Browser Wars: the State of the Battle

Which browsers are best for running Rich Internet Applications?

It's not surprising that many of our developers (and even our CEO) choose to blog frequently about browsers - we help banks deliver single-dealer portals that are accessible directly via web browsers. There's a battle going on over which browser is best and whether you need to download anything else to make it work well.

In fact, our software runs in virtually any browser with no need for plugins or special configuration. But getting a complex, high performance, low latency trading portal to run in any browser is not straightforward: We have worked hard to ensure that end-users can use any up to date browser to access their trading workstation which will display prices with no delay.

However, while we're proud of our achievements, the browser battle does not end there.

Even though we make software that runs in any of the up to date popular browsers, we can't control how often banks upgrade to the latest version of their preferred browser.  The big financial institutions, and to a lesser degree their clients, run with locked-down and often out of date desktop components, which limits their capacity to upgrade or install new browsers.

System administrators in banks and other big corporations have seen no reason to go to the trouble of upgrading their users to anything more current than IE6, or at best the marginally better IE7. The reason? No new features have been introduced since then that seemed necessary for the primary use case: reading web pages.

Rich Internet Applications: Transforming the way the web is used by banks

The primary use case has changed. These days people interact with the web and use it to run Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). RIAs are used to deliver sophisticated and often interactive functionality via a web browser.

These applications can be created using plugins such as Java, Flash or Silverlight (which are not native to the browser), but as with the case with Caplin Trader, many are increasingly based on the native application technology available in modern browsers. The single-dealer portals Caplin creates for banks are Web frameworks, and banks are offering them to their customers as fully functional trading workstations.

As an alternative to voice trading or multi-dealer platforms (where price is usually the only differentiator) single-dealer platforms enable banks to give their end-users access to a wide array of instruments as well as research and analysis tools. These exist as fully customisable portals that can be tailored to stand out with a unique look and feel.

These applications enable banks to get their customers trading with them online and act as a powerful personalised channel that can increase flow and open up cross-selling opportunities.

RIA technologies offer many advantages over locally installed applications including upgrade management and ease of deployment for client on-boarding; to ensure high performance and scalability a robust supporting infrastructure must be selected. 

A suitable supporting infrastructure enables a bank to provide uniquely 'personalised & priced' trading services.

These platforms remember their customers - what they like to trade, how they trade, what they looked at last time they logged on, what other similar clients trade. They then present to the user the necessary pre-trade research, trade ideas and other content required to make appropriate trading decisions, together with customised execution capabilities that meet users' workflow requirements, and efficient post trade and reporting services.

Back to reality

Most home users and smaller firms have kept up with the latest releases of Microsoft's web browsers: IE7 and IE8. Many people have also begun exploring alternatives such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

Though the best native Web applications support IE6 and IE7, and they work fine in these browsers, they work much faster in the newer browsers. In some of our internal tests IE6 and IE7 perform more slowly than the newer browsers such as IE8, Safari and Chrome.

The beauty of native browser technology is that you can use it to develop rich internet applications that will work in any browser without having to download any plug-in to make it work. However if you want brilliant performance from your RIA then it's becoming increasingly clear you should be using one of the latest generation of browsers.

Caplin's development team has put a significant amount of engineering work in to making Caplin Trader components run well in IE6 because it is still the default browser for the majority of our customers. As Caplin's Chief Technical Officer blogs: "To say our developers would rather see it (IE6) burn in hell is an understatement".  But as Caplin customers need their platforms to run well in IE6, ensuring our software runs well in this version of the browser is top priority for us.

The light at the end of the tunnel

It's not all bad. Banks that are switched on are already moving to IE8 and a few are even assessing alternative browsers such as Chrome and Firefox. People are beginning to realise the advantage of having a web-based application that runs as fast as a desktop application.

Recently, a customer of ours who is rolling out a new Web-based single-dealer portal, told their end-users that for the best results, they needed to use either IE8 or Firefox 3. We expected the bank's customers to protest loudly, but not a single one objected. It turns out people are not committed to using out of date applications that don't support optimised trading.

So while we can't yet claim an overwhelming victory, the state of the battle is that a welcome shift in the right direction has begun.