1. Liz Lawley on August 11, 2004 4:41 PM writes...

Clay, are you using the browser primarily to write content for blogs or blog-based cms (or other atom-enabled systems)? If so, I much prefer ecto for that purpose, because I can use it offline as well as online, and I'm not subject to browser flaws.

But you're right, of course, that browsers should do a much, much better job of handling text input than they currently do.

2. Jeremy on August 11, 2004 5:38 PM writes...

I’m typing this comment in OmniWeb 5.0rc2, which will save information that has been entered into textareas, between sessions. It's well worth a look. It will not save text that has been entered if it crashes, however. OmniWeb 5.0 will be released today, and 5.1 should soon follow with the updated (Panther) WebCore. There are other nifty features like scrollable tabs and per-site preferences, and it's a Cocoa application. It costs $30, but there's no harm giving it a test drive! :)

OmniWeb: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/

Cheers,

Jeremy

3. Ray Ozzie on August 11, 2004 7:57 PM writes...

You ask: "why is the browser itself so far behind the reality of the writeable web, and when, if ever, will it catch up?"

IMHO the answer is straightforward: because it's a "browser," so for all practical purposes "never."

Truly successful classes of products are borne with a paradigm that sinks in, and, for better AND worse, are never escaped. Successful classes of products never sustainably veer too far from their original design center.

The spreadsheet is and will forever be a simple waffle editor; regrets to Improv. Email is and forever will be a chronological inbox with folders, no matter how many smart ideas people have to change it into something else. The TV won't turn into a videophone just because it can; it's a one-way paradigm from birth. The browser is so wonderfully successful and ubiquitous and sweet specifically because of its read-only, unauthenticated simplicity.

Because you are who you are, you almost certainly will find one instance of what you're looking for by catalyzing the lazyweb to build something ... but it won't last.

It's a "browser." Long live the browser, and long live the rich client.

4. Clay Shirky on August 11, 2004 9:28 PM writes...

God Ray, that's depressing, in part because it feels right.

I remember when the first forms-capable browser came out (think it was NSCA Mosaic 1.0b4?) and I remember thinking how incredibly cool it was to be able to send content up as well as pull it down.

Then the 2.0 release of Mosaic was all about frames and layout and all the other stuff the designers and advertisers needed, and the official struggle of the browser wars became 'Tricks for designers/not much for users', so we got BLINK and MARQUEE tags, but crappy bookmark and history management, and no attention to forms at all.

And all this time, there have been incredibly popular 'user-sends' apps -- Hotmail and eBay and PHPBB (and Geocities and Blue Mtn Arts back in the day) but no one shipping browsers gave a shit about any of that, since those were server-side apps, while the browser world was obsessed with Web-as-media.

And now, if you're right, the opportunity that still existed in 96 or 97 to watch what users were doing, instead of what web design shops were clamoring for, has passed, and 10 years of engineering for consumption but not production may have left the application crippled for something it's being pressed into service for anyway.

My hope has been that if someone gets the plug-in/extension architecture right, the browser can become the rich client we need. This has been my current line of customization with Firefox, and has so far been unsuccessful for the core problem. When an obvious feature like 'don't destroy my work' still isn't part the browser six or seven years after it became normal in email and word processors, that does suggest some architectural limit.

One other possibility, spurred by Liz's post -- maybe its time to start with the 'writer's desk' metaphor, and fold the browser into something like ecto. Ecto itself won't work for me, as I do a lot of writing in wikis, comment forms, and the like, but maybe an app that assumes that not losing my work is not some arcane feature can take in some IE/Gecko/Webcore engine, and simply re-set the relationship we have with the Web.

_sigh_ Off to download OmniWeb...

5. Jonathan Aquino on August 11, 2004 10:38 PM writes...

Clay, check out my Firefox sidebar (http://tinyurl.com/62wp7) -- it has a number of useful bookmarklets that operate on the selected text that you might find useful for your browser-as-writing-instrument:

* highlighting
* dictionary/thesaurus
* Google
* JPainter - online drawing tool, for your diagrams
* text-to-speech (TTS)

6. Matthew Gertner on August 12, 2004 4:21 AM writes...

I agree that Ray's comments ring true, but that's not necessarily so depressing. We never got cars to fly, but we did invent the airplane.

There are a lot of problems with current browser architectures beyond their crappy editing capabilities. To take just one of many examples, I can download a 700 Mb movie at my machine's peak bandwidth using BitTorrent, but I often can't read a 20 Kb article linked from Slashdot because of the infamous "Slashdot Effect".

Browsers are old technology. I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about the need for a better "plug-in/extension architecture". To go back to your original gripe, the correct solution might be to have a fully fledged editing plugin that becomes active when you need to create content (as opposed to filling out a web form). This is hard to do right now because the browser paradigm calls for edit fields to be embedded in web pages. Does this make sense? Probably not. But its baked into the paradigm.

The power of Firefox's extension architecture is perhaps the best indication that the winds of change are blowing in the right direction. Le browser est mort, vive le browser...

7. Clay Shirky on August 12, 2004 5:09 AM writes...

Matthew, I hope you're right. When I put on my 'what i want' hat, instead of my current 'what'd i'd settle for' (which I still can't get), I'd like to be able to have the browser either wrapped around or embedded in a real editing environment.

I'd love to believe that Firefox is it, and I must admit, I think the way Ff extensions work is quite impressive, but I've become monomaniacal about auto-save. Everything else is decorative -- until the browser can be instructed not to destroy my work by accident, it's not a writing tool.

(and Jonathan, those sound like interesting extensions, but they still fall in the category of decoration. If you work wiht Ff extension architecture, maybe you can explain -- what keeps the browser from saving textarea on window close or crash?)

8. paolo on August 12, 2004 7:06 AM writes...

with XUL (read mozilla firefox's extensions) you can do Everything (you've ever dreamt of).

1) for example you can do a
Mozilla Amazon Browser
http://www.faser.net/mab/chrome/content/mab.xul

or you may want to take the "more under control link path" ;-)
description: http://mab.mozdev.org/
in this page http://www.faser.net/mab/remote.cfm click on "Run MAB in its own window"

2)
but can Everything be too much?
few days ago there was a mozilla/firefox spoof exploit. check http://www.nd.edu/~jsmith30/xul/test/spoof.html

Click on the link "View the spoof that mimics the interface of Firefox versions 0.9.0 - 0.9.2"

WOW! this is a totally "fa_ke" window! It is not a window! in a sense, ceci n'est pas une pipe ;-)

9. paolo on August 12, 2004 7:08 AM writes...

[I had to split the comment in 2 parts because your site kept rejecting this comment as "questionable content" because of the "com / ar" and I had to use a divide-et-impera technique of splitting the comment in pieces. i guess it happens to many commenters, what does this means?]

3)
going back to your "what i want" mood.
there were some attempt to recreate the office suite "inside" mozilla (with XUL) but it seems they were too early (and the required effort was perhaps too much)

3.1)
http://abimoz.mozdev.org/
its a plugin for AbiWord that runs inside of Mozilla. It can be accessed from JavaScript.

3.2)
There is also a project for doing a complete office suite "inside" mozilla
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mozoffice/
http://mozoffice.mozdev.org/index.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-243926.html?legacy=cnet
(it seems it is an old project, no more active)

3.3)
complete operating system "inside" you browser? seems so
http://www.x-desktop.org/
(check screenshots)

10. paolo on August 12, 2004 7:16 AM writes...

[third and last part of the comment]

so, why are browsers so obsolete?
the reason is, as always, the same: mono_poli_sts have no ince_ntives in inno_vating.
you want better browsers? he_lp in destro_ying the mono_poly, put a "get firefox" but_ton on your sites.
(find them at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/buttons.html)
and he_lp in the weekly effo_rts of the firefox community
http://tinyurl.com/6nolu (week 4 effo_rt)

thanks for sharing your thoughts

11. paolo on August 12, 2004 7:22 AM writes...

[I kept receiving a "your comment cannot be posted because of questionable content: because of the "com / ar". The reason was the link http://www.blak eeerrrooosss s. c om/archives/000241.html . Sometimes posting to a site is not that easy ;-)

12. Clay Shirky on August 12, 2004 8:10 AM writes...

Paolo, thank you for your comments, and sorry about the 'questionable content' messages. I don't understand all the spam deflection tools at work on Corante, but sorry you're running afoul of them.

The AbiWord work seems to be inactive, but following that tip, I have found Mozex and Electrix, two extensions that say the support external editor support for text area.

Will report back.

13. todd on August 12, 2004 8:53 AM writes...

I am using mozex to write this. I have noticed that if I close the browser after opening an external editor, reopening the same page prompts me (in the editor, not the browser) whether I want to reopen the file I'm editing that another application has modified. If I answer yes, everything is erased; if I answer no I'm allowed to continue on my merry way.

My question to you is do you really still have problems with the browser crashing? I hope you find a solution that works for you!

14. Clay Shirky on August 12, 2004 8:59 AM writes...

No, the problem is not often crashing; it's both accidental window closes, but also forced window closes. I do a lot of writing on planes, and if I can neither save to MT in draft form (no connectivity) nor leave the browser open (no battery) I have to laboriously cut-and-paste everything in progress in a textarea, save it, then re-associate after re-start.

And yeah, Mozex looks interesting, though I think I can't get it to work on the Mac, alas.

15. Bill Seitz on August 12, 2004 10:05 AM writes...

That last scenario is much more narrow than some of your previous cases (wiki, comments) which don't seem as likely to apply on an airplane.

(I don't agree with RayOzzie. Or rather, I don't think that an AutoSave feature is that far a stretch from the current browser universe.)

16. Clay Shirky on August 12, 2004 11:33 AM writes...

It's just an example of places where closing the window is a forced move. It's orthagonal to whether the text to be saved is in a wiki or a blog or whatever.

The bigger issue, which that scenario illustrates, is that writing sessions are not always contained inside app sessions, something every other application in existence seems to understand.

I didn't think auto-save was that big a stretch either, but I ain't seeing it, and I ain't seeing anyone work on it. I hope I'm wrong, but I been looking...

17. Julien Couvreur (Dumky) on August 12, 2004 1:01 PM writes...

I don't agree with Ray Ozzie's comment: browsers like Firefox are what we make them. Not all concept will fit nicely with the "browser".
With javascript and XUL the disctinction between browser and rich client is blurred.

"What I haven’t found is anything built by someone who understands what’s actually needed — don’t lose my work in progress, please."

I don't see why Session Saver couldn't be extended to save all text inputs along with the tab information.
But thinking some more about it I can think of some spec questions: when do you want the content recovered and when should it be cleared from the "memory"?

Let's say that you reload a page by mistake. Should your last saved content be populated?
Or if you navigate there? Or would you have to press a "reload last form data" button?

18. Jay Fienberg on August 12, 2004 6:50 PM writes...

Clay, glad that you are fighting for the right to write in your browser--this is proving a helpful resource for different extensions that help.

Having a singular, simple, interface for writing / reading is very practical--and the web browser is closer to being a decent editor than Word (and other desktop apps) are to being decent browsers.

19. Ilkka Huotari on August 12, 2004 10:09 PM writes...

I hope people come to take a look at my Netdoc, a new blogging tool (among other things). I hope it will get noticed, since it solves some of these problems, IMHO.

Here's a post I wrote in response to the original browsers as writing instruments:
http://www.visiomode.com/blog/tips/browsers_as_writing_instruments.html

20. Clay Shirky on August 13, 2004 10:15 AM writes...

Ikka, I'm pleased to see anyone writing new blogging tools, of course, but Netdoc doesn't address the issue here, for two reasons:

First, this is not about blogging, its about writing, of any sort. I write weblog posts, of course, but I also write in wikis, BBSes, comment fields; I create forms for my students to fill out; and I experiment constantly with new forms of social software, many of which are browser based. Blogging clients are nice, but they are not interfaces for writing, they are interfaces for blogging.

Second, Netdoc doesn't address the issue even for blogging, since it forces the user to manually save. It's 2004 -- why should anyone have to interrupt writing flow to deal with the unreliability of the platform? If I'm spending time on something, I obviously think its valuable. Save it *for* me.

I am now, as I said, monomaniacal on this subject. I don't want a new client-side app. I don't want to remember to save. I want the browser to work right. (Whether that's merely a local patch, as Ray makes a good case for above, I'll deal with later.)

And to address Julien's question above: I want is for every word I type into a textarea to be saved automatically. The easy way to do this would be to auto-save the most recent text entered into any given field (URL+form number+field name should be a unique ID) and then, the next time I open that form, it should ask if I want to populate it from the stored text or start afresh? And it should have an option for auto-archiving, so once I start a new entry in a previously visited field, everything gets rolled over.

21. Ilkka Huotari on August 13, 2004 6:52 PM writes...

Sorry for being a bit narrow sighted maybe.

One thing I'm interested is in how people interact with software. We (as in software industry) took many steps back when browsers were introduced (this isn't linear, there were advances too), and like the recent conversation shows (working groups on standards for web apps), only now are we starting to do something about it.

Thanks for the comments. I will explore if I can save it for you :-)

22. Clay Shirky on August 13, 2004 9:27 PM writes...

Thanks, Ikka. :)

23. geekus mcgeek on August 15, 2004 11:00 AM writes...

I haven't seen this in the list yet:

http://www.fckeditor.net/

a browser based text editor. Put this ontop a CMS and you've got yourself an-anywhere-write-and-store publishing system.

24. Shantanu Oak on August 16, 2004 2:00 PM writes...

>> I still can’t auto-save textarea.
But you can atleast "save" textarea. Use "Get" and "Put" bookmarklets.
http://www.shantanuoak.com/sites/links4.php
>> Cory’s solution is to treat the browser
>> as the untrustworthy tool it is, and to write
>> everything in BBEdit instead.
Yes, or may be notepad?

>> because it's a "browser"
Convergence is the most important aspect of technology. If mobile phones can be used for text messaging and browsing, why can't I use my browser to write a few paragraphs? Labeling a software will limit it's power. I often think that converting a word document into a slide show should have been much easier. I don't know who decided that a "Word processor" should not talk to the "Presentation" software and hate a spreadsheet?
>> Let's say that you reload a page by mistake.
>> Should your last saved content be populated?
Mainstream softwares will not include such a feature for security reasons. Another reason is that millions of new users join the Net world every month. They use the net to "read" contents. I think an extension will be the solution.

25. Ben Nolan on August 17, 2004 12:25 PM writes...

Blog tools should just save a copy of what's in the textarea to the server every 30 seconds using an xmlhttp request.

My blogging tool - www.ripcord.co.nz/shoebox/ will do this.