[OT] Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday

[Dan Shafer]

On Aug 12, 2005, at 12:56 AM, Rodney Somerstein wrote:

> Ruby on Rails looks to be a tremendously effective approach to  
> create Ajax (Asychronous JavaScript and XML) applications. For the  
> best known application using Ajax, take a look at Google maps if  
> you haven't seen it. This is an exciting time of possibilities when  
> you think of what kinds of applications we are likely to start  
> seeing on the Web. We will finally start seeing more Web  
> applications that feel like standalone apps without requiring a  
> player of some sort to be embedded in the browser. The downside  
> right now is that Ruby on Rails does require using Ruby. I suspect  
> Python will catch up soon if it hasn't already. I don't know  
> whether Revolution can already effectively play in this environment  
> or not.
>

I haven't had time yet to look deeply at the issue of how Rev might  
participate in Ajax or, alternatively, facilitate the creation of  
Ajax-like applications. To do so, Rev would need to be able to embed  
itself somehow into the Web fabric and as far as I know -- always  
subject to the limitation of my own knowledge base -- Rev cannot do  
that and is not really designed to do so. I *think* that means that  
next-gen Web apps built on the Ajax model will not be a Rev  
playground. The XMLHTTPRequest command in JavaScript seems to be the  
singular glue that holds Ajax together, and Rev can certainly emulate  
that behavior but not, it seems to me, in a way that allows Web page  
embedding. Without a plugin or some other architectural change to the  
Rev core, building Web pages that are truly dynamic apps will have to  
be the province of tools like JavaScript/XML, Ruby and probably  
Python. (I'll mail you offlist about Python support since I suspect  
there's only three of us here who care.)




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Revolution Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
 From http://www.revolutionpros.com, Click "My Stuff"