Online Ajax Pages The New Web Desktop?

SphereOfInfluence writes "With our existing models for operating environments aging badly, how do we manage our information and software as we get increasingly mobile and short on attention? In a ZDNet piece, Dion Hinchcliffe discusses the rise of the new dynamic, online, roaming Ajax desktops like Netvibes, Live.com, Protopage, and Pageflakes. Will concerns about privacy and reliability kill these or is this the wave of the future?"

Comments

Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Although cool and nifty, who is really going to want a remote desktop which governments can potentially access at their free will? Especially nowadays with lax wiretap laws and the like.

Re:Privacy

[javaman235]

I think the popularity of web based email answers that question

I'm not so sure it does. The difference is that my email goes over the internet whether I use outlook or gmail, but my journal never does...And I'm not so sure I feel comfortable having my journal online, but I do feel okay with having it on my box.

Re:Privacy

[Nosklo]

Although cool and nifty, who is really going to want a remote desktop which governments can potentially access at their free will?

People who have nothing to hide?

Re:Privacy

[Jaruzel]

Also, users that are savvy enough to run their own server typically don't have all the bullshit Windows problems, so they are constantly calling with some malware/shitware related problem.

You were doing so well... until you threw in a random anti-windows statement.

I run my own web servers at home, on my network, with forwarding from my internet facing router. These servers run Windows 2003. These servers do a variety of public and private web-serving. For a while I even ran a MUD server on another Windows box.

For those that don't have access to a copy of Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP's IIS Web Server implementation is more than adequate to serve several low traffic sites (including those with dyanamic content)

So, I resent your inferred statement that to have a workable at-home server solution it has to be be on a non-windows platform.

-Jar.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Although cool and nifty, who is really going to want a remote desktop which governments can potentially access at their free will? Especially nowadays with lax wiretap laws and the like.

The thing you need to realize is that the vast majority of people out there just aren't terribly concerned about privacy. Most folks figure their lives aren't interesting enough for a hacker/police/whatever to go digging into their email...and if it did happen, there's very little of importance to be found there. Maybe some love letters, or an embaressing photo...but most people don't have classified information going through their email.

Convenience is a very important factor these days. At my job we set up VPNs and VNC/RDP sessions left and right - because people want the convenience of being able to access their computer/work/data/programs from wherever they're at. Services like Log Me In and Go To My PC are insanely popular.

If you told the average user that they could use their computer from anywhere in the world through a web browser... That all their programs/documents/settings/whatever would all be there... That it would be just like sitting down at your PC at home/work, but from absolutely anywhere with Internet access... Most of them would leap at the opportunity, and privacy be damned.

Buzzword alert

[Viol8]

Oh dear, its only a short article and its got "leverage" and
"rich" (as in experience). Pass the sick bucket. Still, I
persevered. Not sure why I bothered. Seems like just another
snake oil "evangelist" (he missed that one) trying to flog yet
more CPU sucking eye candy that will have a large impact on your
computers power consumption but a small impact on how much more
usable the web will be. Is it just me? Is there really something
wrong with clear, simple HTML pages that load quickly without all
this flash/ajax/flavour-of-the-month-tool crap shoved in just to
please web fashion victims?

Re:Buzzword alert

[Viol8]

I don't want "REALLY COOL" "dude". I'm not 12. I just want
information. Google manages to present relevant information from
a couple of billion web pages with a simple HTML front end.
Why can't other sites manage it? Why do they have to resort to
some developers wet dream to get their info across? Because most
of them wouldn't know good usability design if it the dictionary
definition was stamped in red ink on their foreheads, thats why.

Re:Buzzword alert

[sleeper0]

just so you know, one of the primary reasons that the world caught on to what is now called AJAX applications is google's use of the technology - granted not on the search homepage but in several other big apps.

Re:Buzzword alert

[Viol8]

I wasn't talking about Gmail or maps. And yes the search page
uses javascript but so what. That takes no longer to load up
and run than HTML. And even overuse of javascript can be a pain.

If some people want to ultimately have their browser as some
kind of web based virtual computer thats up to them. But I don't
see why that sort of crap should be foisted upon the rest of us
who just want to look for stuff and do it quickly. I still have
to use dial up at home and I don't appreciate having to download
a 1 meg app just to view a friggin web page which could have been
rendered in HTML in a few kilobytes, albeit with a few less
poxy graphics (Boo bloody hoo).

Re:Buzzword alert

[Westley]

Do you have any examples of the 1MB apps you're talking about? Most AJAX usage I've seen has been really small.

As for doing things quickly - I totally agree, which is why I infinitely prefer the Google maps way of doing things to the "old" way where you were basically in the "North by a square, north east by a square, only show me 3x3 squares at a time" trap. Did you really find that more usable than Google Maps?

Jon

A partial solution

[JanneM]

I think Google and Gmail illustrate the limits of online apps (that would include Ajax as well as any other remote system). I see three basic issues:

* I (like many others) use mail as a general information storage system. And whenever I'm offline, that information is unavailable. And yes, offline still happens quite regularily - there's still plenty of trains, planes, trainstations and airports, hotels and conference venues that don't have it, have it but at ridiculous cost, or have it but some random component is down leaving everyone offline.

I need to have data cached locally - but if I'm going to have a local solution set up anyways I might as well go with that and avoid the hassle.

* If I leave data at Google (or some other off-site organization), my data integrity is only as good as their security. That is something I do not have any control over and (as has been demonstrated) even supposedly very security conscious companies regularily goof.

* Google and Yahoo have amply demonstrated a third issue: jurisdiction. If I have information stored with Google, I may suddenly be exposed to liability and possible data seizures in both my own country as well as Googles base country (USA at this time). If I am a company owner, do I really need the headache of reading up on data retention minutiae for a country on a different continent?

As a private citizen, there are today plenty of books and audio recordings that are in the public domain in Europe but not in the US. Also, rules about fair use are different. If I store an mp3 of an early Elvis recording in a service run by a company that is based in the US, will I get hit by a lawsuit, or have my (perfectly legal) recording deleted with no warning? I do not need that headache.

I think these kind of apps really will find their niche as internally run company-wide systems, where you have control, not primarily as the kind of third-party enterprises we usually talk about.

Re:A partial solution

[jetxee]

I would like to add to your three points (no offline availability, requirement for trust, jurisdiction issues) yet another three:

• Backup. I case of GMail I may do backup with POP. In case of general web-desktop service I will not have such an opportunity. This is close to the concept of lacking `local cache'.
• Permanence of service conditions. One may never be sure that the service he is using will remain available on the same conditions. I expect GMail to remain free, but I would not be amazed if any `no-cost' (or low-cost) web-desktop suddenly asks for some more compensation from me. They have my data. Why not?
• Choice of environment. Now to change my computing environment I just need to copy my data and install appropriate software for the new environment. Even if I change an OS, it is not much a problem. I expect, it would not be so easy to move between remote web-desktops. Even further, I expect, that those desktop may discourage moving from web-desktop back to the traditional computing.

Need an offline "backup" application

[broothal]

I used to think this would be the future, but my views on that has changed. Lately, it's been very obvious that any script-kiddie with control of a sufficient amount of compromised machines (zombies) can ddos any webserver, almost regardless of the capacity of the datacenter.

Reliability?

[cperciva]

Will concerns about privacy and reliability kill these or is this the wave of the future?

If you think reliability is likely to kill this, I have two questions for you:
1. When was the last time Google stopped working?
2. When was the last time Windows stopped working?

The simple fact is that a single centrally administered server farm is vastly easier to administrate -- and will be vastly more reliable -- than a hundred million home PCs, most of which are managed by people who are vastly less competent than the average server farm administrator. Of course, if Windows broke and your home PC isn't working, you won't be able to use it to connect to sites online; but this isn't much of a problem. People care far more about their data than their hardware; if all else fails, they can borrow a friend's terminal.

Privacy and security, on the other hand, are much more serious issues; but (sadly) I don't think they have much chance of stopping something like this. Computer security is something which most people simply don't understand.

Re:Reliability?

[killjoe]

Google stopped working when windows stopped working.

Something to think about who wears the pants in that relationship.

Re:Reliability?

[Vo0k]

Worse.

Google stopped working after last storm that broke my ISP's router.
Google slowed down to a crawl when I was delaying paying my ISP bills.
Google stopped working when the Ethernet plug got loose in the hub.
Google stopped working when power supply in my firewall box died.
Google stopped working while the ISP network was down for maintenance.
Google stopped working when the local DNS got poisoned.
Google stopped working when a neighbor was driving his car with broken ignition near the WiFi accesspoint.

Common home networks are too unreliable to base your desktop and mostly everything you do on them.

Re:On the whole they are closer to solution.

[killjoe]

Aaaah good old incompetent Sun and it's stupid management. Only if they had any foresight, will, and brains we would not all be hyping AJAX all to hell and be perfectly happy using applets and java web start. We would forever be saved from trying to shoehorn applications into a stateless publishing technology.

Too bad they could not figure out how to make AWT look nice, how to get swing into every desktop, how to make multipe applications run in the same VM, how to make it easy to build swing apps, how to make gui threading managable by humans, how to not make java web start be the butt ugliest thing in the face of the planet.

Instead we are forever doomed to try and build applications in XML and javascript quite possibly the worst combination of tools to build a applications ever invented by mankind.

Thanks Sun, I blame you, you could have saved us from all this madness but you just couldn't capitalize on the golden goose sitting in your barn.

online!=always available

[J0nne]

If you rely on webapps exclusively, you can't reach your information all the time. Your internet connection could drop out, or you could be someplace without an internet connection (wardriving might be easy, but I never find an open access point when I need one).

Webapps complement regular apps, they don't replace them. It's good that websites are finally feeling more like real applications, and it's nice to be able to reach your information from everywhere, but they'll never replace them completely.

Why does one technology have to kill the other technology? Both can coexist fine. I use Gmail, but I still use Thunderbird to read and send my e-mail when I'm at my computer.

Online apps the new desktop?

[Jugalator]

Online Ajax Pages The New Web Desktop?

I think I'd be happy to see this... as long as the Internet transfer speeds would equal that of a hard drive, and I wouldn't have to pay just to stay online and do my work.

It's...

[ShaolinTiger]

Not like we have a WHOLE load of privacy online or offline now, your PC is under the jurisdiction of the government if they so wish to search it, what's the difference with storing it online?

Even if you encrypt it you have to give up the key or go to jail.

Why not just sit in your tin-foil hat with a copy of DBAN boot-and-nuke in the drive ready at all times..

theres a good side to this

[wwmedia]

Theres a good thing about remote applications

if theres a security bug,
ALL the clients can be fixed in ONE update

none of that microsoft / symantec patching every so often business

The problem...

[Gavin86]

The problem I see with AJAX technologies is that almost none of them have been put to any good -use-. Everyone keeps talking about the 'potential' of such applications, the 'implications' AJAX-like setups can have for software and desktops.... But how many actually -useful- applications do I use a day? What, Gmail? Every now and then when I get directions or I'm board enough to check the satallite photos, Google Maps. And really, those things are the cream of the crop for AJAX applications. Most other sites integrate AJAX in a small way, ways that are helpful and I'm sure appreciated by their users, but nothing earth shattering and certainly nothing that ushers in the obvious defeat of the modern desktop as we know it. Most of these things are subtle improvements on an existing platform.

Frankly I would be both a bit suprised and pissed if the user interface of webpages -didn't- evolve into something much more responsive and a bit more slick. Am I the only one who sees this as a completely expected progression and not the eXTreM3 R3V0LUTION 3.0??

I understand AJAX from a technical perspective, I've made a few "AJAX" applications myself, I just don't see the results and the real world practicality to back up the absurd wave of hype. Consider me slightly amused and half-interested until I see the types of applications that fundamentally shift the ways I'm using this machine as I've been promised.

I'm new to the business world and particuarily the business/marketing aspects of software developement and website design, but do all industries act like this? Am I getting bent out of shape over nothing, or is the hyperbole really hitting the roof on this one?

Re:The problem...

[Tarwn]

Excellent, if I had mod points I would have burned some. I completely agree. Everyday some new set of articles is posted about "Web2.0", etc and yet things like AJAX don't seem to be revolutionary as much as small steps and, in most cases, gap fillers.
I've written some "AJAX" stuff in the past. Granted only a few of sites I wrote using javascript and asynchronous XML calls were written after there was a name for it, but as the parent poster said, it is not revolutionary. There are some sites out there that are heavily AJAX-ified. Some of them are useful, some of them are just feature-filled for features sake. In most of the cases I have seen, though, AJAX has been used to fill the gaps, as a polish, if you will. Now don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing, but even GMail and Google maps are far from the promised revolution we read about in articles such as this.

All this AJAX "revolution" does for us is allow us to treat the frontend web page as a bit more of a client, as opposed to treating it as content in a thin client. Flash did as much, if not more. The only difference here is that AJAX isn't a platform that requirs a plugin, it is instead (at it's core) a group of existing plugins accessible by the browser. How long has AJAX been around as the cool, hip thing? It's already available to every developer with notepad/vi and a browser, it's not very complicated to implement, so where is this revolution that has been remarked on since the day it got an acronym all it's own?

And a commentary on the original article: I lost interest in reading it right after the author said that our OS's are out of date and what we really need is a web-based desktop to truly leverage all of the fantastic capabilities of our machines...right. I didn't look too closely, but to me it just looked like he was selling start pages, similar to what Yahoo and many others have had for ages...personally I like my desktop environment to do a little more.

Agreed

[coder111]

I'm sick sick sick to see HTTP+HTML+JS used for APPLICATIONS instead of a thin client. Browsers make horrible thin clients, and HTML+HTTP+JS is a horrible way to write remote applications for thin clients. Some solution that was designed from the start for this purpose would be so much better. HTML+HTTP should be used for information transfer and PRESENTATION, not applications... To bad- while Microsoft controls desktop, this isn't going to change.

Sun did have a shot at this with java, but they failed horribly, and this opportunity is lost forever. It's a shame, i'd like to see java dominating desktop application programming, not .NET

Oh, and one more thing. If all (ok, most) applications become web applications, who needs a computer anymore? A zero-administration appliance with integrated browser would do just as well... This reminds me we're living in a post-Microsoft computer renaissance, client-server model of computing was used and then abandoned in favor of MS solutions years ago. It is comming back now.

--Coder

Re:real time data is the key.

[zenwarrior]

BTW, as we get more mobile, our attention spans will actually improve and be more focused, since we'll have information we want to review on demand; more time to focus on that information.

I am not certain about that. In fact, all current research points to "information overload" now occurring. There are those who even feel the rise of ADHD is related to more mobility and larger numbers of diversions. Attention spans have gotten much shorter, and we hear that in sound bites on TV and see it in the gloss-over articles of USA TODAY.