The Firefox opportunity.

The future of "great Windows applications," we're told, lies with Longhorn's next-generation presentation subsystem, Avalon, which will reboot software development sometime in the latter half of this decade. Of course, even Microsoft can't wait until then. Consider InfoPath. It's a great Windows application and a rich Internet client that had to ship in 2003. Its foundation is none other than Internet Explorer -- or rather, the suite of components and Internet standards on which Internet Explorer depends. Could InfoPath have been built on a Mozilla foundation instead? You bet. And the result wouldn't just be a great Windows application. It would be a great application, period. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

After I wrote this column, I checked out an interesting new application that I wish had been built on a Mozilla foundation: Onfolio. You can't fault Onfolio's creator, J.J. Allaire, for targeting the overwhelming majority platform: IE/Win. Of course as a .NET app, Onfolio targets a minority within that majority. We live in interesting times! ... [Jon's Radio]
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