The Future of Rich Internet Applications 187
Can't Get Enough Ajax writes "While Ajax continues to get most of the attention these days in the space of rich Internet apps, the future 'face' of Web applications may consist of a combination of Ajax and plug-in technologies based on the new Flash development platforms or other plug-in models. Why? The challenges of building and maintaining sophisticated software in Javascript and the lack of support for audio and video are just two reasons that any RIA strategy will involve a mixture of Ajax and one or more technologies like Flex, Laszlo, or others. But while there are significant advantages to the new RIA technologies, there are also important trade-offs including breaking the model of the Web, lack of HTML support, and more. ZDNet's Dion Hinchcliffe has a round-up of the latest generation of RIA technologies, pros and cons of each, and why there is likely a 'war' brewing among them."
Well, at least he mentions (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, none of them want to deal with the disabled-accessability part, despite a recent Court decision [slashdot.org] that's going to make this kind of stuff a very low priority for a long time.
Re:The future is in the Stack (Score:2, Insightful)
While what can be done with Ajax is pretty amazing, the unfortunate truth is that the developer generally has to jump through hoops to get everything working. Simply the lack of stateful information is a major problem. What's needed is another protocol (Application Transfer Protocol?) that would provide state information to the server, true client-server event handling, etc.
What I REALLY do not understand about the web 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
There are cross-platform thin-client network solutions like VNC [realvnc.com] or Nomachine's NX [nomachine.com]. They do exactly what the web x.0 wants to do, they do it fast and they do it without all the bloat and packing/unpacking of (essentially very simple) data.
Do not bring up the bandwidth argument before looking at NX first. It runs over really small links.
I also do not think that it allows additional security breaches in principle, as a web browser with all the additional plug-ins is also similar to a very high-level shell to a remote server.
Re:The future is in the Stack (Score:5, Insightful)
Rails, Cake, and Turbogears can't provide the sort of rich interaction that flash/activex/java can, no matter how great their frameworks may be. Why?
The problem is not the stateless nature of the web as much as it is the medium with which the web is presented. HTML was designed as a document language, for the static display of information. It was never designed for any sort of interactivity other than hyperlinking. Everything else that has come along is a hack on top of a simple static display medium. Even arguably solid frameworks like Rails are nothing more than a hack to provide dynamic interactivity to a system that was designed against another way of doing things.
If we really want remotely obtained rich interactivity, we need to rethink the medium. We need to drop HTML/Javascript and plugins like activex and flash. We need a new platform designed from the ground up to provide dynamic rich interactivity. That includes both the display medium *and* the means by which it is obtained. XUL was a baby step. The concepts behind XAML seem to go much further -- especially in the display department -- but still relies on stateless HTTP.
All levels of the stack need fixing, not just server-side. We need more than just hacks.
SVG (Score:3, Insightful)
SVG is designed to fix that. It is an open standard, it looks promising but unfortunately browser support isn't quite there yet...
Re:No future! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Some quick insights and clarifications (Score:3, Insightful)
God help us all. I went there once on a trip... lost my granny, my dog got run over, and I came back with only 8 fingers.
That's what happens when you are not prepared for travel!
How good are you Java programming skills? What were your expectations? Have you tried WebStart?
I think Java still has a place for specialized rich clients. I have recently released a Java3D scientific visualization application that uses WebStart. It automatically downloads all the Java3D libraries it needs and caches them on the user's machine, then it is able to use native OpenGL drivers. All the user has to do is to click on the JNLP link in the browser. The application works on Windows, Linux and Mac with with all the popular browsers. I am not saying it was trivial to write it but it can be done, one just needs to know Java at more than the beginner level. Flash/JavaScript/SVG would not have worked for what I needed to do.
Will we see major web portals using Java applications as their interface? - Probably not. But that doesn't mean Java is dead and Ajax is a panacea for all the Internet problems.
Re:What I REALLY do not understand about the web 2 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The future is in the Stack (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, at some point I think we're going to have to ask ourselves if the web/browser is really the best way to get the kind of richness people are expencting from internet applications. By the tiem you add statefulness, better UI toolkits, better event model, etc, you don't really have a "browser" anymore. You just have a virtual machine and you find that you've just reinvented Java applets.
-matthew
Re:Event Streaming to Browsers (Score:2, Insightful)