The Disappearing Desktop - It's Real This Time

[Dan Shafer]

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