Revolution and Internet Applications

[Scott Raney]

On Mon, 8 Apr 2002 Dan Shafer <dan at danshafer.com> wrote:

> The applications I envision building over the next year or two are 
> all Internet and Web-based applications. They provide non-browser 
> approaches to dealing with information stored in Web pages and on 
> Internet sites in databases and other formats. So the Internet 
> capabilities of my tool set are crucial.

A key phrase here I think being "non-browser approaches".

> As I probe Revolution's documentation and build small test stacks, I 
> seem to be finding that this particular aspect of Revolution is not 
> (yet) well-developed.
> 
>
> For example, not only is the htmlText property very weak in terms of 
> the tag support it offers, it appears to me that it doesn't support 
> even those limited tags it claims to. Specifically, the <a></a> tag 
> set appears to be unsupported, at least under OS X. Clicking on text 
> that is connected to a link in the original Web page does not 
> generate an automatic link to the new page. I presume this could be 
> scripted but it's difficult to see how: (a) this could be a 
> general-case solution; and (b) one can claim to support a standard 
> HTML tag but not its associated behavior.

Or c) you're stuck in a browser mind set.  Automatically taking you to
another linked HTML page is *browser* behavior.  MetaCard's (and
Revolution's) way is much more flexible, albeit being less automatic.
You have to handle the linkClicked message if you want it to do
something when the user clicks on a link.

Indeed, this whole idea of "the whole world is HTML" also belies that
you're still stuck in a browser mind set.  If you're really looking
for browser alternatives, you need to start thinking of data in
formats other than HTML (i.e. as XML, or MetaCard/Revolution stacks,
or just raw bits that you manipulate in whatever way you need).

> Similarly, the <image> tag does not seem to work, either. At least 
> the image never gets displayed on any of several Web pages I've tried 
> it with.

Works fine here, but again, *not as a browser does it*.  You'll need
to either embed the image in the stack or download it separately.

> None of this should be seen as an indictment of Revolution, though. 
> As a long-time HyperTalker, I'm really excited by what I see here. I 
> am hoping to find out that I'm just wrong about this stuff and that 
> Revolution can in fact be the development tool I seek. But after a 
> few hours of exploration, I'm inclined to think it's not yet ready 
> for prime time for the kinds of apps I want to build.

I think it probably is, but is going to require some adjustments on
your part.  If you really want to break out of the constraints imposed
by a browser-based architecture, you've also got to give up some of
the conveniences of that approach.  In exchange you get complete
freedom of behavior, and more importantly, freedom from browser
compatibility problems.
  Regards,
    Scott

********************************************************
Scott Raney  raney at metacard.com  http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...