Dreamcard Roadster in the future???

[Richard Gaskin]

Troy Rollins wrote:
> 
> On Jun 5, 2005, at 11:24 AM, Klaus Major wrote:
> 
>> Please read this and spread the URL, so as many people as possible
>> will get to read this!!!!!
>>
>> http://www.fourthworld.com/embassy/articles/netapps.html
>>
>> Wonderful read, thanks a lot, Richard!
>
> 
> Its true, I don't argue that either, and I've read Richard's document 
> many times. It IS a great article. I've believed similarly for a long 
> time, and produced many many projects along the same lines of thinking.

Thanks for the kind words.  It's been flattering to see how widely that 
document's been read.  My hit log shows it linked from some univesity 
reading lists, and someone forwarded it to Jeremy Alaire which managed 
to get me a dinner with him (he's a very interesting cat). :)

Maybe the pen is mightier than the sword.  Can you imagine Jeremy Alaire 
having dinner with someone carrying a sword?

> Nevertheless there are times when an executable of any kind is 
> unacceptable. Browser plugins however frequently escape this rule.

Agreed, and for delivering within the limitations imposed by such an 
environment it seems Flash is a great solution.

And more importantly, only Flash has the most critical thing that often 
gets overlooked in such discussions: it's already on the user's hard drive.

Whether as a standalone or yet another plugin, something's gotta drive 
this stuff.  While managers often say "Give me something that runs in a 
browser", once they find out it still requires a custom installation on 
every client machine they balk.  They're accustomed to the Flash or Java 
experience, where the engine is pre-installed.

Non-IT managers have a tough time articulating ALL of their needs up 
front.  Sometimes IT managers do too.  So they ask for these things 
without really considering all of the relevant factors, and when you 
deliver something that still requires a download and installation they 
say things like, "Heck, that's no better than a custom app."

I don't have hard data, but from my experience in such conversations and 
anecdotally from other developers I find that about half of the managers 
who say "Give me something that runs in a browser" will happily use a 
standalone once they find out that the plugin would require the same 
installation effort and carries design limitations.

That percentage can sometimes be increased by letting them know that a 
player can also be more secure:  in secureMode it can't write anything 
to the local drive, not even a cookie, and the engine is reported to be 
immune to buffer overruns.

You might be able to bump the percentage further still with two other 
points:

- A custom standalone is a form of custom browser, but fully branded 
with their own identity.  The pulsing logo launches their site, not 
Mozilla's.

- By moving content out of the browser they elimintate the billions of 
dollars of lost productivity caused by putting things like intranets on 
a browser, where sports stats and porn are always just one click away. 
People do a lot of surfing on company time.

The trick with all of this is to not deliver each application as a 
standalone; why replicate the engine and slow downloads?  Instead, make 
a single custom player for the client which has its own method of 
listing available stacks from the server and running them.

RevNet is an example of this -- in Rev see Development->Plugins->GoRevNet

I've started putting a variant of RevNet in my own commercial apps as an 
information and support center called InfoCenter -- WebMerge is shipping 
with this now:
<http://www.fourthworld.com/products/webmerge/index.html>


And of course, there's still the other half who lives with the illusion 
that anything in a browser is somehow necessarily "better".  For them 
the best solution is Flash or Java, since nothing else is pre-installed.


> Andre -  I also agree with you, that a java exporter would be the best 
> solution for Rev and browser delivery... but I expect we won't be seeing 
> that either.

I'd bet sooner than we'd see a plugin. ;)

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev