3 ms·
I've been pondering this question for a while and I'm beginning to believe that they will not become particularly widespread, and that it is foolish to solely r
by halo 19y ago
I've been pondering this question for a while and I'm beginning to believe that they will not become particularly widespread, and that it is foolish to solely rely on their success for any venture.
What these "RIA" toolkits lack is two things:
* a common, unified, pleasant look and feel. The web already has this, largely forced by the own limitations and the fact that developers now know what's sane and sensible, whereas these ugly RIAs have neither of those things and seem to be a haven for poorly thought-out applications and ideas. I've seen Microsoft showing muddled pseudo-MDI interfaces, flashy visual effects all over the place and all sorts, but none of these things actually stood out as something I'd /like/ to use. They remind me more of artist portfolio and promotional sites in Flash that no-one actually likes in the first place.
* a killer app. I've thought long and hard, but I can't actually think of anything significant (and positive) that these applications allow that the current combination of technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Flash) don't already. Yes, Silverlight provides for easier development, but were any revolutions single-handedly brought forward solely through having a more pleasant development environment rather than anything actually better for the end-user? Perhaps if Silverlight provided 3D acceleration for in-browser games it'd be a different story, as it is I'm struggling.
Adobe Flex is likely to just continue the success that Flash already has but will not make any great strides forward beyond Flash's current popularity (which I personally expect to wane as computer speeds and browsers continue to improve). Silverlight, despite all the resources that Microsoft are pushing into it, I can't see becoming widespread anytime soon, but equally it's unlikely to be abandoned by MS, so may just be left in limbo.
Of course, I probably regret these remarks in 12 months when Silverlight is the next big thing, but only time will tell but for now I remain unconvinced.
- wallflower 19y agoMy killer app idea for Flex. Mail-order catalogs are wildly successful. Online shopping is boring. Bring the catalog experience and add friend/social networking. Think beautifully-rendered catalog pages that turn, catalog pages that have embedded video, allow scribbled comments, tear-offs... If anyone is serious about this, maybe we can do a prototype. Land one major niche-catalog retailer and the rest will follow...
- halo 19y agoEither you have an exceptionally high opinion of your idea or you have a different definition of what a 'killer app' is than me. There's a huge gulf between a 'killer app' and a 'good idea', and not being one doesn't exclude the other. To me, a killer app is usually a single product that creates such a buzz around a new or previously underused technology or concept that causes a sudden almost universal take up by both users and developers and causes long-reaching paradigm shifts. Google Suggest did it with Ajax, Del.icio.us did it with tags, YouTube did it to online video, Wikipedia for wikis or even the web for the Internet. Not everything becomes popular thanks to 'killer apps' and some innovations are introduced more gradually (such as Flash), but they're somewhat less common and it's generally an uphill struggle before they're adopted.
- wallflower 19y agoI stand corrected. It is interesting that you suggest that Google Suggest did it for Ajax (I would argue that it was Google Maps that surfaced OWA-type no-page-refresh-updates). However, I think that Ajax, like Flash is a technology. The rest of the items in your list are more ideas/concepts (e.g. making it easy for the average person to use technology for their own purposes). YouTube - easy embedded videos - a difficult problem to solve - (Flash just happened to be the enabler). And we can argue that video is/was the killer app for Flash. Email was the original killer app (and still is). Maybe there isn't a killer app for Flash/Flex. Since it is more of a technology that supplements existing technology (OS integration) than a paradigm-changing thing.