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Google Rebuilds Docs Platform
mikemuch writes "In addition to offering faster, desktop-like performance, better imported document fidelity, and more features found in standard Office apps, Google's new infrastructure for its web-based office suite will enable the company to more easily update the apps. A side effect (or benefit, depending on where you sit) is that the new platform will ditch Gears in favor of HTML 5. For a while starting May 3 there will be no offline capability whatsoever. Collaboration is a big focus, with a new chat sidebar and real-time co-editing. The new Docs and spreadsheet apps will be opt-in previews, but a new drawing app is launching fully. Both go live later today on the Google Docs site."
Video playback, offline storage, threads and... input validation? The '90s called, it wants its basic desktop back.
Seriously, who cares? Yay, we can deliver an app via the buggy, bloated, insecure browser+cloud instead of on the desktop using native, always-available logic and the full gamut of UI wizardry provided by the OS.
If you want to collaborate, build and standardise on network storage and collaboration APIs (more...). Let people otherwise run their own software tailored for their preferred environment, rather than the lowest common denominator. You know where we all saw this before? Around 1997, when people thought Java on the desktop would take off and replace native apps. (And at least Google had the cunning to see that Java is a usable language, developing solutions therein and translating to HTML/Javascript.)
Berners-Lee, you had a great thing with the WWW of information. You even tried hard to develop metadata for content, rather than markup/presentation, so the web wouldn't be the horrible but occasionally pretty mess that it is. But W3C has been taken over by organisations who each see a way of monetising the web by laying the standards track in their direction.
What was cool when I dived into it 15 years ago on my ageing monochrome Mac with NCSA Mosaic is now boring. It's a battle between team A - the tech superstars from Apple to Google - whose ultimate aim is to take control from you, and team B - the old media from Murdoch to RIAA - whose ultimate aim is to take control from you. And, as geeks grow up, their one idealistic dreams about a free medium are replaced with increasingly fanatical cheerleading about increasingly uninteresting progress.
Does anyone else think the submission sounds like an ad copy?
So?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)