Dave Winer: “But all that has changed with the ability to access cloud storage from apps written in JavaScript that run in the browser. Software that used to require a central server, and was easy to attack, and had to scale for all sizes of use-cases, now can run in the browser, with little if any loss of power.”
Dave is excited he can host a JavaScript on a server and pull it to the browser to execute because it affords him the ability to do simple applications without the need of web services. I can understand his excitement. It’s less expensive than running a GIGANTOR set of servers to host your services and answer requests thrown at them from the client. Point taken. It’s a step in the right direction, but I still think services are necessary for all but the smallest of apps because browsers still don’t make great hosts for applications.
I think designing services first is the more appropriate thing to do. Don’t think about the UI first. UI’s are a dime a dozen and should be lowest common denominator (browser), up to native, high performance, best of breed (platform specific; iOS, Android, etc.) Because mobile is so important today you can’t leave that out of any discussion about web based services. Most web apps I’ve run on my phone are pretty horrible performance wise, but I can run them. If I have a choice to get a native mobile client I always opt for it because of that.
Dave accused me of calling him stupid.
Far from it, Dave. I know you’re not stupid, I just have a different idea than you, that’s all. A differing of opinion, and that’s ok. I think you’ll be very happy with your new model and out of that we’ll see some great browser apps.
I’ve talked about it before. I’d like to see the browser evolve way beyond what it is today if this is the new “OS” for the web based world. It must if we expect to create beautiful, highly usable, fully functional applications like we did on the desktop before the invention of the browser.
When the browser can evolve to a faceless shell that is language agnostic and allows us to control it like a native application controls the desktop environment, man, then we’ll have something special, until that time it will provide the lowest common denominator gateway to the web.
Web Next
Can you imagine the explosion of high quality code and components that would flow out of a world where we’re not limited to the confines of the browser and JavaScript? It would be industry changing.
I’d love to see the browser community embrace the idea of a full CLI implementation and create a way to hit and endpoint URL that pulls a fully built application to the desktop that’s hosted by an “invisible” browser. [UPDATE: This part, about pulling a full app plays nicely with what Dave is talking about.] The browser should serve as the new OS giving the developer full access to a virtualized machine.
We’ll get there, some day.
Six Colors: “Most apps are just thin layers on top of modern Web standards with the added benefit of a potentially superior user-interface experience, because the operating system takes care of more details with greater consistency, and allows a complicated but more reliable adaptation to multiple sizes of devices, whether it’s iOS, Windows Phone, or Android.”
Yesterday I was lamenting the lack of good choice for coding in the browser. I know, I know, I gripe too much about it. I can hear folks now “Just shut your pie hole and learn JavaScript, like everyone else.” That is good advice, I should learn JavaScript, but I digress.
