Bye, Bye Internet Explorer, Hello Gazelle
Written by Vygantas Lipskas on February 24, 2009
Apparently Microsoft has finally decided to look more seriously into web browser wars and develop something fresh and more secure. Result? Meet the Gazelle, a brand new web browser kernel.
According to the recent released paper (PDF), the idea behind Gazelle is to build a kernel which would act like an operating system, managing and controlling all the system resources among web site principals.
Our prototype implementation and evaluation experience indicates that it is realistic to turn an existing browser into a multi-principal OS that yields significantly stronger security and robustness with acceptable performance and backward compatibility.
…
Nevertheless, no existing browsers, including new architectures like IE 8, Google Chrome, and OP, have a multi-principal OS construction that gives a browser-based OS, typically called Browser Kernel, the exclusive control to manage the protection and fair-sharing of all system resources among browser principals.
What about compatibility?
Microsoft claims that they were able to successfully browse 19 out of 20 most popular sites from Alexa’s top list. The performance of this prototype was “acceptable”, says Research Team.
It should also be noted that the following technology is being developed by Microsoft Research and not Internet Explorer team.
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This has me genuinely interested. It’s high time that Internet Explorer was replaced, and it’d be even better if it was replaced with something GOOD. Also, I’m really interested to know how a browser acting like an operating system would affect performance, security, etc.
Interesting read, I’m hoping that if MS does follow this path they do it correctly and make web browser compatability issues for webmasters a thing of the past.
got to see Gazelle!