app beta's Profile

While part of
the emphasis is removing the classic need to go into a browser to access these
applications, another focus is to make the applications available when you are
offline. 

Weave moves to expand Firefox in the opposite
direction as Prism

Beard hopes to have the extensions necessary to
provide syncing ready to roll out for Firefox 4.

Firefox 3 implements a basic version of this called the
"awesome bar", the new smart web-address bar.

Beard wants
to go beyond this and allow for a basic "linguistic user interface"
in Firefox 4 which will allow users to type basic commands in plain
English. 

Aside from these core improvements, Beard warns that there may be some other
"crazy ideas" in store for Firefox 4. 

put together for
2009-2010

Microsoft already has a patent on a "modular operating system" concept. A "core function" module

Microsoft can also add/remove functionality module by module.

The software+services side of modularization is what is surely driving this change at Microsoft

Generally, we're very much in favor of package-based setup routines,