Web Application Development: the Changing Battlefield of Web Design
From Google:
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more
sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the
latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster
JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over
the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft
Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not
supported by their own manufacturers.We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the
Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After
that point, certain functionality within these applications may have
higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers.
Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers
for Google Mail and Google Calendar.Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above,
Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and
above.
I think you can expect to see more of this as the big boys go after one another. Apple’s supporting HTML5 for video over Flash players. Google has a browser-based OS coming out and leveraging HTML5 makes a lot of sense there as well. That’s a shot directly at Microsoft. Frankly, if the club being used is an open standard, I’m okay with that.
Aside from those guys fighting wars on a battlefield the rest of us are sitting on, it also raises an interesting discussion about website development versus web application development. While I fully support progressive enhancement for website development, it’s harder to achieve for web apps. From a practical standpoint there is the simple issue of cost. For instance, how much manpower should Google throw into alternative content for the Flash charts in Google Analytics? That’s just one item in one app across their entire suite.