[Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

[Listera]

Dave:
> HTTP is not extendable to RIA's the advantage of RIAs is that it by
> passes the asynchronous flaws of get/post of HTTP. RIAs can be
> synchronous which is one of the best things about them.

The HTTP web browser can be made to persist data and sync on network
availability, same as Central, as a company announced last week. They plan
to open source the plugin. I can't recall the name at the moment. Technology
is not the issue.

> But why hold onto a technology just to be simple.

We wouldn't have the Web today if HTML wasn't a simplified markup language,
period. HTML evolved into XHTML/CSS and is now morphing into XML, XSL, etc.
So it's not stagnant by any means.

> Why not just do simple things w/ a more complex language.

Because a more complex language would not have produced the web, in all its
ubiquitous glory. Evidence: SGML.

> Just b/c I can do something complex w/ C# doesn't mean I can't as well make a
> simple desktop calculator either.

Using complex tools to do simple things is a recipe for what?

> This argument that HTML is simple is just not worth it b/c in the end you are
> talking about what to do w/ the technology not what the technology can do.

You are beginning to confuse tool/technology with its usage. Because MS
couldn't write a reasonably secure email client, does that make the language
they wrote it in worthless?

> What we have done w/ HTML is let the technology determine the solution which
> anyone in the UX game will say putting the cart b4 the horse.

This is in no way restricted to HTML, this is how technology works.
Otherwise, you'd have to be claiming that Avalon will prevent developers
from making lousy apps.

> Why have we so willingly accepted this bastard child of a technology?

Because, in less than a decade, it created from nothing a global network of
communications for several hundred million people. Something, I might add MS
Blackbird couldn't/didn't do. :-)

> I just don't get what people are holding onto. The only issue I see w/ HTML is
> unparalleled ubiquity.

Which *is* precisely the argument you are making for us to accept the MS
monopoly.

> This is a legacy technology ad infinatum.

As is any technology in due time.
  
> My problem w/ XUL is that no one has done a "pet store" in it. If someone
> wants to make the pet store in such a way as to compete w/ the Flash/.NET
> versions that are out there I'd be compelled to consider it.

OK. Zulu kind of mixes XUL and Flash MX:
<http://zulu.netspedition.com/zulu/main/overview.shtml>

Pet Store:
<http://zulu.netspedition.com/zulu/samples/index.shtml#>

I'm not an advocate of XUL. I've mentioned Flex here many times since its
inception, as I was on the beta team. I also noted XAML with links. It'd be
mad to settle on any one of these at this ridiculously early stage as a
"standard." Heck Flex just came out as a product and XAML deployment is
still wishful thinking for a few more years.

BTW, for a XUL/XAML/MXML shootout see:
<http://xul.sourceforge.net/links.html>

The Future of the Web: Rich Clients, Rich Browsers, Rich Portals:
<http://xul.sourceforge.net/talk/mtd-may-2004/slides.html#xul-10>
 
> Well, for one it is integrated into the OS directly.

Which means it can't run on other OSes. Are you asking other OSes to be
killed?

> When I work in an application, why would I open a web browser to do it?

You don't. The rendering engine can be embedded into and made to interact
with non-browser apps just fine. Right now, I am writing an app (RIA, if
you'd like) that parses RSS feeds/XML docs and scrapes HTML pages, creates
DB records, displays the extracted info in myriad ways including in an
embedded browser in whole or in snippets and outputs them in multiple
formats through user customizable XSL transformations, all this in a
gorgeous Cocoa UI. The only time you see a "browser" is when a drawer gently
slides in to reveal partial HTML/CSS rendering, courtesy of WebKit.
 
> The problem I'm trying to solve or at least describe is chaos. The
> current system as Listera pointed out is based on tenets of
> competitive chaos and it makes a designers (and I would imagine a
> coder's) life quite a nightmare.

You will always have this as long as there are different OSes, versions,
platforms, languages, etc.

> All the "great" ideas to make this system much more usable, useful, engaging,
> learnable and intuitive all get the answer, "can't do it b/c of this legacy or
> that legacy." Stop the legacies! Stop the madness!

Yes, but no one forces you to use the web.

If you only want to make Windows client apps that will work with a tiny
fraction of the general Windows userbase on a new set of Longhorn-capable
PCs to be shipped in a few years, then you can always ignore the web.
 
> Why would I ever want software to be stagnant?

Because you want a monopoly and that's what you get with a monopoly. No
other company but MS with a 90+% marketshare could possibly sit on a web
browser without significant upgrades for a better part of a decade and
survive.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba