[Sigia-l] Persistence

[David Malouf]

But Ziya the ONLY reason that AJAX (if we must pick a term) works is
that the Open Source community of Safari and Mozilla decided to
implement something from the MSIE world (the ubiquity king).

Mozilla instituting new technology does no one any good. It creates
the whole Netscape 4.x problem all over again, leaving most
designer/developers in the lurch, yet again for at least 5 years, just
pining away, no?

Again, just b/c it is OSS doesn't mean that it will gain enough
traction to make a difference and 10% market share is a joke, unless
that 10% is interesting enough to you. Just look at how many
applications Safari users can't even use that are made by mainstream
companies who can't be bothered.

Again, you never answered my question. Why HTML? And Open is not a
good enough answer. Your argument for why below is hollow at best b/c
it just says "It's getting there", but doesn't explain "Where is
there?" and "Why bother going there?" in the first place.

Why argue for technology? What does it give users? What functionality
does it maintain?

My comment about HTML being a hack comes from 10 years of enterprise
application development environments with some of the most talented
developers in the world telling me so. JavaScript has no memory
management for example. This is a standard requirement for good
software programming and comes through in spades every time I hear
this statement. Wow! great design, but the requirements for memory and
CPU allocations of the client will be too much if we do that design.
These aren't breakthrough designs, these are designs that I could do
easily in more robust and mature languages. Find me a developer who
would CHOOSE to work in HTML/HTTP over other technologies if
everything else was equal and I'd be REALLY REALLY surprised. Find me
a developer who can build a truly robust mission critical enterprise
class RIA without relying on at least some other technology outside of
HTML, JS, and HTTP and I'd be really surprised. Its never happened to
me in 10 years, where I have always had to add in Java or ActiveX to
complete the picture often costing $1000's per user in installation
support which in my mind totally negates the initial "value" of an
HTML application in the first place.

Basically, Ziya, you talk a good game here, but where does the rubber
meet the road?

Things are progressing and this Mozilla 3 is taking things in a good
direction, but as I said, why wait? Just build an extension for
Firefox and IE now to do what you need and be done with it. Why wait
for the Mozilla org to do it for you? That's basically all they've
done themselves.

-- dave

On 2/14/07, Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:
> David Malouf:
>
> > HOw is Mozilla doing something "special" in their browser any
> > different than MS creating a XAML browser or Adobe creating a Flash
> > browser.
>
> The "specialty" in this case is persistence. I'm not aware of either MSFT or
> Adobe currently offering web browsers with on/offline persistence, are you?
> When Apollo ships it will then compete with the Mozilla offering, in that
> regard.
>
> As others pointed out, (wrt MSFT/Adobe) the difference here is that because
> it's open source, others can use and leverage it. Just as Nokia, for
> example, used Apple's Safari/WebKit as the browser for their new generation
> of smartphones. In fact, Adobe uses the same Safari/WebKit as the HTML
> rendering engine for the upcoming Apollo! The same Safari/WebKit,
> incorporating <canvas>, is what powers OS X widgets, and soon iPhone
> widgets. Couple that with Mozilla's persistence for on/offline apps and
> you've got an incredible development platform that is multi-device, free and
> open source.
>
> > If IE and Safari and Opera don't follow suit along with all the other
> > screen readers out there, doesn't that mean that its just as closed as
> > anything else.
>
> That doesn't make much sense. As I explained above, Safari/WebKit is open
> source:
>
> <http://webkit.org/>
>
> where as IE is not. Even if something may not have larger marketshare that
> doesn't make it "closed" when it's obviously "open".
>
> > HTML which was never meant to be an application development environment.
>
> This is an oft-repeated phrase devoid of reality. The original notions of
> what HTML (and you should really be talking about HTTP here, too) could be
> has of course changed drastically. An unbelievably rich and multi-billion
> dollar ecosystem of commerce, entertainment, information and data is run
> globally over HTML. Unmatched by anything else for convenience and ubiquity.
> And that *is* precisely the strength of HTML: adaptability and
> expandability.
>
> > Web applications are a sorry excuse of a hack that have use scalability
> > issues.
>
> That's utter nonsense. You can pick any technology and make similar
> comments. Take Flash, for example. Its text handling, indexing, large grid
> data handling, vector-to-bitmap conversion/caching, just to cite a few, have
> been "sorry excuse of a hack that have use scalability issues." Is Adobe
> dealing with those issues with Apollo? Sure. Just as web browser folks are
> dealing with their own shortcomings, with canvas, Ajax and now persistence
> -- the subject of this thread!
>
> > Who needs Firefox 3?
>
> "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
> Kenneth H. Olsen, CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
>
> > Just b/c it is open source doesn't mean that it is ubiquitous
> > instantaneously.
>
> That's a strange straw man argument, since I never said anything about
> instantaneous ubiquity at all.
>
> In just a couple of years, for example, Firefox 1 and 2 have garnered a
> baseline of better than 10%, and in many key domains and some European
> countries 35%-40% share. Despite all odds and obvious lack of marketing
> resources. Today I can't imagine a web app that doesn't consider Firefox as
> one of its deployment platforms, other than a tiny cocoon of IE-only myopia.
> Just a couple of years ago that wasn't the case. Think about that. The days
> of one company taking half a decade to update its browser are over. So is
> the notion that the same company with the current browser dominance can
> dictate technology choices.
>
> > In all these years of your defense of HTML-based technologies, you
> > never explained why it is good to do HTML.
>
> The answer is self-evident: the web. Used by a billion people.
>
> > You explained why you can do, but not why is it good to do? And "Openness" is
> > not enough of an answer.
>
> HTML (and HTTP) can't do everything. Neither can anything else. HTML can
> solve a gigantic range of problems. And its shortcomings are being
> eliminated year by year: yesterday Ajax and canvas, tomorrow persistence,
> soon perhaps vector graphics and GPU acceleration. And so on.
>
> ----
> Ziya
>
> Heterogeneity happens.
>
>
>
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-- 
David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/