The Disappearing Desktop - It's Real This Time

[Andre Garzia]

On Nov 10, 2005, at 4:57 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

>> And your notions about 'specialized browsers' and discounting  
>> Andre's server development issues so quickly only points to the  
>> great hurdles which AJAX still has to make, currently with no  
>> visible roadmap.
>>
> Andre has a server developer's perspective on this and it's not  
> that I discounted it quickly or lightly, just that it has to be  
> seen for what it is: a single-perspective take. Again, I'm not  
> interested in defending AJAX (or for that matter Laszlo) per se.  
> The *concept* of thin clients running Web services-based  
> applications has the endorsement and attention of a broad range of  
> developers, big and small, and is starting to get some serious  
> traction. Lumping it in with all that has happened in the past may  
> be illustrative and may help it to avoid some of the known pitfalls  
> but it doesn't diminish its future potential or validity.

hheheheh Dan I never though you took my points lighly :-) and yes, I  
am from a server perspective. I think many things can benefit from  
AJAX approach, mainly things from intranet related stuff and general  
network tasks like emails. Revolution could replace Javascript and  
HTML/CSS on Ajax, one could use Apache and XML to backend his app,  
which is almost what were all doing with auto update clients. The  
main benefit I see from using AJAX is that the user does not need to  
download anything. In this era of kiosks and appliances this is a big  
plus, I also like the perspective of running nice little Rev apps  
from pendrives, but thats not for everyone.

How could Rev jump on the bandwagon without loosing it's rev-ness. We  
can use Rev to help us develop, even if the end product is AJAX, Rev  
has a high level functions for string manipulation and AJAX is all  
about text scripts. One can use Rev to help not only the server part  
that is backed by Apache, but also to create code generation and  
management tools that will help to cope with the task of writting  
Javascript.

Using altuits altBrowser one can create the ultimate AJAX testing  
suite in Rev, and run everything from one app. This should get  
Revolution developers a nice enviroment to develop, even, if they are  
doing javascript. I don't like Javascript or jscript or whatever they  
are bundling with browsers these days but until browsers bundle  
better languages, we'll have to use it. a spidermonkey external might  
be cool too.

I think there's a market for AJAX Development Tools, many people want  
to start to code with AJAX but there's no nice friendly environment  
yet. Also could dashboard widgets qualify as AJAX?

>
>> My suggestion, is try and develop a full AJAX application, then  
>> get back to us on what you find. My gut tells me it's a lot more  
>> difficult than doing the same in Rev. For me, just like the other  
>> mentioned technologies, I'll wait and see.
>>
> I plan to do just that. And I hope a LOT of people wait and see.  
> That just gives this old gray-haired techno-weenie enough of a head  
> start to stay ahead of the stampede when it does come.