Adobe Offers a Little Hope for Joe Hewitt?
As mentioned on ReadWriteWeb and elsewhere recently, Joe Hewitt (co-creator of Firefox, creator of the Facebook app) has posted his concerns about the future of the web in “Web Technologies Need an Owner.” Personally I believe his concerns are legitimate. What future could their really be for web development if everybody’s viewing their content through native mobile apps?
So Joe calls for stronger leadership, offering no solutions of his own. And we finish reading the post a little sad.
But recent news from Adobe has got me thinking there might be a little hope, yet.
As a designer who has dealt with the limitations of web layouts for a long time, the prospect of CSS Regions and Exclusions is very exciting. Finally we could bring some of the benefits and power of desktop publishing applications to online, dynamic environments. This, in my opinion, would be huge.
This leads me to believe that at least in part this battle of web vs. native apps is one of convenience: the convenience of a native app for the user versus the convenience of the web for the content provider. If web development is more convenient, potent, and affordable, it will be more preferable. The more power one has in developing with web technologies, the more web development, and everybody wins. Perhaps this is a naive simplification and not a reasonable or comprehensive offering of comfort, but I find this inspiring and a sign of life.
So I offer Adobe’s CSS contributions to WebKit as a glimmer of hope for Joe Hewitt. And we continue to wait for standards bodies to finish something. Anything.