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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.
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.
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.
I hate to break it to you, but Gmail and Google Maps are totally AJAX, and even a basic web search on Google makes use of JavaScript. Google integrates it all so seamlessly, you don't even realize that they're using fancy "Web 2.0" tricks to give you what looks like a simple HTML page.
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
No.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
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.
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.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
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."
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."
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"