Revolution and the Web, feedback wanted, Part 1 of 3

[Brian Yennie]

Mikey,

> The "free for startups" version is just that.

Actually, if you read the terms - it's free until your startup makes  
money. Then you owe them licensing fees retroactively. So they're  
offering deferred payment to startups, which is cool I guess - but  
it's definitely misleading that they call it free. Intriguing, but  
would you stake your startup company on thousands of dollars of  
deferred licensing fees of a 1.0 product? Scary.

> The straight Pro
> edition is LIST PRICE $5,000, however they are accepting new
> applications to the "Pioneers" program and preorders at a big discount
> (65%?) until...sometime.  The per-seat price includes everything.

That's still around $2k per seat, and I assume the offer will go away  
if the product starts selling.

> You
> buy the Professional edition, you get a perpetual license, and you can
> build and deploy as many systems, servers, etc. as you like without
> paying anything more.  It includes the application server, database
> server, and web server along with the rest of it.  I believe they are
> trying to compete with M$, so they intentionally gave away the
> deployments to attract corporate and professional developers.  So, in
> more ways than one it is different.  The packaging is different, the
> pricing is different.

I agree it's interesting. Keep in mind they "include" the database  
and web servers because they're just bundling free software (Firebird  
and Apache). Any tool that generates web apps could bundle those two  
if desired. Pricing out deployments versus developer licenses can  
often be 6 of one and a half dozen of another - really it depends on  
your business. Some love to be able to just pay for the developer  
seats and be done with it. Others would rather save money until they  
are ready to bill a client - and then just pass on the cost.  
Personally I *do* like the former the majority of the time.

> 2) On AJAX/FJAX:  If you've used Gmail or Google Maps you will
> immediately recognize that there is a significant difference between
> AJAX apps and your run-of-the-mill web apps.  Speed.  Smoothness.
> Shortcuts. You can't get the same feel from straight XHTML.

Sure you can - just add Javascript =). Seriously, though - XHTML +  
Javascript enabled is all you need on the client side to have an AJAX  
application. I don't think anyone was suggesting exporting just XHTML  
tags from Rev and calling that a web app...?

>   The XML
> portion is a way to speed the information transfer process.  Instead
> of reloading the web page every time you pull up a new record, only
> the changed data can be transferred, which means significant speed
> savings, and no flashing blinking screen when your browser reloads the
> page just to display the data from another record...err card.  In
> addition, the opening "A" in "AJAX" stands for "Asynchronous", which
> means that your application can and does cache data, so that it is
> already in your browser waiting for you when you do something.

XML has nothing to do per se with the speed of AJAX apps. You can  
very well make asynchronous calls for data without transmitting it in  
XML format, and get all of the same benefits. Depending on the app,  
XML may in fact be a good format to choose - but it's definitely not  
the source of increased speed. Your asynchronous request could return  
XML, XHTML, HTML, plain text or my personal fave - JSON (Javascript  
Object Notation) objects. Or anything else your client-side code can  
handle. If you really want to open a can of works, try sending back  
some Javascript to execute - voila, self-modifying web app (ack)!

- Brian