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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?"
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.
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..
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?
Netvibes, Protopage, Pageflakes, Live.com, and a bonus Google Personalized
Ah hypertext links. What wonders have Tim Burners Lee wrought. And look, I'm anonymous so no karma whoring.
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.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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 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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
No.
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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?
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."
"roaming Ajax desktops"
I swear that statement would scare my mother.
sh has aged very well, thank you very much.
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 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?
"Progress comes from the intelligent use of experience."
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