The Future of Rich Internet Applications

Can't Get Enough Ajax writes "While Ajax continues to get most of the attention these days in the space of rich Internet apps, the future 'face' of Web applications may consist of a combination of Ajax and plug-in technologies based on the new Flash development platforms or other plug-in models. Why? The challenges of building and maintaining sophisticated software in Javascript and the lack of support for audio and video are just two reasons that any RIA strategy will involve a mixture of Ajax and one or more technologies like Flex, Laszlo, or others. But while there are significant advantages to the new RIA technologies, there are also important trade-offs including breaking the model of the Web, lack of HTML support, and more. ZDNet's Dion Hinchcliffe has a round-up of the latest generation of RIA technologies, pros and cons of each, and why there is likely a 'war' brewing among them."

Comments

Re:The future is in the Stack

[Nicolay77]

Cygwin is ugly... maybe it's the reason others have not attempted a good X port, but blah. And I've used cygwin and mingw a lot.

However I think you're right about X problems. A widget level protocol instead of a pixel level one would be nicer to have.

Re:The future is in the Stack

[oyenstikker]

mechanism, not policy.

X hasn't been replaced because it is entrenched and broken. Because it is entrenched, you'd have to provide X11 backwards compatibility. Because it is broken, that is hard to do. It works well enough, so it'll be around until a big player, IBM or Sun maybe, steps up and writes X12 or Y and sets it free.

APAX: Asynchronous Pixels and X

[SimHacker]

Since X-Windows is so pixel oriented, a natural scripting language would be a two-dimensional cellular automata like John von Neuman's 29 State Cellular Automata, which can run "Universal Constructor" programs that reproduce theselves or any other program. Since it's Turing Complete, you could script an emulator for any other language!

-Don