Hiya,
Content aside, that's one of the best written texts I've seen in a
long while.
If this comes naturally to you, that's a gift. If you've worked at
it, the craftsmanship shows.
This is written regardless of personal opinion (that's should not be
taken to imply anything).
Cheers,
Luis.
On 12 Oct 2007, at 01:51, Richard Gaskin wrote:
Ken's post raised the question of the cost/benefit ratio of
developing a Rev plugin, and while it touched on many of the
highlights on the cost side it didn't address much of the benefit
side.
I can't really call that an omission from his post, as I don't
believe there are many, if any at all.
The few ostensible benefits are seductive but generally haven't
held up well to analysis in previous discussions. Let's take a
look at them:
The main ostensible benefit of a plugin is that it lightens the
load for deploying Rev-based media. Just hand out a URL, the story
goes, and that's all the user needs to run your stuff.
That's true only to the degree that someone takes up the suggestion
of building a JavaScript library for common Rev tasks, and writes
an exporter to translate Rev stuff for true browser-only
deployment. Thus far no one has pursued this, and it remains the
only option that truly addresses the central issue of zero-
installation.
Even if a browser plugin were available, you still wouldn't be able
to run Rev media until you first convince IT staffers among your
target audience that they should locate, download, and install this
plugin on all systems expected to run Rev.
If you could win that argument with IT over plugins in the future,
you can win it today to deploy a standalone that acts as a
browser's helper app, downloading and running any Rev stacks it
needs, right now.
But if you can't win that argument, whether it's a plugin or a
helper app standalone won't matter: it won't get installed, and
your user still won't be able to run your Rev stacks.
Rev-based helper app standalones provide all of the benefits of a
plugin, and much more. They aren't limited by the browser UI, can
retain state information locally, can provide an offline mode if
desired, can have multiple windows, etc. etc.
And best of all, there's nothing stopping any of us from deploying
such systems with the technology we have in hand right now. Many
of us do.
Details on this issue have been covered in depth before -- these
three posts may serve as a reasonable summary:
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2006-November/
089327.html>
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2006-November/
090333.html>
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2004-February/
031316.html>
So what about sites where IT requires true zero-install? Well,
even if RunRev saddled themselves with the expense of such a
venture, taking time away from more critical priorities to put this
in our hands, it still wouldn't be zero-install, and you'd be
having the same installation discussion with your customers that
you can have today, leaving RunRev free to pursue things with a
higher cost/benefit ratio.
I have one client whose product market is expanding into segments
which require a true zero-install solution. For that product we're
writing an exporter which splits the program's logic into two
halves, so that on the client we'll deliver the UI and content in
HTML/JavaScript, and use a combination of Rev CGI and MySQL
providing the other half of the functionality on the server side.
Translating the UI to JavaScript, Java, or Flash is the only option
for delivering media in a browser which doesn't require an
additional installation.
If there's a compelling must-have business case to be made for a
plugin I'd like to hear it. Over the many years this has been
discussed I haven't seen it yet. Sure, it'd be nice to have, but
there are a lot of nice-to-haves and a long list of must-haves
too. I'd prefer to see RunRev address this nice-to-have after all
the must-haves are shipping.
And while we wait another few years for RunRev to clear their
plates to get into a position where a plugin could be responsibly
considered, take a look at all the energy Adobe's putting into AIR:
<http://labs.adobe.com/showcase/air/>
Web 2.0 was about moving ever more functionality into the browser.
But as AIR, Google Earth, and other significant initiatives
suggest, Web 3.0 is taking place beyond the browser.
You can join that revolution right now, 'cause Rev's been doing
that extremely well for years.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
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