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July 18, 2007
New tech confusions
New tech confusions: Not all speakers are up to speed; here's a refresher. Adobe Flash Player 9 is already plugged into nearly all the world's browsers. Microsoft's Silverlight is a proposed future browser plugin. The beta Adobe Integrated Runtime gives webpages extra privileges -- to become more like OS-native applications -- across different brands of operating systems. Adobe Flex consists of MXML, the framework and compilers, and optional tooling and data servers from Adobe -- its compiled SWF output runs locally within Adobe Flash Player 9. In 2002 Rich Internet Applications introduced in-browser applications which separated data requests from display requests, and RIAs became very popular after Ajax enfranchised JavaScript developers. Sun's JavaFX is an announcement about a new scripting language which can compile for playback in each browser's Java Virtual Machine. Flex adoption is through the roof, but is still only at the start of its growth curve. Silverlight can not possibly be "a reasonable choice for anyone planning on building cross-platform RIAs today", even if you were willing to accept the extra user costs of installation, because there's not even a definitive installation yet. Comparing Silverlight to "Flex" makes no sense; the author could more usefully compare XAML with MXML. The best thing about Microsoft's adoption last year of the "Experience Matters" mantra is that they're greatly helping to raise the expectations about acceptable user experiences today. Related: Mike Downey distinguishes similar parts of proposed technology stacks from potential future competitors. (Mike says they're already competitors, but I think only in marketing campaigns, not in actual deployed technology.)
Posted by JohnDowdell at July 18, 2007 12:08 PM
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Comments
AIR does not "give webpages extra privileges". It enables the creation of cross-platform desktop applications using traditionally web-focused technologies. Your description makes it sound like a plugin that gives web pages access to users' hard drives, which is precisely the type of misinterpretation that hurts the technology.
Also, comparing Silverlight to Flex is a pretty valid thing to do. While Flex is currently miles ahead, they are both frameworks that facilitate the creation of RIAs. Silverlight refers to the plugin as well as the framework (as far as I can tell), whereas Flex runs atop FP9, but saying that comparing the two "makes no sense" is incorrect.
Posted by: Ben at July 18, 2007 01:51 PM
"Webpages with extra privileges" is a description of the benefits, not the technical means. "Beyond-the-browser" is a previous concise description, but leaves unsaid the motive.
I'll leave Microsoft nomenclature up to others, but "silverlight is framework" conflicts with the "wpf (subset) is framework". There are browser plugins, there are frameworks, there are compilers, there are servers. Comparing a browser plugin to the varied things called "Flex" is indeed silly.
Posted by: John Dowdell at July 18, 2007 02:47 PM