Microsoft working on a new web browser concept
Mikey 4 comments
If you're in web development circles you've probably heard by now that Microsoft have a new web browser in production. Code named 'Gazelle' they say, this is a 100% new product, which really means it wont be based on any Internet Explorer code.
Security is being pimped as one of it's more compelling features, as well as the ability to run as an independent OS. You can read about that and more in this PDF file.
Looking through my web development goggles, this news potentially answers a question I've had about IE7 and IE8 for a while now: Why so drab? I think one of the reasons for IE's lacklustre feature set is because Microsoft have spent the past couple of years just trying to get the web standards rendering on par with the other browsers. Firefox is already a web developers dream come true, so Mozilla were able to forge ahead with all the cool stuff that makes IE look vanilla in comparison.
That's just my theory though, and I'm really hoping Microsoft get this right this time for the sake of all web developers.
Jim
Tuesday 3rd March 2009 | 07:41 PMI find it amazing how similar gazelle and Mozilla sound alike... Coincidence, I think not. why else would MS send a cake to Mozilla for a new Firefox?
Rodney
Tuesday 3rd March 2009 | 08:49 PM...in response to this comment by Jim. They're not alike at all. Firefox is a browser application. Gazelle is a Browser-based OS. That's a fundamental difference. It allows Gazelle exclusive control over system resources. Firefox must request resources from the OS, i.e. Windows or Linux, etc. Gazelle is the system which decides who gets what resource.
The Gazelle interface itself is essentially no different to IE - you wouldn't visually recognise it differently to IE8. What makes this a significant step forward isn't that it's going to come with gimmicks like "tabbed browsing" or other nice features Firefox introduced to us all, so long ago - but rather that it allows the browsing experience to be totally dictated by isolated security routines. Therefore, a compromised browser does not automatically equal a compromised host operating system.
Full credit to Microsoft on this one - it brings application sandboxing (chroot-ing if you prefer) to a more average-user acceptable level of ease of use, while making significant steps forward in security, such as isolating instances, even form the same domain and same root URL, from one another and from your PC. Essentially, the only way a browsing instance can interact with your computer resources (e.g. the registry or NIC) is via pre-defined service calls from within Gazelle. That act alone if it's done properly will kill dead in the water 99.999% of spyware auto-installers, while allowing ActiveX to continue its sometimes useful existence.
Jim
Tuesday 3rd March 2009 | 10:32 PM...in response to this comment by Rodney. I realized the difference, just felt like putting on my tin-foil hat. I haven't worn it enough recently :P
Rodney
Tuesday 3rd March 2009 | 03:46 PMMy understanding was that Gazelle was closer to a concept, than an actual product? I thought Gazelle was about evaluating the concept of browser based OS's instead of being an actual product for live use (though I am sure it will one day lead to it).
In any case, Gazelle is fundamentally different to IE, Firefox or any other browser on the market, in that it's based as it's own Operating System, instead of being an application. I.e. "Gazelle's Browser Kernel is an operating system that exclusively manages resource protection and sharing across web site principals". The idea being closer to a total sandbox, for purposes of enhanced performance and security.