04.18.08
Where is the browser from Adobe?
Arguably, anyone who uses the Internet touches Adobe technology at some point. Most likely in the form of Flash and Shockwave or Acrobat. Some of the most annoying problems creep in when your browser and operating system don’t cooperate with these technologies. Adobe could fix this. If Adobe had an Adobe-browser they could seamlessly combine the browser with all their extra technologies to work together. Historically Adobe has had good support for multiple operating systems including Linux so we know there is expertise within the company to support a broad range of platforms, perhaps even including mobile phones.
You can say there are already too many browsers and several very good ones now, but I think the Adobe browser is missing.
What would be the attributes of an Adobe-browser? I think it would have several useful things. First, it would be small and tight, carefully written for fast execution. It would need to be rigorously standards-compliant, perhaps based on an existing rendering engine, but not necessarily. Finally it should be a component. The browser itself should be able to plug into IE or FireFox, or run by itself. It should also be highly manageable and secure. It should also break some paradigms about what a browser should look like. That’s a tall order.
An Adobe browser should be highly manageable and secure because in a lot of places people would want to use it as the sole interface on a Kiosk. Imagine all the Flash and Acrobat technologies right there, for a pleasant user-interface and form-filling capabilities. In companies it would be nice to be able to lock down different aspects, like proxy settings, history settings.
Maybe Adobe doesn’t want to touch the browser market for several reasons - there is no profit in it, nobody “buys” a browser anymore, several good browsers already exist, or they don’t want to dominate the Internet and have to contend with antitrust issues. Certainly there might not be much profit in it, except perhaps in an IDE, developer materials and deployment and developer education for those wishing to extend or better support the browser, the “ecosystem” around it. Several good browsers do exist. OK, extend one. Use the rendering engine from an existing browser (maybe not IE) or partner with Apple, Mozilla, Opera or KDE. Do not worry about dominance and antitrust. It would be hard to get market share away from the big two, worry about that once you are successful.
I’m not asking Adobe to merge all their technologies into the browser. They should be modular, as they are with other browsers. That way you could trim the browser down for a cell phone, or have different levels of Acrobat support according to what the browser needs to do. The Adobe developers of all those other good technologies can continue to concentrate on making them work and improving them, they would have just have an additional browser to worry about integration with.
Finally, an Adobe browser could be a great development tool for all the people who work in development with Adobe technologies today. The first and best place to make sure your AIR, Flash, ColdFusion, or even Acrobat applications are working. Hopefully within an IDE like Eclipse.
C’mon Adobe, how about it?