On my way home today I was listening, as always, to one of the many podcasts that I subscribe to. In this particular instance, I was listening to podcast #11 of the stackoverflow.com podcast hosted by Jeff Attwood and Joel Spolsky. The podcast follows the development of stackoverflow.com, but turns largely into a general chat about web technologies and their use.
What I was listening to specifically was a chat between the two answering a question from a listener asking about what they thought of Silverlight. Generally what they were saying was correct (as I see it) except for one point. Joel pointed out that he thought flash and silverlight weren’t great for apps online due to factors such as the inability to bookmark pages, copy and paste text etc etc. He was advocating that web applications were best based in an AJAX interface, it any interaction was required.
Joel then went on to say that he did not believe that Flash or Silverlight would be adopted for online applications as they were distinctly “un-webby”, giving you more of a rectangle in a browser window that tried to be a desktop instead. Both Joel and Jeff agreed that this would prevent mainstream adoption of Flash and Silverlight for online apps.
However, as you may have predicted, I disagree with this. The reason for this is down to one fundamental part of their argument. For me, the web is a connected set of applications: browsers, email clients, ftp clients etc etc; all providing different services in different ways. One new element to the party is that of internet-connected applications, which is exactly where I see flash and silverlight winning over anything else. The problem isn’t the un-webbiness of the rectangle in the browser, the problem is that the browser is built to suit paradigms that are now several years old, and a bit behind the times. For instance, when was the last time you wanted to create a bookmark in an application other than your browser?
I see tools such as Adobe’s AIR changing the web by quite a margin, dropping the browser back to a pure surfing device. OK, you might have a very website orientated app (such as Google) which will always be best suited to AJAX and the browser, but others such as eBay make make more sense as a proper standalone internet-connected application (as the San Dimas development is trying to show).
For now though, we are definitely caught in a tricky place where technologies like AIR and WPF are very new and everyone is figuring out exactly what you can do with these new tools. As experience from the development community increases, as well as interest from prospective clients, I believe the internet will start to change into something very different to the one you are familiar with today.
On the Flash side, Flex 3 has deep linking support to allow for traditional bookmarking and history management. Also, Flash 10, recently released into beta, promises much improved text management. I would assume Silverlight has also addressed these items, or will very soon. So, to the main points of theirs you provide, they seem seem like a non-issue.
In terms of what is “webby,” I think it is users and stakeholders demand’s that will shape what the web looks like in the years to come. For my money, I am betting on client side runtimes, like Flash and Silverlight, as this provides them with “richer” experiences than traditional browsers technologies can provide.
I agree with the argument that the ““un-webby”-ness of Flash and Silverlight make them unsuitable for certain applications. What I don’t agree with is that AJAX represents an alternative that solves these problems. Most advanced AJAX apps suffer from all of the same issues as Flash and Silverlight (bookmarking/back button issues, lack of “spider”-ability, etc.) and I find it disingenuous on the part of many AJAX proponents to argue otherwise.
Thanks for the reality-check, Neil. I can rationalize those positions, based on what I’ve read from Jeff and Joel in the past.
Talking about “bookmarking” or “copy/paste” here in 2008 shows that the person speaking hasn’t listened to others in the past — and they’ll now instruct others upon such scant knowledge.
“How do you bookmark a JavaScript app’s state?” is the same question as for a SWF app (although bookmarking isn’t the only way to serialize application state). “Copy/paste” is at the creator’s discretion.
Same with the “browser rectangle” call but to lesser degree… WMODE has enabled irregularly-shaped compositing and event-handling, but it’s been the browser variances which have confused so many about this since Netscape 3. Player has always taken advantage of these browser connections as they’ve become available, but it’s a long, slow, uneven road to wait for congruency in browser implementations.
I agree with you 100% that we now have a variety of network-aware types of client runtimes. The odd thing about this debate is that in-browser runtimes and desktop network runtimes both date back to the time of Netscape 2.0. I think many of the browser-supremacists have a briefer experience, just in-browser, and so don’t know that both technologies have been growing over time. Mobile/embedded experience will help expand that worldview too.
Jeff and Joel both have good things to say. But we have to sift the wheat from the chaff. If they’re objecting with vague “unwebby” based on bookmarking, copy/paste, and redraw areas, then I wonder if knowing the truth would change their opinion.
tx, jd/adobe
I completely agree with you about the abilities of flash-based applications and that the problems occuring due to its implenetation I am sure will dissappear in a couple of years when people adopt in their mind and financial issues to that far-developing technology though i think it will inevitably give birth to another bunch of serious obstacles. Since there is no limits in perfection.