Stephan Schwab - platforms tag

Client-Server Computing: The Future Web?

Sat, 24 May 2008 11:24:54 GMT

For some time I've been waiting for a headline like this one on InfoQ. If you are old enough, then you've probably worked with classic client-server applications and don't believe that the web browser with tons of JavaScript is the ultimate solution to all computing problems.

Those modern browser are nice and can do a lot of things. But there is nothing that comes close to a real desktop application, which is not restricted to the browser's sandbox, by default has a rich user interface and can take advance of all the capabilities the hardware it runs on has to offer. A browser is just another form of an all-purpose terminal application. It's like a VT100 terminal app - just with graphics ;-) And VT100 was introduced in 1978. Of course you can pick you favorite terminal type for comparision. There have been plenty of them - just as browser rendering engines.

It would be blind to ignore the benefits of a JavaScript enhanced browser though. You can create an application with a rich user interface that is accessible from an extremely large selection of devices running many different operating systems. DHTML/JavaScript is what brings them all together, which is good.

But DHTML/JavaScript is not the solution for each and everything and trying to push the limits of a platform aimed at solving another problem is usually a bad idea. Instead a server application, which simply exposes a RESTful API and serves platform specific applications running on client devices seems to make sense to me. Now that the iPhone SDK is out one can create a client that provides a native UI and has access to all features the hardware offer. So there is a mobile solution. For desktop systems a native looking and feeling Java Swing application seems like a good choice. There are many different ways. What counts is that one does not limit the user experience to a web browser on steroids ignoring all the existing and stable platform choices. Ignoring that seems to me like intentionally going back in time and throwing away the progress that has been made.

Update: Here is another post with the same notion.

The Browser is No Place for Multitasking

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:50:49 GMT

Reading my feeds I came across this little snippet:

Why We Need Web Apps on the Desktop - ReadWriteWeb:

As Mitch Grasso, founder of Sliderocket (our coverage) wrote in a comment here yesterday, "Adobe AIR isn't just about taking apps offline. Multi-window support, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, and access to the rich clipboard are all things that you take for granted in a desktop app are difficult or impossible to do in a browser. Browsers are designed for reading webpages - not hosting applications."

There might be a day when the web truly is our operating system, and when browsers really will be designed to run multiple applications. But that day hasn't arrived, and until it does, bringing web apps to the desktop is another important step in their evolution and the way forward in pushing the idea of hosting data in the cloud out to the mainstream.

A while back I wrote The webtop - back in time? and I still think there is a reason for offering some service in the form as a webapp and there is a reason for desktop applications. Squeezing everything into the limited runtime environment that is the browser is not a good thing. We have better capabilities on the desktop and there is no need to get back in time and tie ourselves again to some kind of mainframe. It doesn't matter whether that happens over a wire or with a wireless connection - it's the same.

Maybe the bad experiences with a certain operating system that is plagued with viruses, worms, and trojan horses made people fall in love with the safety of a sandboxed environment named Firefox. I can understand that. But is that a good compelling reason for going back in time and seek salvation in the arms of mainframes and terminals? I don't think so.

Update to Leopard

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:31:38 GMT

My own update to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) has been almost smooth so far. On an end-user machine, a Mac Mini at home, it was without any difficulties. Just slide in the DVD and wait for some time. I'm not sure how long it took, as I left it alone, but it might have taken an hour.

On my MacBook Pro I found VPNTracker 4.9 not to work with Leopard. That's a fact that is as well advertised on the vendors homepage. They are working on a new version 5 to be compatible with Leopard. In order to get my IPSEC VPN to work I looked around and found the free IPSecuritas, which even gets me a menu bar icon to start and stop the VPN. So I switched.

The Letterbox plugin for Apple Mail and Mail Act-on have been disabled. For Mail Act-On there is an update available.

Is Java 6 really ready?

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:04:30 GMT

Ok... Now it's getting ugly with the Java 6 VM on Ubuntu Linux:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
#
# An unexpected error has been detected by Java Runtime Environment:
#
#  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb48d24d3, pid=4758, tid=3075954368
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.6.0_03-b05 mixed mode, sharing)
# Problematic frame:
# C  [libswt-pi-gtk-3346.so+0x2e4d3]  Java_org_eclipse_swt_internal_gtk_OS_GTK_1ACCEL_1LABEL_1GET_1ACCEL_1STRING+0x6
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as hs_err_pid4758.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
#   http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp
#
Aborted (core dumped)

Java and Mac OS X: it's all about priorities

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:04:07 GMT

To most users Mac OS X is a desktop operating system. It has Unix under the hood, but the most important part that distinguishes Darwin (the FreeBSD variant) from Mac OS X is the user interface and the applications one can build by using libraries such as Cocoa and others.

Now apparently Apple has done a number of improvements for the Java 5 VM and JDK libraries to allow Java developers to write equally compelling desktop applications in their language of choice. That makes sense and is a good thing.

Server side Java developers and people interested in the bleeding edge can always use tools like Parallels or VMware Fusion to run another operating system (Windows, Linux or Solaris) to get access to the latest Java VM whether it is experimental or short after Sun releases a first production version. So it's not a matter of whether Java gets abandoned by Apple or not. It's simply a matter of where the priorities are. To a desktop application developer it's more important that his applications can be run on a solid and well equipped environment. Apparently Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) is such an environment. I've always been happy with its predecessor Tiger (10.4) and I don't feel a big urge to use the Java 6 VM. For a current server side project I need to use Java 6 and I do that with Ubuntu Linux running on VMware Fusion. There I have the Sun Java 6 VM. It's a huge difference and I would love to keep working on OS X as I don't have to restart Eclipse so frequently.

Java on Leopard - enough complaining

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:13:11 GMT

This is definitely a comment worth sharing.