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In the Windows world, OLE and COM did things that you can only dream of in the Cloud world. OLE[0] allowed one application to embed content from another applic
by Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
In the Windows world, OLE and COM did things that you can only dream of in the Cloud world.
OLE[0] allowed one application to embed content from another application, without needing to know anything about the other application. It even had facilities to sort-of merge the UIs, so if you were editing a CorelDRAW drawing within your Excel spreadsheet you'd get a subset of the CorelDRAW toolbars and menus within your Excel window. All of this was done at runtime - there was no special programming in Excel to embed a CorelDRAW object.
This stuff actually worked and worked surprisingly well. It's unfortunate that we seem to have lost this.
I don't think we'll ever see this happen to the same extent. The only integrations will be ones that are specifically approved and developed, all N^2 of them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding
- tomc1985 9y agoOLE was and is brilliant. As a kid I always loved watching it contort to embed something ridiculous like Paint Shop Pro into Microsoft Word
- est 9y agoI hope DDE/OLE/COM+ and later DCOM could evolve to a next level: cross-computer embedding. e.g. During a conference, drag drop a certain part of UI from a remote computer for real-time demonstration. Even embed a content into an email and send it to a friend, as long as your computer stays on your friend can open part of your widget.
- dmd 9y agoThis was the promise of Lotus Notes. Sadly, the implementation and especially the UI dragged it down.