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The Blurring Line Between PC and Web
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Feb 25, 2008 08:05 AM
from the battle-for-hearts-and-minds dept.
from the battle-for-hearts-and-minds dept.
The NYTimes has a feature about software development systems that move the Web offline and desktop applications online, with a focus on Adobe Air, which will be released tomorrow. The article has quotes from the developer behind Microsoft's Silverlight (he was a colleague at Macromedia of Adobe's Air guy), and from the head of the Mozilla Foundation about their online/offline offering, Prism.
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Translation (Score:2, Informative)
he was a colleague at Macromedia of Adobe's Air guy
For people who would like that translated into English, he worked at Macromedia with a guy that worked on Adobe Air.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Funny, I interpreted that as "cleaner with a camera and access to the Air guy's notes"
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Huh. I interpreted that as "Microsoft employee posing as a janitor with a camera and access to the Air guy's notes" or, alternatively, as "Miguel De Icaza in a janitor's suit."
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Security nightmare? (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only one who frowned and thought about the security issues, when reading that?
Re:Security nightmare? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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I've been following AIR since beta 1, and despite my initial excitement, I can tell you that the last few releases have illustrated Adobe's extraordinary dedication to the principle of CYA. To the point of destroying the platform's flexibility.
One way to develop an AIR application is to use HTML/CSS/JavaScript. In beta 1, you could use DOM injection to add new <script> elements pointing to outside sources, and they'd execute within the scope of the application. This made it possible (trivial even)
Re:Security nightmare? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Security nightmare? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it would lock me out of my data. A lot of places I work I have no internet access (not even via mobile -- not allowed to use one in some locations, and I've not found a way to access the net when riding the London tube). I deal with the issues of having data available wherever I am the easy way -- I keep anything I might need on my laptop, and synch to a server when I get back to base. If there's anything I've forgotten, or I need to check email, then I need to find an internet connection. Works anywhere this guy's solution will work, and a lot of other places besides, and I don't need to buy anything new.
Maybe I'm a luddite, but I don't see the point in moving stuff onto the web that's better placed on one's desk or laptop.
Parent
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Sure, if your application is not very "self-contained", and requires constant access to the internet to work, then you have problems in "no-internet-access" zones. Too tightly integrated to work all the time.
But, as one can get automatic updates to Vista, XP, and browsers such as Firefox, we have the reverse going on, in that updated code is placed on your computer for various, mostly useful purposes. Done all in
You can never remove the need for offline. (Score:4, Interesting)
As for having the web offline... The big thing about the web is the links between the various pages. Using a tool such as HTTrack might well enable you to keep the links between pages, thus letting you have the experience of browsing multiple domains using your web browser, even when not connected. But most people just "save as" which gives a different experience depending on if you save the full page or just the HTML, and depending on which browser you use. (Thus guaranteeing that not all the links will work.)
Anyway, I would love to be able to take all the pages that I have already saved and quickly and easily form them into some sort of net, doesn't anyone have an automatic tool to do this?
(Oh and I need to both register and have cookies enabled to see the article. Fuck that. Can someone post the full text?)
Re:You can never remove the need for offline. (Score:4, Informative)
True, but the gap between online an offline will blur: desktop apps that query online databases, and web kits that install through the web AJAX-like applications with local caches. The user will no longer be aware of the browser methods to persistently store content found online.
As for archiving visited pages, the best solutions I've found are through Firefox extensions. I've tried [[Google Notebook]] and [[ScribeFire]] (both take care of online storage and thus multi-PC synchronization), though I've heard wonders of [[Zotero]](1).
(1) I think we're not in Wikipedia anymore... you'll have to google them.
Parent
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True, but we are getting to the point where offline information is becoming useless in a world where information always changes. Lets take a stock broker for example. Saving last year history of a particular mutual fund in a local file is needed for long term study, but when he needs to know the current offering price during the active trading day he is going to be a ve
Laptop anyone (Score:5, Interesting)
Cloudy thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
The future is always on, always networked, and software developers who spend the vast amounts of time and effort required to replicate little portions of their database or webservice in a "local" mode are going to be eaten alive by those who simply depend on the ever increasing reliability, performance, and ubiquity of the Internet.
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There are limits to the amount of bandwidth that will be available at all times. As more bandwidth and higher speeds become available, so to will more uses for that bandwidth and speed be dreamed up. Right now 20% (http://w
Expensive thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I would very much love to live in your future of free high speed connections that are always there, the future is looking like pay per gig to clamp down on bittorrent, recover costs for universal monitoring of traffic (without need for pesky warrants), and milk people for all they're worth. "Oh, too bad your line went down when the phone company screwed up and you didn't notice when your router swapped over to the 3G cellular backup, that'll be $54,000 this month."
Here's a tip: The US is not the entire world, and companies sell to the rest too. Try telling everyone here in Africa that "in 5-10 years it will be virtual [sic] impossible to go 'offline'", I'm sure it'll be good for a laugh.
Parent
Re:Expensive thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even in the US it's laughable. There are huge chunks of the country where there is no cellular service. I know a lot of Slashdot's readership doesn't go camping or drive through the middle of nowhere, but it's important to realize that not everyone lives like that. Using a network to get data is great. Depending on it as the sole source of data for things like navigation (or worse yet, the navigation application itself) is stupid.
Parent
what does AIR/Silverlight offer that is new/better (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:what does AIR/Silverlight offer that is new/bet (Score:5, Funny)
Well, they enable lock-in and generate revenue for the companies that own those technologies.
Oh, wait... You meant for us? Nothing...
Parent
Re:what does AIR/Silverlight offer that is new/bet (Score:5, Interesting)
Mostly more control and better programming. OpenLaszlo [openlaszlo.org], which is briefly mentioned in TFA, is an XML/javacript based programming language which compiles to Flash and/or DHTML. It includes a bunch of APIs for things like layout, data binding and server communication, and is one of the easiest prototyping tools I've ever used.
The slogan is "write once, run everywhere", which may be familiar to some older Slashdotters, but it's not too far off the truth. I'm using it now to develop auditing apps for the Nokia N800/810 internet tablets, and it's impressively simple.
If you're interested, I'd suggest you download it and try it, or check out the tutorial [openlaszlo.org]. It's very easy to get started, and the tutorial compiles and runs your code online.
Parent
Re:what does AIR/Silverlight offer that is new/bet (Score:2, Informative)
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Now back to our normal program...
The ground continues to shift under our feet (Score:2, Insightful)
Mainstream applications are moving onto the browser. Everything is changing as a result. I, for one, am having a hard time predicting the future. Does this development, for instance, presage the death of the corporate IT department?
The other day I was having a chat with our school's senior management. I observed that many apps were moving onto the browser and that this would make it easier for
Give generously, help find a cure (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Speaking of which... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://a.viary.com/ [viary.com]
Anyone know how sluggish these apps are? (Score:5, Interesting)
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A downloaded script will never be faster than a local compiled application of the same functionality.
The problem with Adobe AIR (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with AIR is that it requires "porting". A website won't just work in AIR, and once it's been ported, it will no longer work as a regular real website, as it'll have dependencies on Adobe AIR. This effectively means that if you as a developer want the best of both worlds, you'll need to maintain two version of your application.
The approach Mozilla is taking with Prism on the other hand (which is also being taken with Bubbles and Fluid, with standardization between these in the early stages of being talked about), is to make available small features which allows a real website to gain some properties on the level of a desktop application when run from Prism, without stopping to work as a website. This is the progressive enhancement approach, which helps keep the web open (any browser can continue to run the application). It's very important for developers to realize this distinction, less the web gets locked into a proprietary realm. (both Microsoft and Adobe would love nothing better than to be the sole gatekeeper to this realm.)
Re:The problem with Adobe AIR (Score:4, Informative)
Websites can continue to have their needs well served by HTML and JS.
Web applications that need to offer rich client experiences without succumbing to browser compatibility issues can choose to use Flex (which yields SWFs as well). Those same apps can run in the browser and with minimal rework be re-deployed as desktops via the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).
The AIR instances will the have the benefit of using connected and disconnected modes (in addition to having desktop icons, file I/O, systray access, etc...).
AIR is an alternate to the browser-hosted flash engine. Its the desktop container for the flash engine.
Parent
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One of the main web-safety concerns I have these days is with XSS and cookie stealing. It'd be pretty nice if I could keep instances of my browser complet
Three versions! (Score:2)
Three versions... don't forget Silverfi^H^Hlight.
no problem to come up with excuses (Score:2)
Local LAMP so different? (Score:2, Interesting)
With such a set up it is would be very easy to set up some kind of SYNC type system between the locally (client) hosted lamp set up and online services. I am sure some kind of framework / web app could be quickly created that would allow an online and offline mirror of the site to operate.
This system is basically r
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Joyent have also developed Slingshot [joyent.com], built on top of Rails, which allows you to provide your web app as an offline desktop application. Again, this all synchs up with the servers once you get back into ran
Also local WAMP and file:/// (Score:3, Informative)
On the WinXP side, I've been using local web hosting with XAMPP for development for around a year. Works well from a USB drive.
Lately I've also been looking at personal wikis as a kind of outliner on steroids tool. At least one launches its own micro web server and uses your choice of browser as the interface, with the scripting done server-side (but on your machine). It can run from a USB drive. I've forgotten the name of this guy, because I've been focusing on another one:
TiddlyWiki uses client-side Jav
The Story is Already Old (Score:2)
It's not this is revolutionary. It's part of the evolution -- not sudden at all. Let's look at some examples...
Consider how long we've all been able to browse content offline after seeing it online. Or, how we've been able to start and stop uploading (FTP) when connections go up and down. The "blur" between local and network has been happening for a while.
Oh, and another example: Microsoft Sharepoint. I'm not a huge fan, but non-geeks can't really tell if they are local
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The most stupid trend in computing. (Score:2, Insightful)
What a needless waste of bandwidth running large applications, such as office applications on the internet would be. If every application ran from the internet, there would be little bandwidth l
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What a needless waste of bandwidth running large applications, such as office applications on the internet would be. If every application ran from the internet, there would be little bandwidth left for anyone.
Sure, but if no application used the internet, you wouldn't have posted this. There are many applications where it makes sense to have some sort of centralized storage: blogs, email, newsgroups, etc. There are others where the internet is at least needed as a communication medium: email (again), Instant Messaging, bittorrent, etc. There are advantages to interconnectedness.
It's also worth noting that in many cases what they want to do with the technology is to extend the experience that currently only
Snore... (Score:2)
Umm. How long do "movie schedules" actually stay relavent when offline?
It took data stored on the Internet and used it interchangeably with information on a PC's hard drive.
Wow, dude invents "caching", film @ 11.
Am I just getting old... (Score:3, Interesting)
s/SUN/ADOBE/g
reality check (Score:2)
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I mean, it's not a money decision on the scale of buying your choice of player and a ton of movies.
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Seriously, why do we need any of them to triumph? Let's forget the proprietary lock-in aspect of these technologies, let's consider that they make your page much less accessible and platform dependent (platform dependency on a web page sounds so awkward or bizare to me, really, who would want such a thing?) The fact that they screw people with disabilities, is another problem, but let's forget of all those, and remember that such pages would be slugish, please.
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It's not going to work soon anywhere (Score:2)
I personally would love to have FIOS or some other level of service that would allow me to migrate partially online, but honestly at the rate things are going I don't expect this stuff to gain any momentum anytime soon, at least not in the US.
It's not going to get momentum elsewhere any time soon, either, for the same reason that those ISPs you mentioned are starting to get scared and adopt packet shaping, and that your chances of getting a cell phone line at 12:05am on 1 January are pretty slim: there is this little thing called bandwidth, and it needs to become a great big thing (at a cost of billions of dollars of infrastructure) before the idea of everyone migrating to these on-line apps is even technically credible. And that's just for fi
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Seriously, though... Remember the times when we used to actually create?
As someone who spent much of today suffering a combination of Outlook, Powerpoint and Project rather than my usual helping of Visual Studio and Word... No, my memory of those times seems to have been erased, and replaced only by submission to the fact that all software today is **** together with a slow loss of the will to live.
On the bright side, this all gives me another few years to contemplate my pet "if only I had the time" project of developing actually good, actually useful software that does the