Wassup With Web 2.0? at Simon’s Blog

Wassup With Web 2.0?

Just been flicking through various pieces of coverage about the recent Web 2.0 conference. Is it just the reporting, or does this all look a bit on the weak side? From what I’ve read, the highlights seemed to be:

A new web-browser - where they screwed up the demo by showing broken features
A new messaging server, with a web-based (AJAX - gasp!!!!!) front end
A newsfeed reader from Google
A slider added to the Yahoo! search engine “graphical” user interface. This is supposed to let the user provide context for the search - but, as usual, not much original thought has been given to getting good meta data
A Google founder saying that he thinks there are better ways to create and share documents. And the point is…?

Now, when I say “weak”, I’m not commenting on the quality of the software. Rather, I’m saying that there isn’t much sign of anything disruptive in the coverage I’ve seen. Most of the start-ups seem to have been rather obviously built for a quick trade-sale; and I can see some solid 5X returns on those. As such, it’s not surprising so many already have got VC investment.

But companies that achieve 5X trade-sales are usually beyond dull ( unless you’re a shareholder in the company, of couse). What interests me is - where are the new Googles and eBays? After all, software remains the only sector where you can go from zero value, to a genuine tens of billions (based on revenues and profits) in a few years. But to do that, you have to change the world.

I’m not sure how many people really understand what Web 2.0 is really all about- I’ve seem quite a few descriptions of Web 2.0 that boil down to “The participation age and AJAX”. That those two “ideas” are said together so often, shows a lack of understanding IMHO. So let’s be clear. There are genuinely massive (multi-billion dollar) opportunities springing up from the participation age. AJAX has next to nothing to do with it.

Why hasn’t AJAX got much to do with it? Because, the truth is it’s hard to write great user interfaces using AJAX. It wouldn’t take much for AJAX to stop being the “technology of choice” for “rich app in a browser” development. For example, it might not take much for Java Applets to start to making a comeback. For years, Java applets were a big part of the cause of general misconceptions about Java in communities of developers who build simple computer systems. Applets used to be the cause of some really terrible web experiences. They were so bad that applets all but died out on the Internet. As of Java SE 5, however, the technology is probably just about good enough to make applets a sensible choice for more web developers. However, it will take time for people to realise that technologies can improve with time. A couple of high-profile applet projects might do the trick, I suspect. And with a little more investment, the applets in Java SE 6 could easily catapult Java applets far ahead of AJAX and Flash.

UPDATE (19 Oct):

It’s not just me! Others are thinking the same thing! Phew!

Trackbacks & Pings

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Comments

Richard D. LeCour wrote:

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.

Posted 10 Oct 2005 at 11:33 pm ¶
simon wrote:

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.

Posted 11 Oct 2005 at 12:22 am ¶
Richard D. LeCour wrote:

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.

Posted 11 Oct 2005 at 1:01 am ¶
simon wrote:

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.

Posted 11 Oct 2005 at 2:08 am ¶

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