[Sigia-l] RIA: the wrong tree?

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Ziya Oz
> Sent: 24 May 2007 06:25
> To: SIGIA-L
> Subject: [Sigia-l] RIA: the wrong tree?
> 
> "On more than a few occasions<most recently in the context of 
> Avalon [Windows Presentation Foundation]<I¹ve observed here 
> that both IT admins and end-users prefer browser-based apps 
> to traditional compiled clients, for everything except 
> content creation. Every time, I get emails and incoming 
> pointers from people saying 'You just don¹t get it, the Web 
> interfaces are so tired, we really need a richer UI 
> paradigm.' The interesting thing is that these reactions are 
> always<every time, without exception<from developers. Not 
> once has an end-user type person written in saying they 
> wished they could have a richer interface like the kind they 
> used to have in compiled desktop apps."
> 
> So says Tim Bray, co-inventor of XML, currently at Sun:
> 
> <http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/11/03/>
> 
> Is he right?

While this is plainly a troll, I would of course say the answer is no. "End-user type" people have no reliable capacity to imagine user interfaces, and the idea that UI designers need to wait for such people to ask them to design things is of course tripe.

Nice weather we're having in London by the way. I was thinking of taking a trip to the Lake District this weekend.

Jonathan




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