I totally agree how wrong it was. However, is it?
The spirit of the article is that HTML will never be as powerful, performing, or rich as thick clients are at any given time.

It is amazing how far HTML and it’s siblings (JS and CSS) have come since this article was written. But at the same time thick client technology has also advanced. We’ve moved on from Flash, but now we have Objective C/Cocoa & XAML/.NET for desktop, mobile and tablet. Further there are still security and peripheral issues that still limit what HTML can do compared to thicker technologies. Yes, HTML has gotten so much better and it survives well and does somethings that are totally appropriate. But at the same time, it cannot nor should not solve all our GUI needs.

But yes, man! was I wrong.

cheers,

Jess

“…the time has come to create a new system that is low bandwidth, utilizes a single code base for all platforms, and is componentized enough to make updating and customizations easy using internet-based distribution.”

Sounds great, let me know when the software industry and human nature allow this for *any* technology segment. Telecom hasn’t done it in a much longer period, even consumer electronics have barely managed to accomodate standardized remote controls.

Considering that just displaying HTML is a fairly straightforward task, even the browser makers haven’t done too well, as you mention. Who do we entrust with a truly long-range idea like yours? Realisticly, it would have to be Microsoft, given the difficulty of designing, building, marketing, and killing-off of competing standards that would be needed.

http://www.ftrain.com/archive_ftraintwo_15.html

Flash will go away before HTML. HTML is needed to make .Net, Java, and other server side technologies to work with the client. Even though Macromedia hired Mr. Nielsen, Flash is still over 90% unusable.

Just to clarify, I am talking about application development. Publishing is still and will still be a great thing to do in HTML. Why the heck not? Especially b/c HTML and XML work so darn well together. As a CMS person I understand that more than most.

1. Flash – Anyone dismissing Flash out of hand, does not know flash anymore. Flash MX changed all the rules. Also, I did say that it can’t be taken seriously until they improve the development environment so that it performs better for programmers. They may have to split the UI into two. This is something that the folks at Norpath have actually done quite well.

Sub points on Flash. Flash MX works with JSP, .Net and even ASP appserving environments. It will even run directly from a J2EE environment.

2. .Net is many things and MS has been doing a wonderful job of confusing people about what it is and promising a lot more. It will have its own UI environment, but that UI environment is just really a marketing scam replacement of VB. It will only run on Windows. The only difference is that it will communicate via .Net protocols.

3. XUL – The concept is very sound, but from what I was told and from what I’ve seen, it is window dressing only. The content of the applications that it supports still require DHTML to funciton. I’m still stuck using the same limited widgets as before. G-d! I would just kill for one HTML combo-box.

4. Standards-based HTML – What standards? Who’s standards? What browser? I could write code that is completely standards compliant and I get 2 things: 1. less functionality b/c it doesn’t support as much as the browser say they support. 2. pages that look differently in various browser/platform sets. Standards compliance is a myth for anyone wanting to get more than a publishing environment out of HTML.

5. Did I say “broadband”? I think I said “bandwidth”. I never meant to imply that broadband should be required. What I was suggesting was that applications that are attempting to be ported to this environment have severe bandwidth issues. Anyone who has worked in a CMS based on the web will realize this once they transfer their first PSD file over a modem so that it can be converted by the server using a digital asset management program, or somone using a DMS that takes care of PPT files and is constantly transferring the documents back and forth for editing.

What I was really trying to refer to though is the display of large sets of data with much metadata associated with each “row”. The more intelligent you want your navigations to be (actions as well) the more metadata you need to port w/ each row. Thus you need to reduce HTML wherever you can. In our case we can’t use ID tags along w/ class tags and this severly limits our ability to differentiate efficiently styles.

Ok, I’ll stop there for now … I hope the discussion ensues here. I also want to propose that if there are enough people interested in Web application development that we start our own community. For now the bulk of what we do will continue to be in HTML, but I would like to see other environments spoken about too. Any takers?
== dave

Flash was undoubtedly originally developed as a linear animation tool. However, with the development of Flash MX, and a little outside the box thinking, the possibilities are endless. While Flash works directly with J2EE, .NET and ASP, there are endless other opportunities, including Cold Fusion. As long as you can develop a dynamic content page with any application server, you can pull those variables into Flash, which creates a robust application environment.

While Flash may be linear in nature, the introduction of extensive action scripting with the manipulation of timelines and content through variables creates an application that is as successful and impressive as the person that developed it….it just takes some talent and a little imagination.