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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?"
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.
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."
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."