Comments on: Wassup With Web 2.0? http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2005/10/10/wassup-with-web-20/ Simon Brocklehurst's Technology Blog Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:49:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Simon Brocklehurst's Weblog http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2005/10/10/wassup-with-web-20/#comment-70 Simon Brocklehurst's Weblog Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:21:45 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=14#comment-70 <strong>The Ben and Mena Show…</strong> So… the “big story”to come out of the recent Les Blogs 2.0 conference was “The Ben and Mena Show”. If you’ve an eye for trivia, you will know about it by now: Mena Trott - CEO of Six Apart - was giving a talk. Be... The Ben and Mena Show…

So… the “big story”to come out of the recent Les Blogs 2.0 conference was “The Ben and Mena Show”. If you’ve an eye for trivia, you will know about it by now: Mena Trott - CEO of Six Apart - was giving a talk. Be…

]]> By: simon http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2005/10/10/wassup-with-web-20/#comment-8 simon Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:38:08 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=14#comment-8 Interesting that your Dell box didn't have a JRE installed - I had thought all Dell boxes were supposed to ship with JREs (Dell and Sun signed an agreement for this in 2003). Assuming you don't wipe all PCs and install a standard image at your company, that's genuine surprise to me. Ultimately, I don't think we're too far apart in our views on the misuse of applets. I can quite understand your frustrations with understanding of good user interface design being a scarce commodity. Interesting that your Dell box didn’t have a JRE installed - I had thought all Dell boxes were supposed to ship with JREs (Dell and Sun signed an agreement for this in 2003). Assuming you don’t wipe all PCs and install a standard image at your company, that’s genuine surprise to me.

Ultimately, I don’t think we’re too far apart in our views on the misuse of applets. I can quite understand your frustrations with understanding of good user interface design being a scarce commodity.

]]> By: Richard D. LeCour http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2005/10/10/wassup-with-web-20/#comment-7 Richard D. LeCour Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:31:40 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=14#comment-7 Haha! "simon says:" Funny! Maybe so, but I just purchased three new PCs (namebrand, two marketed for business use, other marketed for home use). None had a JRE installed. My new Dell box at work didn't have a JRE on it either. Score: 0 out of 4. So, Sun has a lot more work to do if they want applets to be the next AJAX (so to speak) I completely agree with the points of availability of faster hardware and increased RAM and broadband speed, and Java is getting better all the time -- but increased performance is not an excuse to use a technology when something simple/ordinary will do. The Internet certainly does not need more scrolling text ticker or water ripple effect applets. And why create an applet that is a calendar control, a menu, or rotates banners when there are much simpler implementations. Use applets where appropriate is my main point: games, 2D or 3D applications, animation, client side rendering, apps that need realtime response (chat, GPS, etc)... My rambling stemmed from talks with an engineering department that created a report query page with an applet (?!?!) that should have been created with plain old DHTML instead. Lazy, and annoying to the end user. Haha! “simon says:” Funny!

Maybe so, but I just purchased three new PCs (namebrand, two marketed for business use, other marketed for home use). None had a JRE installed. My new Dell box at work didn’t have a JRE on it either. Score: 0 out of 4. So, Sun has a lot more work to do if they want applets to be the next AJAX (so to speak)

I completely agree with the points of availability of faster hardware and increased RAM and broadband speed, and Java is getting better all the time — but increased performance is not an excuse to use a technology when something simple/ordinary will do. The Internet certainly does not need more scrolling text ticker or water ripple effect applets. And why create an applet that is a calendar control, a menu, or rotates banners when there are much simpler implementations. Use applets where appropriate is my main point: games, 2D or 3D applications, animation, client side rendering, apps that need realtime response (chat, GPS, etc)…

My rambling stemmed from talks with an engineering department that created a report query page with an applet (?!?!) that should have been created with plain old DHTML instead. Lazy, and annoying to the end user.

]]> By: simon http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2005/10/10/wassup-with-web-20/#comment-6 simon Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:52:25 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=14#comment-6 Richard - you're 100% correct when you say that critical to success of the whole client-side Java platform is the presence of a modern JRE on a computer. But, Sun has been working hard to ensure that Windows PCs and Macs ship with modern JREs for a couple of years now. The level of deployment of JREs is a big success story - and one that many haven't kept up to date with (including Google's CEO, if you watched what he said at the recent Sun/Google press conference). So, when I say that technologies improve with time, I don't mean just that the technologies themselves improve. I mean too that the environment that technologies find themselves in changes over time. In this case: modern JREs are becoming pervasive; CPUs on the "average" desktop run 5 to 10 times faster than they did when applets first hit the web; the same kind of increase is true for RAM too; and broadband connections have high penetration into many parts of the world - in 1996 everyone was on dial-up. Richard - you’re 100% correct when you say that critical to success of the whole client-side Java platform is the presence of a modern JRE on a computer. But, Sun has been working hard to ensure that Windows PCs and Macs ship with modern JREs for a couple of years now. The level of deployment of JREs is a big success story - and one that many haven’t kept up to date with (including Google’s CEO, if you watched what he said at the recent Sun/Google press conference).

So, when I say that technologies improve with time, I don’t mean just that the technologies themselves improve. I mean too that the environment that technologies find themselves in changes over time. In this case: modern JREs are becoming pervasive; CPUs on the “average” desktop run 5 to 10 times faster than they did when applets first hit the web; the same kind of increase is true for RAM too; and broadband connections have high penetration into many parts of the world - in 1996 everyone was on dial-up.

]]> By: Richard D. LeCour http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2005/10/10/wassup-with-web-20/#comment-5 Richard D. LeCour Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:03:10 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=14#comment-5 It's not about whether or not technologies improve with time. It's what people do with technologies. My rambling concerning how bad applets are is more about the ever-present trend of developers that use technology because they *can*, without consideration as to whether they *should*. While I am not necessarily a proponent of either methodology, AJAX support is built into new browsers, while applets require a separate download of a JRE. To release a new paradigm -- whatever that may be -- at least 80-90% of browsers must support it without downloading something extra to use it. Broad support for applets will likely only occur if Firefox or IE (yeah, right!) were to include a current JRE within the download. It’s not about whether or not technologies improve with time. It’s what people do with technologies. My rambling concerning how bad applets are is more about the ever-present trend of developers that use technology because they *can*, without consideration as to whether they *should*.

While I am not necessarily a proponent of either methodology, AJAX support is built into new browsers, while applets require a separate download of a JRE. To release a new paradigm — whatever that may be — at least 80-90% of browsers must support it without downloading something extra to use it. Broad support for applets will likely only occur if Firefox or IE (yeah, right!) were to include a current JRE within the download.

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