Slashdot Mirror
Where is the Real Ajax/Flex Revolution Happening?
andzik writes "Even with all of the buzz around Rich Internet Applications these days, using toolsets like Ajax and Flex, most sites that utilize these technologies seem to be incremental improvements, not revolutionary interface changes. Where does the Slashdot community feel the best opportunities are to substantially create different/better user experiences using RIA tools? What will be the killer app? Are we just not seeing them because the best improvements are being made to web based applications and not in the public space?"
On a related note, Vertigo asks: "Not so long ago everybody believed that it was a good thing to have the freedom to modify your software to suit your needs or to mangle your data in any way. But now that users are flocking to non-modifiable, one-size-fits-all web 2.0 apps like Gmail or Flickr, are we moving away from our open source ideals? Those services do provide many important benefits, but in the process of their enthusiastic adoption did we not loose sight of the most important issues?"
I've just discovered OpenLaszlo earlier this week. It's a (now) open sourced web RAD system. It compiles into Flash files so almost anyone can run the apps, and it feels a lot less hacky than Javascript ever did... blasted browser wars, "standards", and all. Pretty interesting technology -- especially if you can't wrap your mind around building an application in the Flash "everything is a movie" model. The IDE is an Eclipse plugin.
I think the original point to my post was that AJAX is nice but I don't think that the standards are there yet.