> So what else is there?
The next step in the "recycle" evolution of real interactive I/O.
Once upon a time, we had dumb terminals. Then someone had vision - "I
think I will add smart keys and graphics to the terminal." The
server sent special graphic codes the terminal understood.
Then the PC cames around and with the exception of a few killer apps,
they were used as "glorified dumb terminals" and with one major
component - "storage"
Then someone had the vision "I wish I can walk in the morning and have
my dumb PC terminal that now has storage, download all my new mail so
I can read it off line at my liesure"
Then some people, like myself, who were playing around with MODEMS and
online systems, said "Hmmm, I am paying Ma Bell way too much in
connect time, maybe we can download the mail and data from remote
online systems and display it offline." Silver Xpress, the 3rd of
its kind, after TAPCIS and QMAIL Deluxe made a few million for me.
Clones of Silver Xpress, like Offline Xpress (which we now own) did it
in Windows.
One of my favorite descriptions of Silver Xpress was:
"Time Shifted Offline Emulation of a Online Session"
SX followed all the security and rules on the online hosting system -
whatever the Online System did to control the user while he was
connected, the user could not violate this while offline. This is one
thing I hope the "Gears" people have realized as they embark in
offline development. Its more than just moving and sychronizing data.
The
offline user can not create more or behavior any different than he
normally could when online.
The GUI era was emerging, and a slew of "Tag Rendering technology for
Terminals" began to emerge - RIP was a promising technlogy and many of
the top multi-million commercial Online Remote Hosting systems added
RIP
support - many of the then top Telecommunications softare like QMODEM
all added RIP support. Robo/FX was another Tag Rendering technology
which introduced and/or touch based with embedded objects ideas like
programmable WIDGETS. Prodigy has its own rendering technology as
well, which was the first to direct marketing Screen Ads. There were
others, but of course, HyperText was then introduced and soon HTML
came out and all these others were history.
No need to go there, but what it provided the new "terminal' called
the BROWSER and slowly but surely, now everyone and their grandmother
were connecting not to a then early "social network" local community
BBS
service, but was connecting willy nilly to all kinds of online "BBS"
system" around the world.
Great stuff, but what was lost was "True Interactive I/O" and
communications. Full Time connectivity was lose. Local networking
communities were lost, login authentication was lost.
Then as expected, the cycle began again.
Someone got the idea "Maybe we should attract local social groups with
mmon interest" and someone got the idea "You know, I'm tired of all
the public access. I will add Login Requirements!"
Then someone with his smart/graphical "Browser" terminal got the idea,
"I think I will make the browser smarter with rich graphics and AJAX
to pull data and do dynamic updating.".
While other got the novel Idea "Maybe users should download special
clients," and even others now wanted to keep the connection ALIVE with
full interfactive I/O beween the client "smart Terminal" and the
backend
server.
But guess what?
Now some are getting the even brighter novel idea, "Maybe we should
offload some of these applications."
You know the cliche:
The more things change, the more it remains the same. :-)
Anyway, its not about "who and why or how one can use it Java/Jquery."
There are plenty of usages, far fetching and beyond what you and I
could ever imagine. But one thing for sure, none of this is novel.
Its just recycling of old ideas using new bubble gum and candy.
What we are seeing is the re-emergence of Real Time Interactive I/O
applications - Full time connections, etc. It is really the name of
the game. It was always the case, and what is also repeating itself
of the age-old debate of THIN VS FAT clients or centralized vs
distributed or online vs offline applications.
--
HLS
