The Disappearing Desktop - It's Real This Time

[MisterX]

> We have the dreamcard player which is the most advanced and 
> friendly thing ever. Before the dreamcard player, I used 
> REBOL and REBOL had a browser plugin which was nice, there 
> was also another solution called CURL, even Squeak could load 
> modules on demand and be very user friendly. Even OpenDoc 
> could solve such things. AJAX is not the answer for me. We 
> need smarter things for me, but still microsoft and the other 
> biggies will use AJAX, it's there, it's a buzzword, they will 
> create Outlook Web App and it will not be safe (at least not 
> with todays technology)
> 
> Cheers
> andre
> 
> PS: ... who would not feel safe writting AJAX apps.

Andre, 

you are very right but a dreamcard application can be just as
unsafe or malignous as any spyware or trojan. Ajax is supposed
to be safe and im sure many industry standards will evolve to
support that. It has been a requirement for Java, javascript,
I don't see it stopping there.

Be it in outlook or in a form based email, it doesn't change the
fact that it's useful and if the gui's can be enhanced, that much
better. Many users do not have the choice to install apps like
dreamcard on their desktops because of corporate security policy
or cyber-cafe safety. 

On the other hand and just to counter Richard's quote

    "Many articles have been published extolling the
     virtues of Browser-based applications, but few
    (if any) of these were written in one..."

Any PHPNuke article (or xoops, xnuke, wiki, etc...) have shown it
is possible - how the end article is delivered, is another story
yet many other websites have demoed this as viable with pdf, doc,
html output. Other systems, like wiki, allow also rich content 
editing among many... 

Other apps 100's of thousands of corporate users need are SAP, B2B, 
log servers, google, googlemaps, etc... Extending this is obvious. 
Having the right framework to do so (phpnuke, wiki, forum servers, 
etc) have shown the way... The big problem as Andre says, it's they 
are not easy to program, let alone for each OS, each browser, each 
screen size.

So while it is possible to deliver better than ajax products with
Dreamcard, there remains lots to be done in marketing or product
visibility of rev so that it can become accepted as a "standard".

I still think a DreamCard plugin is the way to go if this is get
anywhere otherwise, your RevHTML server or cgi framework is just
going to be doing xtalk (yep, like asp) with php, xml and or sql. 

And that's not the point for the RunRev developper. 

And until someone makes "components" for downloading to make ajax
like apps (working on the desktop via dreamcard), the number of
applications that are as flexible as real desktop applications 
(like an Office suite of tools), is always going to be limited. 

For example, the RevOnline stack. It's parts are not parts. The 
content can be changed but not the tools. It would be cool if
the next time you clicked on news or users, you would get a
newer and more capable/efficient gui each time...  I think that
the edge of Ajax is there... Not that it's not possible in rev
but until we work on it, it's not going to get far anytime soon.

This is why I've been working on modularizing and standardizing
every GUI possible in HyperCard - and the point is that it ported
to MC and rev almost without any rewrite... The program stayed the
same! And to my big surprise, PHPNuke, Wiki servers are written
the same way... Maybe there's something to be considered there...

Im sure there's lots to be said in the subject... The question is
not how to make a better web service but rather when is a web 
service or application better than a desktop application or service?

Ajax solves part of the speed and functionality problems but it still
requires local storage (like java applets). This is where server-side
apps like javascript, dhtml, xul (?), and the browser keep the 
upper hand - at the cost of delivery speed (if that's a consideration).

cheers
Xavier