Browser as Platform (was DesignBais - Impressive)


Luke Webber wrote:
Tony Gravagno wrote:

Couple added points: Consider the evolution of the medium. The
internet browser was designed to be used to surf across pages and
sites - which is why we have Forward, Back, Stop, and Refresh buttons.
Business applications simply don't work like that, as we all know, and
we would never want someone to use those buttons in a real app. We
only put internet-based business apps in the browser because people
have adopted this as the universal client. DesignBais and other
products in this category are for building applications, not websites.
The fact that the developer and end-user use a browser is a matter of
convenience, and that shouldn't be confused with the real purpose.

FWIW, I honestly don't understand how this current "browser as the
platform" fad got started, but I sincerely wish it would wither and die
very, very soon. As platforms go, the browser is a total load of crap,
and the dominant browser in the market is the worst of the lot!

I dragged my feet with "real applications" on web platforms until the
end of 2004 and then early 2005 with the "AJAX craze." Some fads are
just that, but I think this one will actually turn the browser into the
perferred application run-time container.

I have been using gmail, writely for word processing, and am now
testing out google spreadsheets. In general, these tools are very
useful and usable. They require only a browser and an internet
connection. That's it.

AJAX also holds the promise of letting us write UI's that give the user
the benefits of our character interfaces with its responsiveness plus
the ease of use, no training necessary, of the 90's GUI's because of
the asynch services architecture. It isn't yet _easy_ to write
really-satisfying applications that run in a browser, but the
popularity is going to explode, not go away any time soon.

Of course I could be wrong. But you wouldn't believe how much effort
it was to convince my colleagues that the internet was going to be huge
after I saw Cello, followed by lynx and Mosaic. I did a talk in 1993
about database-backed web sites (using Mosaic, predating both Netscape
and IE). I'm doing AJAX talks now. My track record might have a
little dent in it by picking Java, which might be hugely successful but
is still not easy for software development IMO. So, time will tell.
Cheers! --dawn

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