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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?"
But this solution has also it's own problem, like all the earlier attempts, in this case the problem is a lot about security and secrecy.
When these applications start to be sold to companies to run on the company's own servers, some of the problems do go away ofcourse..
I think the popularity of web based email answers that question. People will use non private web based applications for private data.
The real question is who needs it at all? The linked article mentions consumers probably not being ready for this kind of service for 1-2 years. The reality is that the market is fragmented, and while there are API's the results generally just resemble personalized home pages. I saw much better technology die on the vine at desktop.com 6 years ago - it was cool stuff looking for an audience. The same team had made what became yahoo mail - much simpler tech but in the end much more popular. The same situation probably stands today - (semi) cool tech looking for an audience. More or less we've long gotten past personalized home pages as a neat new thing - just adding AJAX doesn't change the paradigm. Desktop.com went some major steps beyond that but didn't just get killed by the bubble... they also never had an audience.
If more people could safely run their own servers from home, we could have the benefits of these web-based apps without entrusting our data to strangers.
I think the first barrier to this is the ISPs: I don't know of any broadband provider in my area that allows one to run a server. (The cable provider even tries to get people to pay extra to set up a router.) I'd think there must be little demand, but then I see ads on TV for remote access (to Windows machines).
I guess no one has found a way to make a profit providing some sort of secure server appliance that allows a house to be networked and provides a remote connection. It seems we've had the parts of the technology for over a decade, but noone has put them all together. Heck, it's only in the last couple of years that we've seen home entertainment center computers, and those were possible at least as early as 1992.
General consumers do not care about privacy until they get bit by it or a "trustworthy" news agency makes it sound like the whole world will collapse.
That's not really being stupid - just relativly uneducated and most people are too busy with other things to really think it through. I talk people out of using this type of stuff all the time - simply tell them how it can be abused. Until then they usually just look at the marketing hype about how useful it is when it works.
The first major public group that looses something important through a lack of privacy and it will stop. Just as people didn't lock doors at the turn of the century (who cared about privacy?) once it was obvious it was going to be taken advantage of it changed. Though it will probably swing back too far the other way in trusting almost nothing.
But hey, maybe they will fix thier privacy issues too, it *could* happen.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
The problem with AJAX as I see it is that it is a bit of a Kludge.
Why did XUL never take off? I think that is a really interesting technology, much better than AJAX, but I guess being mozilla only it will never really reach mainstream? I guess it wouldn't be possible to create a XUL plug-in for IE?
Take a look at your personal computer's desktop. Do you have every document, email, and application you own open on it, running side-by-side at the same time? No? Then why should I expect the wave of the future to be a personal web page?
Want the future? Extrapolate from an "always-connected" world. Figure servers will increase in power exponentially. Figure the devices we carry will increase in power exponentially.
With all that, the "future" is an oversized web page? Please.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Although I do think, Ajax with javascript/dhtml is pretty cool, it's a bit overkill to think that it will be the "desktop" platform of the future. My beef would be an idea of a secondary application layer (only logical, not literal) over OS and within browser application framework. The shared load between Javascript JIT compilation and native applications to make Ajax application smooth, stable and functional would be hard to implement especially for portable PDAs with underpower processors and limited memory and buffer cache. Not to mention Ajax applications will always have to be confined within browser application, not able to compete with multithreaded and compiled bytecode applications.
j s.html
Try benchmark Javascript against your machine here;
http://www.24fun.com/downloadcenter/benchjs/bench
I think, for web "desktop" to be successful and attractive for "users," the web browser platform itself has to change dramatically to give Ajax applications an development edge and ability to compete with native applications. Otherwise similar fate of Java Applets may be ahead for Ajax.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Odd conclusion? Well no. They are expensive but that is because they do not actually have a datalimit, or rather you have one 100gb on my account but they don't actually measure your data throughput. Tiscali does and the limit is 1gb for half the price. Mmmm. 40 bucks for 1gb or 80 for unlimited.
Next is that their helpdesk is always busy, this is nasty but at least the helpdesk fucking knows their business AND is available in the weekend. Oh and their online help is good enough that the only thing I ever needed from them is password resets.
So who cares about this? Is this on topic? Well no but I am getting there. Next is reliability. I said xs4all sucks? Well it does, it always managed to drop my connection at least once per month. Fucking annoying.
Offcourse that was until I moved house and now am on tiscali. Wich drops the con every 10 minutes. Suddenly the internet is totally different. Even simple browsing becomes a pain when every 4th click results in a minute long wait for the modem to reconnect.
Why is it crap? Oh who knows. I actually have worked for tiscali (then worldonline) in the distant past and they never struck me as the brightest bulb (they hired me after all) but perhaps it is just the phone line.
But it really doesn't matter. On my old con it was already troublesome that a couple of times per year I could not google or whatever but with this ISP can you imagine using web apps? It would be like trying to do work on windows 95 adware edition.
And that is my fundemental, and I think everyone elses, problem with the whole idea of webapps. Very nice until your connection drops out.
As long as we got joke ISP's with idiotic data limits web apps are never going to take off. Think of it like this. Who here does not have some kind of emergency equipment like a flashlight for when the elec drops out or camping gas stove for when the gas drops out? And that is (at least in holland) extremely reliable stuff. Trusting my internet connection to determine wether I can work or not does not sound very smart to me.
Oh and as far as mobile computing is concerned. Those who can afford mobile connection costs don't need it, they got secretaries and those who need it can't afford it.
You can forget the net 2.0 the same problem that killed the 'bubble' ideas of the net are killing any new ideas. The ISP's simply ain't up to the task of providing reliable constant connections. Oh the better ones come close but xs4all in holland is tiny. The best and reviewed that way by consumer organisations but still tiny.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I just finished watching "I, Robot" moments ago so take this with a grain of salt if it seems I'm a little wary (wait... that's normal - nevermind)
/home or /Users or 'Documents and Settings\user' may be on remote systems when you "sync" your directories designated to be on a central (at least for your own access) system. Something tells me that data encryption isn't going to be a part of the equation. The google's of the world would LOVE to read your data to profile you. (re: also governments)
I believe there very well will be a means of having a "central system" to hold some of our types of data we really need access to. School reports, dissertations, files for work or more where we simply can't keep them on one computer. Your
I would never really allow my files, even encrypted, to be stored remotely. My own computer practices of this are evident as I have a particular laptop that is never hooked up to the internet. This iBook has no wireless and I've put in "blanks" into the dialup, ethernet, usb & firewire plugs to prevent "mistakes". All updates are downloaded individually as they appear to me on another iBook when I see that "Software Updates" has an update waiting and transferred using CD-R's. All data to and from this system are handled by the same method. It's for things that I both want and need to keep private out of neccecity and choice. Things of financial, housing, family information, contracts, journal and some phd work as well. Normal things you really want to keep private from others.
All in all, I recommend people doing something similar. The dual iBook thing on my part was only due to extreme luck on ebay where I picked up two for the price of one, so find something for your financial ability to use.
If you can find a good, smaller ISP, they'll let you do what you want.
Perhaps MSN doesn't allow you to run a server, but the smaller folks don't care.
Basically, the phone company forwards them the packets. If you run your own server, that's less work for them. As long as your modem can connect, via the phone system, to their network, their job is essentially complete.
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.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
We've all heard over the last few years that Microsoft et al want to move all their software to a subscription model. Gone will be the days when you pay for a piece of software once and it just works for a very long time. This isn't going to happen overnight, but this all ties together and that's where these guys want this to go. Thank god for F/OSS.
the difference is that if the information is stored on your computer, the feds can't get to it without a search warrant
if it's online, they only need a subpoena. Much easier to get, however, if it's a serious issue I don't think they're going to give up just because they need a search warrant.
however, look at the recent DOJ subpoena. There's no way they can subpoena information that is on your computer. so there's a difference. If you're doing illegal stuff, you would have to be a moron to do it through a medium that stores all your information online
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
Just to add to the url links, here's an interesting looking project:-
http://www.eyeos.org/
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?
Yes. Amount of repeatable content, basic pain of CGI/PHP. Take a GOOD application of AJAX: DeviantArt comments. Each art piece posted to the site may be commented by the users. Sometimes there's 200-300 comments, discussion occurs etc. Indentation provides some threading, there are some basic forum-like features etc. You probably want to cut on page switching when you dig into the comments. You set it to display 100 per page. Including links, avatars, smileys and some more such crap plus bandwidth throttling from the server if you're not a subscriber, it starts getting really lengthy to load the comments page. But it's still better than loading 20 separate pages 10 comments each. Then you want to participate in the discussion...
Non-AJAX, non-javascript, pure CGI way: Click "Reply" in given thread. Wait for the "reply" form for given thread to load. Type your answer. Click "preview". Wait for preview to load. Click "send". Wait for the whole discussion page, 100 posts, plus your answer to load.
AJAX way: Click "Reply". Immediately a textarea appears, where your post would go, with "send", "preview" and "cancel" buttons. You type in your reply and press "preview". The border around the textarea blinks for a moment and then turns into your post's final look, in context of the 100 other posts, differing only by "preview" replaced by "edit" (which with no further delay gets you back to editing your post). You click "send" and the border blinks a moment more. Buttons vanish, your post is placed in the context amongst all the rest, where it was supposed to be. No single other post gets reloaded.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I think it's interesting to note that AJAX and online desktops were presaged by Desktop.com in 1999-2000. I worked there, so I can say with authority that we did have a full web-based operating system going in Netscape 4 and IE 4. The stuff that's done now isn't as complex as the stuff we had, in general, though recently (GTalk through GMail, for example) it's started coming close. (I admit I haven't been following some of the other sites mentioned, so maybe some other folks are further along.)
We ran into a couple of killer problems:
* Browser instability -- we had no control over this. Netscape lasted on average 10-15 minutes and ate tons of memory. IE lasted longer, but also consumed memory until it crashed.
* Slow connections -- we had a good 500K download at first connection (or empty cache), which was *slow* over dailup, which was the norm.
* Apps -- nobody is going to come if the apps aren't there. In the day, even making a notepad clone was difficult because native HTML controls were always on top.
The first two of these problems have been/are being slowly overcome. The third one is still a problem.
But the problem of privacy has never really been foremost in the minds of users. Maybe it will be, but with everyone using web mail, I'm kinda doubtful.
Ian
We see a few "Web 2.0" apps, and we make our comments based upon those. However, that's like looking at Alexander Graham Bell's demonstration of his first telephone and comment that it would never get anywhere because of its technical limitations.
* What if instead of your Web 2.0 application using a remote server, it used your own desktop machine as a server. Would you still need your Internet connection?
* What if businesses ran their own Ajax applications for wordprocessing, spreadsheets, and whatever else they do instead of needing every application loaded on each and every PC?
* What if you could quickly switch from one HTTP server (running from say Google.com) to another HTTP server (running on your desktop). What if the application could store your data remotely and locally? You could use a remote server when you have good service and switch to your local server when you don't have Internet connectivity.
* What if you decide not to lug around your desktop machine, but rather work on a PC laptop? Maybe not even a laptop, but a Linux based PDA?
Do you see where this could be heading?
With "Web 2.0" applications, you could be running an application from your "desktop server", from your company's server, or even from a public server. It doesn't matter! Your application will still work.
With "Web 2.0", your data could be stored locally, remotely, or even both. It is even possible for a remote server to "update" your local instance of your application when you decide to work locally. When you switch to your local desktop server, you still have the same up to date application you had on the Web.
With "Web 2.0", you're not tied down to a particular piece of hardware or even a single platform. You could be using your Windows XP desktop at work, switch to your laptop on the train ride home, switch to your Mac at home, and when you go off on your well deserved ski vacation, switch to your handheld Linux powered PDA. Each and every device would have access to all the applications and data you need. There's no difference between one piece of hardware vs. another.
Corporations are no longer have to preload their desktop machines with the applications their workers need. They're not tied down to a particular platform. No more waiting for that MSCE to show up in order to install that application you need. Heck, if a meteor came flying through the window and smashed your desktop PC, you could get on another one and not miss a lick of work. You'll still have the same desktop and the same applications. The last time my PC died at work, it took me two weeks to get back up and running.
When an application is updated, everyone at your company has the latest copy. You don't have to install it on tens of thousands PCs. Desktop support is much simpler. You don't have to worry whether someone has the same version of your appliction (or even if they have your application).
That's why everyone is so excited by "Web 2.0".
Unfortunately, I don't believe AJAX is going to be the way to go. (Of course, what do I know? I thought Windows 95 would be a flop.) Ajax is too iffy. JavaScript is not the "universal" language we all think it is. Every browser on every hardware platform implements it a bit differently. Its even worse than Sun's "write once, run everywhere" JVM platform. I'm playing around with Ruby on Rails to see if that feels any better.
The legal line will get blurred very soon. (The content companies will make sure of this.) That will make any server clauses completely void. The only meaningful contract language left will be bandwidth limits and volume of data traffic per billing cycle. And if you think about it, that's all the ISPs really care about anyways.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
For example, check out http://svn.code-host.net/svn/Insurrection/ for some ways in which this can be used in "minor" but very "useful" ways. (That is, the site does not depend on it but it is much nicer and lower bandwidth due to it)
I think a well-designed system for running apps remotely would be great, but all attempts so far have had serious problems. AJAX's problems are that its component technologies were designed for completely different purposes (web document display), that it lacks many UI components, that it lacks a programming model on the display side that supports good GUI development, and that it lacks desktop integration (drag-and-drop, menu bars, window closing, etc.).
The previous attempts at this haven't been much better; X11 got everything right on the application side but screwed up on security and compression, Display Postscript and NeWS had serious technical problems and never really pushed remote usage, etc.
The closest to a good web applications delivery language might be XUL or Microsoft's proprietary clone. Or, maybe, just maybe, people will finally clean up the HTML/Javascript mess and fill in the missing bits and pieces; the standards for that are on the drawing board, but whether they get adopted is anybody's guess. Until they are, AJAX applications are going to remain painful to develop and limited in functionality.