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

[Dave]

> If we wait for Longhorn to reach a sizeable userbase meaningful enough to
> deploy XAML-based RIAs that's another half a decade or so.
> 
> Meanwhile, XUL and MXML (Flash) are x-platform NOW and will be so half a
> decade from now as well. If numbers can be believed, Flash runtime is
> ALREADY deployed far more deeply than any variant of Windows now or Longhorn
> will be in half a decade.
> 
> Since I can't imagine an OS/platform not capable of fully participating in
> the web/Internet surviving in this day and age, your capitulation to XAML
> would effectively kill off pre-Longhorn Windows as well as Mac/Linux/etc.
> Maybe that's precisely what MS wants, but about the rest of the civilized
> world?

As you know I love Flash ... no doub there, so I won't argue against it.
the whole capitulation argument is an interesting one. 
1. Being named "David" I often feel compelled to play the underdog
game, but of late analysis needs to be done on that approach from a
cost benefit perspective. I mean, if I thought fighting the goliath
was going to yield me my own kingdom, I might consider, but I don't
think that is the case.

2. MS is in it for themselves, no doubt. So is everyone else though.
There are no altruists in this business and if IBM could switch roles
they woudl try. Oh they did! However, they had bad timing and got
caught. The fact that MS is a convicted monopoly abuser to me (and
lamely convicted at that) to me is the most distressing part. As I
said before I think that b/c the Internet and the technologies that
run over it are so important to 1st ammendment rights I actually
believe that they require international control and should not be
corporatized in the manner that they are, but hey the corporations
rule the world, no? I mean Gibson, Dyck and other distopic writers
have gotten that much right.

Back to what's most important to me ... users (I'll anser Dave's
question about "developer" as user in a separate e-mail.)

Choice is not a user benefit in this case. This is not about buying
cars or bicycles. They all basically do the same thing and adhere to a
set of standards. They just improve on those standards through
performance and features, but the standards themselves are unchanged:
blinkers, brake lights, headlights, steering wheels, gear shifts are
practically interchangeable for every vehicle in their interaction
design.

The computer industry needs to start doing the same for users. How? I
have no idea. but the proliferation of different standards is a
negative for users. Interroperability is at issue as well as economies
of scale that other industries have accomplished so well. This is why
Flash and XUL are not real solutions for me. B/c they themselves are
just alternative solutions. They don't interroperate and they cause
yet another layer of choice like Real vs. WMP vs. Quicktime.

Users don't care about these choices b/c while there are "features"
that each solution offers, it is the core that gets in the way from
even evaluating those extras fairly. Users REALLY don't care about OSs
or Browsers or technology. If Amazon.com ran perfectly well by
speaking to their machine and saying "Shop Amazon" and the Amazon
search and browser mechanism appeared on screen they would be happier
than having to open a web browser, to to the favorites menu or address
bar and find or type the address reference. Of course they would
probably say, "Shop Amazon for XXXXXX".

Basically, you think that MS is the problem, but I think they won and
I'm sick of fighting this fact and am well, just giving in. I have to
battle this chaos way too much and it is none too fun anymore. I said
it in 1997 and nothing has changed since then, we are in HTM(hell) and
we haven't left it.

BTW, I do not think that MS has not upgraded IE6 to cause stagnation,
but rather the stagnation of legacy requirements has caused MS to
avoid making too many changes, b/c the cost benefit ratio is week. I
bet 3 years ago if you asked develop community if they would change
their site to fit in more features, they would have probably gotten
the answer NO, whether they were W3C standards based or not. Why? b/c
for the developers it is just too much to do b/c they know that they
would still have to accommodate Netscape which is on a different track
and other browsers. I don't think it is so easy to just blame MS for
all the Internet's ills. It is responsible for many, but I also think
as a community we glorified the Web ad nauseum and it became a pattern
recording in the industry to continue to support old things.

Maybe it is the culture of MS that is to blame, but I don't see anyone
else helping the situation. Creating new standards doesn't help
either. Support old ones is also not helpful, so if we stuck here I'm
not sure we are doing anyone any good. I'm not sure I'm really doing
my job of advocating for my end users and I guess while people like
Ziya have been challenging these norms (pretty well from what it
appears), I feel like the IA community at large has done something
worse, which is to give up its total responsibility for the end-user
by capitulating to the stagnation.

What can WE do to move this problem forward? If the only options are
supporting the devil, or staying the status quo, we need to find other
options and if necessary lead the solution as best we can.

Back to Flash ... I'm a huge advocate for flash, but b/c it is built
on the plug-in architecture it is not viable for many compliant and
secure industries (maybe that is on purpose from MS). As a consumer
tool though it might be it, if we could get past the upgrade-phobia
and find better ways to coddle our users into upgrading (for their own
good). But for enterprise application development the blocking of
activeX and Java across the firewall is still a real problem.

-- dave