What If The Internet Looked Like This?

I have been thinking a lot about web applications lately. Google I/O 2010 was a few weeks ago and it gave me some interesting things to think about. Specifically, how the browser is a broken system for the current incarnation of the web. This is nothing new, but it strikes me as odd that we haven't figured out what to do about it. The browser was created to view the web of documents. Now the web is increasingly more about applications. Vic Gundotra said during I/O that the web grew up. This is true, but its still wearing its Power Rangers outfit everywhere it goes. 

We need to break free of the browser model and get to a point where the operating system can seamlessly run web applications with an experience similar to the way desktop apps are now. Chrome OS plays with this concept, but I think that it fails by continuing to insist on the browser model for experiencing apps. This is not so bad when considering Netbooks. But the internet has become such an influential part of our computing experience and we still rely on a browser to use the many powerful apps on the Internet. But what if there were a better way?

This is what the Internet looks like now:
I have run into having dozens of tabs open in Chrome and needing multiple windows to organize it all. So right now, I have one window with my Gmail, Google Calendar, LinkedIn, Digg, Mint.com, Squarespace Blog, Youtube, Django documentation, and my web server all running in one window. In another I have Google Docs. And in a third I have Google wave. Sadly, this is the fewest tabs I will regularly have open. During peak times, I could have tabs for Engadget, Mashable, New York Times, etc. Luckily using TweetDeck and following this sources on Twitter has cut this down significatnly, but it's still possible. 

This leads to massive web page overload. Not because of the amount of web pages open, but because of the way they are organized via tabs. Also, web apps in the browser often don't feel like applications. Adobe AIR was able to help by allowing web applications to be built on the desktop and make calls to web services. I think it would be good to have web apps where they ran in their own Window and showed up in the task bar like regular desktop applications. In this way, the browser transforms into the window manager:

In the above picture, think of each window as a web application running similar to how desktop apps run today. Or how Adobe AIR apps run. I can imagine a simple UI where you are browsing the web. See an application and click "Install." Then, that web app is loaded onto your computer. Or more accurately, A link to that application is placed in your Applications directory or Start Menu. Now imagine that they were all running in the cloud. That's right. One of those windows would be a Google doc window. One is Gmail. One is Youtube.

Web developers could build apps with unique characteristics. What would Facebook or LinkedIn look like if it weren't governed by the constraints of the browser. What if web apps could learn to understand the size of the screen they inhabit. Or the size of the window. So if you shrink your Twitter window down, it will become a single column stream. And if you maximize it, it becomes an intricate dashboard. Facebook launches the mobile version of the site while constrained, and the full when not. These are the kinds of things that I think could be really compelling when we free the power of the web from the shackles of the browser. 

So that's my vision. Let me know what you think in the comments. What interesting things can you see for the web in the future? 

Update on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 5:48PM by Alex Shenoy

I think a good analogy is WebOS meets ChromeOS. Think about this: What is the last web application that you used that actually felt like an application? For me the only web app that I use that feels like a real application is Mint.com. Everything else feels like a document. I guess Hootsuite also counts. But everything else feels trapped by the browser.

And given many of the advances in HTML5, it seems like there ought to be a decent way of taken advantage of them in a streamlined way. The Web should be firmly integrated in the user experiences. There will still be a browser, but Web Apps should have support to run outside the browser and offer integration with the desktop environment.