Comments on: Ajax and Smart Clients http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/ The place for me to turn abstract stuff into concrete (!). Mon, 16 May 2011 13:06:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Offline Task Handling Application « Conceptual Integrity http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-61 Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:35:09 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-61 [...] Task Handling Application In a recent post, I complained about Ajax applications, in particular Remember the Milk, and how the requirement to [...]

]]> By: Conceptual Integrity http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-35 Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:08:57 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-35 Offline Task Handling Application

In a recent post, I complained about Ajax applications, in particular Remember the Milk, and how the requirement to have an online connection at all times makes it impossible to handle your tasks whenever you want to. I really needed

]]> By: Thomas Drakengren http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-34 Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:35:07 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-34 >Personally, I prefer the son of Telamon
I hope they won’t share fates, then! :-)

Actually, I really don’t care what the technology behind Ajax looks like. Well, I’m pretty sure it sucks, because there’s Javascript involved! Rather, I see it from the user perspective, as a technology making it easier to create web GUIs with better usability properties than before (which doesn’t say very much). And the current hype makes even more people develop better web GUIs. Pretty exciting to me! Let’s just hope they’ll construct applications that are useful, too…

Interesting about the IBM Workplace product line architecture; haven’t heard about that. Sounds pretty heavyweight to me, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

]]> By: Pontus Gagge http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-33 Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:11:04 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/10/31/ajax-and-smart-clients/#comment-33 Personally, I prefer the son of Telamon. Or possibly the cleaning fluid. I find it hard to get too excited about AJAX: there have been a lot of hacks based on ‘remote scripting’ as the microsofties have termed it for a while. OK, some standardization around the DHTML and client-side JavaScript is nice, of course. Still, there are limits to using DHTML+JavaScript as a client platform…

When it comes to rich or smart clients with offline agility (or whatever the hype term will end up as) there’s quite a lot ongoing. As you mention, MS would like to see Office and particularly Outlook as the be-all and end-all (cf the SAP ‘Mendocino’ connector), leveraging the Office desktop dominance, complemented with SharePoint portal services and various Vista services planned in the future such as WWF. Generally, though, there is yet too little support for writing robust applications with graceful caching fallback, versioned distribution and provisioning (under Office, yeah, I know), security and supervision, at least from an enterprise perspective.

Right now, I really like what I am seeing from IBM with their Workplace product line architecture. Basically, they take the Eclipse platform, combine it with their J2EE and particularly portal platform, and let the combination manage provisioning, security, caching, &c. The drawbacks? There is still a lot just on the drawing board, it’s not exactly a for hobbyist operations, requirements on mobile devices push the envelope of J2ME, and, of course, the ever-present price tag… a bit too much if you just want to take notes on the go!

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