Andre....
Actually, my blog accommodates arbitrarily large posts and comments,
but it's fine that you reply here.
On Nov 9, 2005, at 4:10 PM, Andre Garzia wrote:
(by the way, where is your RSS feed?)
On the left side of the page there's a large orange XML button that
will get you my feed.
What if you need to use word processor on a vacation where no net
access is available.
There will, of course, be situations like this. I'm not exactly sure
what the solution looks like. I suspect that it could take one of two
forms. Either there is a local proxy Web server ("proxy" not meant in
the usual technical sense but in the more common sense of a stand-in)
that interacts with you while you're offline and that auto-
synchronizes your work when you are reconnected. That's certainly
pretty feasible. The Web apps that you use could be cached locally
where your local browser can access them if and as necessary. This is
hardly a difficult problem in any case.
it's harder to create a user interface for web based apps than it
is to create for desktop apps
If you've looked at some of the tool sets for handling the creation
of UIs in Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), of which AJAX is a
subset technology, then you know that while it is presently somewhat
more difficult, this is likely a temporary condition. As the demand
for them grows, UI tools will be developed and offered and they will
get better and better.
Not only bookmark but the most simple go back and go forward of
browsers will wreck most web apps. Try fiddling with that while
gMail is thinking, you'll see it getting lost pretty soon.
I agree this is a challenge but again it's not really difficult to
overcome. Kiosk-type Web apps deal with this by the simple expedient
of removing the back and forward arrows in the browser UI. Bookmarks
can either be disabled or made more intelligent so that they work
either with cookies or with some other session management technique
to overcome the brain-dead nature of static bookmarks. For many years
there have been bookmarklets that contain JavaScript and behave more
intelligently and contextually aware than standard bookmarks.
That's why I don't think we'll be leaving the desktop soon, at
least, not until someone present a better language than javascript,
a better way to track and save runtime data than cookies and a
better user interface than "hack your own".
To me, this smacks of the argument that essentially says, "We tried
that once and it didn't work so now we have something better." I'm
arguing that with the clout of a Microsoft behind AJAX style
applications and with literally tens of thousands -- perhaps hundreds
of thousands of trained JavaScripters available as a developer pool
-- this thing has a life that is much larger than your view gives it
credit for being. And FWIW, I happen to *like* JavaScript. I like the
fact that it's object oriented. I like the simplicity of most of its
syntax (though some of it makes me crazy; same is true of Transcript
for that matter). I like the fact that I can mix it freely in Web
pages (a huge drawback for Transcript for the kinds of apps I want to
build) and I like the fact that there are so many great libraries and
tools for it.
he problem is that since everyone and his dog got a browser
installed, we're trying to hack apps into browser technology
instead of trying to make a breakthru on network app tech.
Which I translate: "The problem is the real world doesn't understand
what we could do for it." True, but not a problem that I see being
able to overcome.
=========
It's early in the cycle. Even though DHTML, of which AJAX is a small
variant, has been around for eight or more years, still this
technology is getting a fresh look. And it's not being driven by
Microsoft; rather, the behemoth is now running to catch up. Early
adopters have to put up with stuff that later-round users will find
fixed or smoothed over. That doesn't mean AJAX isn't a sound or
useful technology, only that it's early.
And of course I talked about AJAX but there are other technologies I
referred to as AJAX-like, such as Laszlo (http://
www.laszlosystems.com) that use not DHMTL but Flash files as their
output format and which are far easier to adapt to cross-platform
browser deployment.
Now, don't get me wrong. For the ultrathin client apps we do have to
build, Rev is a great answer. And if Rev had a Web plugin that would
go a ways toward solving the problem of trying to use Rev for
Internet-aware applications. But even then, you have a sizable
download and many -- perhaps most -- users won't download anything to
their desktops any longer, let alone plugins for their browsers.
At the end of the day, though, I am not so much defending AJAX (which
hardly needs or benefits from my defense of it) as I am trying to
point out the absolute inevitability of this new trend becoming
dominant. It has too many things going *for* it and the objections
are all subject to technological solutions and therefore they will be
solved. You get out in front of the curve or you find yourself
relegated to a space where new development is lagging the rest of the
market.
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Dan Shafer
Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
"Looking at technology from every angle"
http://www.eclecticity.com
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