posted by: Markus Merz | January 8, 2007 6:52 PMThe exposure of documentation and formats would drive a browser like this. Today, there are tons of XML services, but they are all hidden. They would all have to be exposed and searchable/researchable/understandable so that Mozilla could be skinned/plug-in'd/etc to handle each format and/or service.
Posted by: sir_flexalot | January 12, 2007 8:39 AMThis is a good news IF the Mozilla foundation remains neutral to the software industry. :)
Rock on.
Posted by: Jimmy Lin | January 12, 2007 8:40 AMIsn't this what MS tried to crush when they did the Anti Trust stuff against Netscape? Middleware that makes the OS a commodity?
Troll Bob
Posted by: Troll Bob | January 12, 2007 10:55 AMWhen firefox stop styling my rss/atom feeds and ignoring my xsl stylesheets I might stop hating them. If I stuff it with 512bytes of crap it works though. Now since when did Firefox require "hacks" to make a page display correctly? I'd say since they became community orientated and ignored the correct way of doing things as set by the w3c. FF is losing its standards ideal in my books with FF2.
Posted by: devnull | January 12, 2007 12:00 PMthe browser will never be an OS, this has been tried before and failed terribly.
In anycase, the microformats is a good idea, but will have security issues written all over it. Being a data broker is not a bad thing. It can defiantly help integrate your web experience but at the same time cause it to be overly complex for non-technical people.
I believe the power is with the end point of the data. If the integration is two way (firefox app) this gives the application developers a better hook into the web traffic (instead of spawning a firefox window with a URL as a parameter).
Speaking of which this box im putting text into now doesnt support firefox. (its trailing off the edge).
Posted by: joe | January 12, 2007 2:13 PMA national health promotion and disease prevention initiative bringing together many individuals and agencies to improve the health of all Americans WBR LeoP
Posted by: Leo | January 21, 2007 8:25 AMA national health promotion and disease prevention initiative bringing together many individuals and agencies to improve the health of all Americans WBR LeoP
Posted by: Pharmacy Wizard | February 9, 2007 2:27 AM