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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."
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.
;-)
Isn't that what started the downfall of browsers in the first place? The fact that malicious code could be executed client side by attackers through websites? I have a feeling that either the quote isn't written in its entirety or was modified in some way that changed what Rasmussen originally intended. I really doubt that someone of his level wouldn't acknowledge the dangers in doing what that quote proposes.
"It's quite good," he grudgingly admitted.
Luckily Google came out with it first so Microsoft again looks like the one copying what others are doing - right?
I don't know if I like the idea of taking browsers to the limit when it comes to advertising and pop-ups.
Before people start complaining, it is important to remember that google maps is still at this juncture considered beta. Of course it has some bugs; that's inherent in the "beta" distinction. Surely, though, we ought to be suitably impressed by the progress made by google. Until they came along, we had few real innovators.
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
I think the answer to all of IE's problems is to give it MORE access to my PC.
But the real issue here is "the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained". Thin clients, security, cross-platform compatibility and consistency... these are the driving factors for the new Internet. As more and more people move to W3C standards, etc... Microsoft will lose their strangelhold on the market that has been littered with alternate, proprietary technologies that no one wants and no one really needs (ActiveX, .NET, Microsoft BOB [:)] and join the rest of the world. Microsoft is not going anywhere anytime soon, but they can't grow by being different from the other 10% (and climbing) of the market. The browser may be the great equalizer.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. It ends up being a 3rd company, Google, a non-participant in the browser war who comes along and pushes the envelope. What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market? I think Google's play nice strategy is paying more dividends than MS's destroy all competitor strategy.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
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.
One thing where MSIE excels over Firefox is exactly providing totally unrestricted access to all the system resources of the client's system, for any website developer/programmer, even without need for confirmation from the user. Although Microsoft swears by God that this feature will be removed from IE7...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
yes, his advice is sound, and his work backs it up.
but using bleeding edge technology on browsers is much harder for a lonely coder / small team. how much money / time / man hours do you think google had to get around the fact that ie can use VML and firefox png + a linear description?
...and there is no software for users to install.
Except for, maybe, a web browser?
It doesn't come from browser elves, you know...
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Everybody to the limit, google maps is to the limit...
I said co-ome on fghwgads!
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
to the limit!
No, Vern. They just let him in.
I am leaning towards things like Ajax for my future web devel. Look at the way 'Google Sugest' or even the spellcheck in Gmail works; it's feels like it's a desktop app, there's no pausing to download a plugin or anything. Bringing more of a desktop response to web apps is going to be where it's at in the future, and I think Ajax is the one to watch.
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
And to begin today's Google worship service, please open to page 152 of your hymnal. Let's begin
"Amaaaaazing Google.... is a search engine
That helps a geek like meeeeeeee
Iiiii once was lost, in the interweb
But now you've show the waaay
T'was Sergey who made the Google god
And Larry who helped him ooooout
How precious was that interface
So simple yet so compleeeeeeet
Through many popups, porn and 404's,
We have already brooooowsed
T'was Google that brought us safe thus far
and Google will lead us home.
Google has promised more to me
Like gmail, maps and blogs.
They own all of our web dayayata
But Google "does no evil"
When we've been browsing for ten hours
and don't know how to thinnnnnnk
we'll log onto Slashdot again
to hear more about Goooooogle."
-- Pastor Google
"Slashdot -- Serving freethinkers since never"
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Isn't that what started the downfall of browsers in the first place? The fact that malicious code could be executed client side by attackers through websites?
Define "downfall". Web usage isn't exactly declining, malicious code or no.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Support for IE7 is already broken? ;)
If you "embrace bleeding edge technology", don't come crying when you get cut by it. Bleeding edge technology tends to mean just that, it is not as reliable as traditional technology.
...", however, your customers probably won't get your point, when "the rest of the web", "just works."
When your application crashes 20% of your customer's browsers, you can of course say, "But that's not my problem. They should have upgraded to the latest version of the browser, and
It would be nice if they supported SVG. Sure its not native in most browsers yet, but its on its way and in the meantime there is Adobe's SVG plugin. Opera has support, Firefox should have it by 1.5 and KHTML has it in the works.
SVG is a W3C approved standard. Adobe has more marketing oriented description of the technology.
Other than Microsoft is anyone else using VML?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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
IE already has this "install on demand" where a user has to confirm to allow a certain application to be installed via the browser.
The problem is though, many clueless users click the thing that makes it go away (cause they were promised something good before they clicked a link) which is the accept option. (certainly on pages which are persisting and force a page-reload until the user confirms) Allowing things to be installed which rather shouldn't be allowed.
A confirmationbox wont ever prompt you "Would you want to allow us to take over your system and do bad things with your PC?" "yes" - "no"
(many users would hit the "yes" if they were told they'd get a nice game in place for it, or that MSN will send 0.01$ to a sick child somewhere in a place unknown if they click the "yes" option.)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
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)
No. Many users never become un-stupid. I don't say "smarter", because many of the stupidest users are smart people - doctors, lawyers, etc - that feel they shouldn't *have* to learn, and often take a point of pride that they haven't learned it and instead can command someone else to fix it.
Much like many people, for whatever reason, take pride in the fact that they never conquered math.
The world in general will remain stupid; you have to code around it.
They should all conform to standards. Yes in and in that perfect world we'd also have standard units of measurement; currencies; plug sockets; sides of the road to drive on!
Blaming Google for Microsoft bugs? If this is not an isolated case just on your machine then surely it is MS who is to blame for buggy CSS/javascript/whatever feature it is that crashes IE. Its not that Google code is buggy, it runs and shows you the maps, it is IE that slows down and eventually falls over.
This "blame the user" mentality is a major factor in why so much software sucks. Whatever the system, if most users of that system do the wrong thing, it's the SYSTEM's fault!
Like it or not, computer users' environment is one where they are asked repeatedly to confirm things unnecessarily. Probably hundreds of times a day for some. Of course uers will stop reading the messages and just click OK, that's the rational thing to do.
To steal a formula from the US defense secretary, we need to design systems to work for the users we have, not the users we would like to have.
What's a sig?
Acutally NASA was first to come out with this as a part of their World Wind / Land Sat. Open Source application (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/). World Wind is much more advanced than googlemaps (don't get me wrong I love googlemaps) as it uses many different datasources. Some features of World Wind include a 3D Engine, Blue Marble,Landsat 7,SRTM, MODIS,Globe and Landmark set. And if you don't like how World Wind works - well then download the source and change it.
Now I'm not completely against the idea of using some sort of file writing, but I think it's going to have to be of the most restricted degree. No writing to the registry, no writing to any sort of system directory, perhaps restricted simply to XML and plain text. Even then, I would imagine that unless the programmers are exceedingly cautious, holes would end up in the code. Something like that would have to be done with the greatest care, and at this point, considering the flaws that are on browsers already, I don't know if I want them to have the native ability to write to my filesystem.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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."
:D
SO THATS WHY the blue line won't print in Exploder, but will when I use firefox. Thanks slashdot!
-lo
It really depends on the type of user IMO.
I've developed quite some professional software packages. The users to-be are involved in the process as they will have to work with the system. You just don't want them to lose time and get frustrated cause your software doesn't feel intuitive or has unnecessary confirmations or steps to have a simple action done. (which action might occur quite frequent in a day. It starts as a small frustration and eventually they HATE the thing, yet are forced to keep using it cause it has cost alot to design. Which could've been just a simple placement of a button or some 20 extra lines of code for you.)
But mostly they KNOW what they want and how they want it... And are willing to read through your manual to in the end work more efficient and save resources.
Joe doesn't seem to be willing for that. The "target user" and their desires is as well a more illusive subject when it comes to internet applications which are going to be used by millions or billions.
The whole "security"-aspect as well has spawn these applications which try to dumb down terminology, in an attempt to have Joe decide on complex actions to who the concept of that action in completely lost.
My tutor taught me; "If you design software, always take in account that a user will do everything he or she can do wrong, but never make them feel they're mothered by your application. Mother them without them knowing.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Having developed all kinds of web apps since '96 for the exact reasons given in the article (simply the most convenient platform for distributed applications) I have learned that "that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space" is not the most limiting aspect of web app development.
The most limiting aspect comes from one of the web's strengths, that it's based on a very simple request-response protocol. This means that you can't update the browser from the server. Instead of the server sending an event to the browser when something needs to change in the user interface, the UI needs to regularly ask the server if anything has changed. The consequence is the irritating, frequent page updates in web chats and similar applications, and "unnecessary" consumption of bandwidth.
This is why you need to use Java or Flash for more advanced applications. Then you can do pretty much anything, but the client also gets a whole lot thicker, and you can't use the web UI API shared by all browsers (form widgets, basically), which is one of the reasons web apps are so convenient to make.
I'm not saying this is something that should be "fixed," the request-response protocol is generally a good thing (and very unlikely to change anyway). I'm just saying that this is the big difference between designing web apps and desktop applications.
I protest the way you associate dogs and advertisers. Dogs have served humanity for millenias, helping hunters feed their families and guarding the results of their masters hard labor from those that would take it away. Dogs, especially bloodthirsty attack dogs, are not something advertisers keep, they are something that you keep on your property to keep the advertisers away.
Unfortunately, recent technological advantages have given the advertisers an opening past the guard dogs, with ad banners, email spam and telephone terror. However, dogs have proven to be very adaptable, and are quickly gaining the neccessary skillset to perform their job in modern society. Already they hunt drugs instead of mice and explosives instead of rabbits; I predict it won't take long until they gain sufficient computer skills to safeguard their master in his journeys in the Information Superhighway, barking ad banners apart, herding spam from the inbox to trash and breaking the neck-equivalents of viruses between their slavering jaws of digital teeth.
Indeed, dogs do not deserve to have their reputation tarnished by being associated with advertisers; please refrain from such baseless mudslinging in the future.
And in any case it is unadvisable to feed children to dogs; small finger bones may stick in their throats and choke them to death.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Sure. PNG is just a bitmap format, so you can put whatever image you want in it. You draw the lines in whatever configuration you need, then anti-alias the edges. The best part is the support for alpha channel, meaning the lines are smooth regardless of what the background is.
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.