Bill,
I think Chipp meant the future of <applications based on web browser
containers> is Ajax and the DOM.
We keep coding in transcript for the following reasons:
* Revolution native interface provides better user experience than
browser based interfaces.
* Revolution native applications have more features than it's
browser based cousins.
* Revolution apps will work away from an internet pipe, try that
with an online app.
* No way in this earth that a browser based app will ever be able to
launch a 100 megabytes document to work with... not matter how clever
your ajax skills are.
Ajax is nothing new. Ajax is simply a hack. Ajax is on the client
browser side, on the server side you can have Rev, Ruby, Rebol or
your favorite language (even if it starts with another letter than
R). Ajax is not here to replace desktop apps. For some things it
makes sense to have a online web based experience, for example,
Conference Web Pages, someone organizing a conference would be happy
to be able to code a little thing in Rev for the conference users to
register/login and see conference features. No one is thinking about
having a web based photoshop editor able to handle RAW format files...
it all depends on what you're trying to build...
A friend of mine is on the operating system business and will not use
anything but C/C++ and he is right (gosh, never though I'd speak good
of C...), I am on the network appliances business so I code in
transcript because it enables me to build desktop apps that are
network savvy, some other guy might be on the Web Shopping Cart wars
using RoR+Ajax. We would all be correct and no one could call its
option, the future.
Latelly, this list is mixing apples and epiletic porpoises.
Not all computer languages and computer authoring tools are made to
do the same job. People keep comparing Rev to Flash to AJAX... They
are very different things made to do different stuff. We can't
compare them, it's like saying Photoshop is better than MS SQL Server
because it has a better looking splash screen, it makes no sense.
AJAX is Asynchronous Javascript + XML, what does that means? Till
now, everytime your web app wanted to do something it needed to do a
roundtrip to the server and refresh everything. Think of an airplane
full of cargo and that everytime you want to move some message
package arround you'd load and unload the whole airplane in both
destinations. This takes time and effort. Now imagine that AJAX is
just a super clever flock of strong pigeons, you can have how many
pigeons you want. Everytime you need to send messages around, you'll
just dispatch a new pigeon to roundtrip with your message, no need to
load and reload everything, just launch your pigeons as your needs
arrive. It's fast, it's cheap and its asynchronous because while some
poor pigeon might be carrying a very heavy message that will take
eons to be read and understood, the other pigeons might be carrying
quick messages so your business is never stopped while the airplane
business is forever waiting for the baggage carrousels to start so
that they might then see the mail packages...
I don't know if this is a clear comparision but I've been thinking a
lot about airplanes later.
The thing is, AJAX exists inside a browser, inside a web page, it's
just some fancy javascript code that will breed and dispatch pigeons
as needed. On the server side you might have anything you want
including Rev. They are not competting technologies, actually they
might complete each other. You can have your business logic code in
transcript on a server CGI easy to mantain and update and have your
clients with a nice browser GUI that is very responsive by using AJAX
skills...
I'l put some pages online about that...
andre
On Jul 5, 2006, at 12:42 AM, Bill Marriott wrote:
"Let's get serious" -- If the future is in "AJAX, DOM, Jscript and
Frameworks" then we're all wasting our time coding in TranScript or
xTalk or
whatever you want to call it, as none of those technologies speak our
language. We might as well "invest" our time learning those
technologies if
you're right and we're "worth our salt."
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