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Google Maps Creator Takes Browsers To The Limit
An anonymous reader writes "Addressing a crowd of developers in Sydney today, Google Maps creator Lars Rasmussen encouraged them to embrace bleeding edge technology in browser software. He cited the example of how Google Maps can command Internet Explorer to use VML (Vector Markup Language by Microsoft) to display a blue line between geographical points, but use a PNG graphic format and a linear description for the Firefox browser." From the article: "Firstly, the Web allows rapid deployment and there is no software for users to install. It's also much easier to make sure code runs on multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows. The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained."
I don't know if I like the idea of taking browsers to the limit when it comes to advertising and pop-ups.
For all the Slash-Love Google gets here, I think it's important to point out that a company whose sole revenue model is advertising is advocating more control of system resources through the browser. I think Google's business model is too often overlooked here.
there is no software for users to install
Um weird, I had to install my operating system, and then I had to install Mozilla. How in the hell is he browsing the web without installing software?
I want to experience the self browsable web!!!!
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Heh, go tell that to Microsoft with the new "broker" process in Explorer 7. One story below this one.
Removing this "limit" may be a great thing for web developers, but it's also the only thing that keeps us and our computers from being controlled by them.
diegoT
is that why the map never prints correctly in firefox? (I can't be the only one who's noticed this)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'm talking about web content. When I refer to the thin client, I'm referring to a Pentium 233 in a coffee shop in Sierra Leone. Case in point: Google Maps VS NASA Worldwind. Within a year, the same functionality will be available on Google Maps.
As time goes on, the processing power of the "thin client" will grow to the point that 5 years from now, a JAVA compile will be a joke.
Alternatively, modify the VRML plugin to allow slapping bitmaps onto the polygons produced. You now have a pseudo-3D map that gives you a much clearer idea of relative heights and actual appearance.
Are there any other ways of doing this? Sure! Google could publish the specs for a new tag for drawing lines. >hr< already exists, so line-drawing code is already present. Google could add a tag >ar< which is just like >hr< but it would have four attributes - xloc, yloc (both expressed as either pixels or % of the image, starting from the top left corner), angle (expressed in degrees) and length (expressed in pixels or % of maximum length of a line with that start and angle).
This is where Google's muscle comes in. Google could publish a set of tags for making Google easier or more powerful, and most browser writers WILL implement them. Microsoft, to avoid losing people to other browsers, and Mozilla/Firefox because people will be filing bug reports on it until they do.
The W3C - and Microsoft - have forgotten the lessons learned over HTML 3.1. He who provides the content commands the tags.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just to reinforce the point that ActiveX/COM/.NET are important: there is no equivalent technology on Unix platforms that easily enables developers to share components across languages. One reason Windows is so successfull in the workplace is that it is trivial for a casual programmer to glue together many powerful components to create custom business applications.
The closest Unix comes is TCL and Python. These are the standard glue languages on Unix. But, using Python on Windows with COM really exposes how far behind Unix is. On Windows, you immediately have programatic access to almost every program installed on the computer. Its trivial to include an Excel spreadsheet in an application that loads data from a Web service, mixes it with a local Access database and uses VTK to render a fancy visualization. The same task on Unix is possible, but requires more effort and the UI controls are (for lack of a better term) clunkier (and that's all the user really cares about).
The Linux crowd really should put aside their predjudices and spend a few months writing Windows applications, just so they can understand what they're missing.
-Chris
Don't forget the cell phones. SVG Tiny would be a good way to get Google Maps access to a bunch of mobile browsers. If they can do it in VML, then it should be easy to do in SVG. SVG would be a whole lot simpler than the stuff they do for paths with PNGs in Firefox (imo).
more of the same on Twitter.
The OS developer. Someone, somewhere along the line, should have realized that one application rarely has the need to overwrite data created by another application. In fact, if you think about it, very few apps need to know that other apps exist. Common APIs exist for handling functionality that many apps need (TAPI, MAPI, OpenGL, etc) but how often does Mozilla need to overwrite Photoshop files?
We really need to sandbox everything. Steel sandboxes that simple email worms can't penetrate. There's no reason why everything needs to run in one shared space (even with memory and file protection, everything is still partly visible). This extends to inter-app protection. Why doesn't each firefox tab run separately and just dock into the display window with some form of IPC?
So really, the burden should be on platform developers. OSes, Browsers (especially like Firefox that are trying to be an application delivery system), and the like.