I remember sitting in a college computer room in 1992 on a text terminal getting the weather in strange cities via Gopher, and thinking, “Man, this internet is going to change everything.” I had no idea what it was going to do, but I knew that playing Jeopardy in IRC with strangers all over the world was incredibly addictive.

A handful of years later, the internet swept through barbershops like you mentioned, and it revolutionized businesses, advertising, HR, all kinds of things. It took a few years, but it happened. Along the way, companies paved the way. Some rose, most fell, and Netscape keeps coming to mind.

This year, I remember seeing the Flocktails extension, looking at the Flock “about” page and seeing all the microformat contacts, and thinking, “Man, these microformats are going to change everything.” I don’t know what it’s going to impact, but you’re right, it will be huge.

Getting microformats into barbershops is going to be another few years, but it’ll happen. Flock will be the next Netscape, because they’ll get the early adopters to push microformats. All it takes is a few smart apps like HR hiring sites using microformat resumes, and bam, it’s going to take off. I’m not in a position to push microformats in any meaningful way in my company, because we don’t have a use for them yet, but I’m itching to find a way.

Now, the reason that I’m writing today is because I too have been thinking about where the future of browsers is headed. I’m a Front-End Web developer, so to say the least I have a vested interest in what the future holds for the various browsers.

I like Safari. I think it’s interface is clean and usable…the only thing holding it back is its JavaScript support. Admittedly, the WebKit team is doing a great job of advancing things on that endeavor, but since Apple only releases upodates to Safari whenever there’s a new (major) update to OS X, Apple users by and large won’t get to see how far the te4am is taking WebKit. Very sad. I also wish that the developers consider releasing a cross-platform version of Safari… I think the millions of Windows users out there would enjoy using a browser like Safari, but we know that Apple isn’t going to do that.

Camino is my day to day browser. It’s Gecko wrapped in Cocoa goowey-ness. I love it! No extensions, a pleasant UI, it’s light, no memory leakage, sites render beautifully…it’s everything that I wish Safari was.

I like Flock. I love the Flickr intergration, the Blog tools, I love the look, the icon is the sexiest one that I have ever laid eyes on……but I can’t use it. I mean I do use it…it functions as my Web Control Panel. Using the ‘pipe’ method Gcal, Gmail, Backpackit, Google Analytics, W3Counter and Google Space (flock extension) share one common window. But I can’t use it to do my everyday browsing. Why? The way the developers changed the way users handle bookmarks is atrocious. I have god knows how many bookmarks. I keep them all in a Hierarchal scheme that let’s me know where everything is. I am comfortable with this system, it works for me. In fact, I think bookmarks on the whole is one of the few “Web 1.0″ things that is still viable and functional. When I imported my bookmarks into Flock, my nice beautiful system broke because the developers felt they came up with a new way of handling bookmarks that was better. Yeah, that’s cool if you only have a few bookmarks or maybe you keep all of yours on delicious. But what about the milions upon millions who don’t use delicious? I don’t mind trying to innovate, but give me the option of rolling back to what’s familliar to me if I so choose. This, I think, has been Flock’s only flaw. In all other regards, Flock as a browser smashes Firefox.

Of course, there’s no need to talk about Firefox because your analysis was spot on. If Mozilla doesn’t figure things out soon, that 15-20% that they enjoy now will be gone and replaced before you know it.

I’d also like to say, don’t forget about Opera. It’s lived most of it’s life as the Black Sheep of internet browsers, but the developers of late have really been working hard to change all of that. Its’ look still leaves much to be desired, but under the hood, and the rich feature set that it comes with, is pretty impressive. Native Bit-Torrent intergration (how come Flock didn’t think of that?), widgets that run inside the browser, thorough customization and it has a pretty secure kiosk mode that allows Sys-Admins to deploy it in public computing lounges and educational institutions….I know because I rolled it out in the labs at the University where I work. Trust me I looked at all of the browsers available for our Macintosh based labs and none of them offered the security and feature set that Opera did. Give it a try, you might like it.

In the end, I’m exicted about what the future holds as far the Web is concerned. I just wish that I didn’t have to use five different browsers to experience it.