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March 03, 2008

Understanding "offline"

Understanding "offline": Link goes to CNET's Martin LaMonica, titled "Microsoft to take Silverlight offline eventually, says exec". They've already got it, in a sense, because Google Gears offers larger-than-cookiesized local storage and is addressable by JavaScript, and the path via NPRuntime should be clear. But when you think about implementing a project using efficient local storage, then it becomes real obvious real quick that "offline" is not a feature so much as a capability, and that individual applications have to make significant decisions about the type of experience they'll offer when unconnected. Does Photoshop produce great art? Some would say yes, but Photoshop just provides imageprocessing capabilities, and it's really your own individual effort that actually produces "great art". Even the RIA definition said "rich clients must enable" these occasionally-connected experiences... a platform layer can't provide occasional-connectivity, only enable occasional-connectivity. And the task of understanding how to design and architect applications which work pleasingly regardless of current connectivity still lies ahead of us. Anyway, if you'd say Google Gears "has offline", then Microsoft Silverlight would "have offline" too... the MS exec needn't have painted such a dour picture. ;-) (And it's good to keep reminding reporters that Adobe AIR is not just "offline" or "desktop" or "cross-platform"... it's the set of these and other abilities, all in pursuit of helping webpage developers reach the world's desktops. Nothing else is quite like AIR.)

Posted by JohnDowdell at March 3, 2008 03:15 PM

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Comments

I liked this line from Loren Heiny this weekend, when talking about speculation on future announcements: "To me, actually, it's not just about online/offline. A good technology is going to work well 1) across a range of devices 2) be easier and less expensive to operate than other solutions by at least a significant factor and 3) operate inside the browser where it makes sense and outside of the browser when it makes sense."

We need to provide new types of experiences. A feature-checkmark means less than pragmatic deployment.

Posted by: John Dowdell at March 3, 2008 04:02 PM