The browser wars are over

That was the consensus yesterday of a panel of representatives here at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo who help develop Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and the Google Reader.

Instead of trying to trump one another by adding features in point releases, the companies that developed these browsers are instead intent on advancing their use as platforms for a new generation of rich Internet applications and for tackling the hurdles that will come along with that shift in strategy, the panel said.

"We're moving from putting up [on the Web], 'Here are me, my mom and my cat' to 'Here is a rich application,'" said Charles McCathieNevile, chief standards officer at Opera Software ASA. "As the Web itself grew, you had these little communities building these cool things. The explosion was enough that these little communities were running into each other. As the Web has become a really big platform to build on were seeing a lot of sharing that wasn't happening before."

Chris Wetherell, user interface engineer for the Google Reader news aggregator, said that he likes using the browser to develop applications because he can solve problems without having to learn how to install software.

"I could suddenly deliver this help desk application I wanted to write without having to mess with the installer," he said.