Jason Fried on Browsers

Jason Fried's comments at the MIT Emerging Techologies Conference make a fair point. The browser is a good platform as long as browser manufacturers don't keep making life hard for web app publishers.

From a user perspective it's desirable not to have to install separate applications for apps such as Flickr and Basecamp.

I still think things will get a lot better as browsers improve and creating richer GUIs gets easier for the developer.

One thing I was thinking is that it would be handy to have a single point of sign on when you open the browser. The browser then passes relevant username/passwords to any sites that require them. Having to remember usernames/logins for every site is still an obstacle that hinders the simplicity of browser based applications. If a single mechanism could address the problem in one sweep, it would make life easier for users.

Microsoft Passport and "remember me" cookies are a step forward, but I think things could be improved if there were a standard that the browser inherently supported.