Long time no see. comments inline Sent from my iPad
On 2010-04-05, at 1:44 PM, Steve Jones <[email protected]> wrote: The other piece that the iPad/iPhone has really demonstrated is how rarely services are actually re-used between multiple areas in the "web". Sure there are a bunch of twitter clients but most people using Facebook seem to use the standard Facebook app and most other server/consumer applications are equally tied to a specific server side implementation that is used by only one client set. Whether these elements use REST, SOAP or anything else is irrelevant as they are tied applications in a more client/server style mode than a "web" mode. The web currently is an extension of a client/server architecture... whether the client is a browser or a dedicated client is somewhat immaterial. For me the iPhone really demonstrates how little there genuinely is of the "web" application model and how in reality we are still at a technical client/server model with clients tied to servers. IMO part of this is driven by REST and its lack of proscribed documentation thus making interfaces obscure to anyone other than those who wrote it. I wont disagree that there is a lack of documentation.... but are you seriously claiming that crappy REST API's are responsible for why there are so many iPhone apps instead of just relying on browser-based apps? The iPhone/iPad do not demonstrate that REST rules, arguably they prove quite the opposite, they prove that a client/server model with proprietary APIs rules and that the "power" of the web is trumped hugely by a closed garden model. Last I checked, the best and most widely used application on the iPad was Safari. The multitouch web experience is easily the biggest draw on these devices. And that all of the apps, music, or vids you download from iTunes are available via hyperlinks that can be communicated and shared with others. And that nearly every application grabs its content from servers via HTTP and URI, and can allow you to copy those URIs and use them elsewhere. Yes, there are plenty of proprietary APIs layered on top of those standards. Time will hopefully help to standardize new media types where they are needed. What the iPhone and iPad does is show the Web is not just about browsers. I think you are confusing the politicized process of HTML standards development with architecture. How can the world suddenly adapt all platforms to a new UI paradigm? It takes time to standardize deployed practice. The flood of iApps are an expected occurrence because a piece of the Web, HTML, has to catch up. Yet both HTTP and URI remain crucial (if incomplete) to the user experience on these devices. It is completely disingenuous to claim this is all proprietary client/server. It is, at worst, partially proprietary. Like most evolving information exchange protocols... Stu __________________________________________________________________ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca
