Who am I?
I am a software developer. I have a little experience and simply enjoy doing it. I know quite a few programming languages and love figuring things out. My biggest downfall is not reading the manual, which is a big deal because in the Linux communities, people like to say "RTFM" (you can look that one up if you want). So, if you don't read the manual and you ask for help don't expect many to help you. I usually end up reading the manual after getting pretty frustrated. Nonetheless, I love software, and I feel like sometimes I can just crank out stuff that might otherwise take me a while. I sometimes find my groove, and when I do, there is nothing I can't do (within reasonable terms).
What am I offering to you, the customer?
Simply put, I would be making a Web Browser - similar to the one that you use on a daily basis - that would be faster. The reason for this is how the data is represented. There is a lot of redundancy in web content, and I know it can be made more efficient. I did a little research, and perhaps the best thing to do would be to optimize the HTML (content of webpages) with byte code (sorry if that is a little too complex), but there is still an even better way to represent web content. We have already devised better systems for representing data and sharing it. We just haven't used it much for web content. Why not? Well, the biggest reason is because you can't just start representing web content another way because websites already have certain content. Perhaps the biggest challenge would be maintaining compatibilty with the old way of representing web content.
Another major thing is that the way the we
represent a web page is so limited. In order to do anything reasonably
interesting, you really need to use JavaScript. However, JavaScript is a
scripting language and it really has quite a bit of overhead and
resources. Additionally, CSS is too static. You can't really make
variables and manipulate the style of a webpage as efficiently as you
should be able to. HTML is also pretty static. It's all really just a
mess. It's time to update the way we represent web content!
I think that the biggest advantages for website developers would be that it would be easier to make a website from scratch, they would have a faster website, and on top of all of that they would be able to do cooler things because the way in which the content is represented and modified in real time would be more comprehensive and more modern.
Who am I offering this to?
Obviously anyone that uses a web browser would be a customer. I wouldn't make anyone pay for it. Then it would never take off. The official website for the project would have advertisements as a source of income, however. The other major customer would be software developers. I would make the project open source (meaning you can download, modify and redistribute the source code), and this would be a major benefit because if the software started to take off, then people that are even more experienced than me could write code to optimize it or make it even better. I would probably put all of the code on github. This could also win me some footing in terms of getting a job at a software industry.
Why do the customers care?
The customers using the web browser would care because downloading a page would be so much faster. We are already spoiled because hardware and technology has grown so quickly that the interchange of data is so small. Also, the consumer would have more dynamic web pages that could be more useful, more user friendly and more customized. Who doesn't want that? But sometimes when you don't have a good connection or when you need to
download a page that has a lot of information and a lot of styling and
javascript, it can really take a while to load.
It can be a litte hard to explain the more technical aspect of web browser, but here is why the software community might care. If you have a better way to represent content and you can do more with it because it is more dynamic, then why would you not use that? Web browsers now-a-days simply don't live up to their potential. They are good, but they are just not there yet. It's not only a mess to create a website from scratch, but it's not even as efficient or dynamic as it could be.
What are my core competencies?
As aforementioned, I am a software developer, and I love doing it. I think the main thing that sets me apart (as I said in my other "Idea Napkin" post) is my tenacity. I am not the best software developer. I don't know how to do things as well as someone, for example, who is working at google and developing google chrome, but I would definitely keep working on it until it is complete. Additionally, another competency, perhaps, is my willingness to let the project take a life of its own. I don't feel like I need to write all of the source code myself. I would certainly try if needed, but if I simply plant the seed of the idea and perhaps start it and then people pick it up and bring it to its full potential, that would be fine with me. After all, that is what the open source community is all about - distribution of knowledge and source code, not monopolizing it and making it proprietary. It seems to defy the "entrepreneurial way," but in reality, it is what will drive innovation in the software industry.
Evaluation
Do I think that the above five elements fit together? I do, in fact. The only way that anything has been created - from 3-dimensional printers to web browsers and other highly-used software - is by trial and error and a lot of perseverance. You are never going to write a program right the first time ... well maybe you will ... but you certainl won't right a really big piece of software and have it be perfect. First of all, hardware will become more optimized, unleashing more potential. But on top of that, there will be human error or simple fallacies in logic that make the software not optimal. However, by simple grit and error, people have developed what would have seemed impossible not but twenty years ago. That is why the pieces here fit together. If I simply am tenacious enough, then I can make this web browser. Telecommunications is a perfect example - that industry has advanced so quickly and both the technology and software for that area has simply been inredible.
Feedback
The only contructive feedback I received is that some of the points were hard to understand. I can understand because if you're not interested in software, then reading something from a software developer could be hard to follow. I tried my best to describe what I would do from a non-technical aspect. From any angle, I simply tried to make the ideas as clear as possible, so that you can understand exactly where I am coming from. I hope it all made sense and you have a very vivide image of what I am trying to achieve. In the feedback people also wished me luck, and during my break I will probably be at an internship on the side, but I think I am actually going to pursue this. Maybe I can simply create the base and the seed of the idea, but if I could pull it off even on a small scale, I would be very proud of myself. Thanks to all who wished me luck! Good luck with your endeavors as well!
