« Googlers oogle over Bio-Diesel | Main | The Apprentice 2: Andy's Alamo »
November 30, 2004
My Bet for PC client application development
I have been seeing quite a few plans recently for client development environments. The latest one was for a toolkit to make developing and deploying java applications on PC clients easier for an enterprise. I don't get it. The browser is such a good and ubiquitious development environment. Why use Java on a PC? I understand Java on the phone where resources are severely constrained and the browser is too heavy. But resources are not constrained on the PC. I also don't understand why people write VB apps for the PC, but that is another story. So here is one of my meta investment bets. The vast majority of client development on the PC will be done in the browser. Now I haven't decided if that is IE or Firefox or something else, but I do believe it is the browser. Microsoft had better watch out for Firefox. It is the first browser to actually get double digit share against IE in years. And it is more standards based than IE. Normally Msft would swat Firefox like a fly, but in the current regulatory environment it is much harder to do. Look for microsoft in increase it's integration of IE and the server extensions to keep the lock. And .NET framework (which of course will be much better supported in IE). But Firefox does offer an interesting alternative to IE. Keep an eye on it.Posted by Martin at November 30, 2004 10:51 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.nwventurevoice.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1584
Comments
It's interesting that you are seeing activity in this area. Reminds me of when I first started doing web consulting back in 98. The big argument back then was web vs. client/server. Of course the web had all the hype in the world, but client/server had all kinds of nifty user interface options unavailible in the browser at the time (Java has yet to catch up). Also, the client/server stuff had better dev environments (for the most part. I used WebObjects which was really nice for web dev). Things like 4D and (god forbid) VB offered a lot of UI out of the box that was hard if not impossible to do in straight client side web dev. I remember porting spell checker functionality from 4D to WebObjects. Getting the misspelled words to highlight in the browser required a trip back to the server or some really nasty javascipt. Either way the client side stuff was better.
Of course the web won out in the end. Not for any superior UI reasons, but because the common interface on the data and connection (xml, http) meant that you could string together applications and data stores much easier. The web service hype was pretty much the death knell for client server based enterprise apps.
On the consumer side things are a bit different. Sometimes you need functionallity that you can't get straight from the browser. I'm suprised that Macromedia hasn't really pressed this with Flash. Java is IMHO pretty crappy for client side dev. Sure you can launch it from the browser and it's cross platform but it's still bloated and crufty. .NET is interesting but will fail because of the MS lockin (my guess). So, my meta bet on client side dev would be whatever made development easy, integrated with existing backends and most importantly offered an extremely slick and responsive presentation to the client user. I'm not sure that such an environment exists yet, but I think the presentation will have to look like Flash, with the dev ease of .NET and the community and library support of Java.
Posted by: Toby 
at November 30, 2004 12:36 PM
Macromedia has two such beasts, products called Flex and Central, plus XUL, Bindows, Laszlo, and Vexi from others.
There's a continuum between pure browser and pure standalone app; just updating a window without HTTP request/response delay doesn't justify a standalone app (even if it launches from a browser). XUL and Flex are on the right track of letting the developer pick exactly where a service should be thick and where it should be pure browser.
Posted by: troy at December 2, 2004 8:04 PM
Interesting, I'll have to check out XUL and Flex. I wonder about the consistency for the end user of having pages with various states of "applicationess". If it stops people from hacking ugly Javascript though, it can only be a good thing.
Posted by: Toby at December 3, 2004 1:42 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)