[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: the web client interface was RE: Two link questi

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: the web client interface was RE: Two link questions
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 10:53:57 -0400
• In-reply-to: <003501c34d3a$04073910$2001a8c0@bryans>

bry@i... (bryan) writes:
>>What is more questionable in the assertion made elsewhere that 
>>hypertext (eg browser based web pages) is the 
>>only realistic client for the web.  It condemms complex 
>>operations to novice mode.  Because any compute 
>>process is linearizable doesn't mean it is a good idea 
>>for any given case.  
>
>Certainly doesn't mean it's a bad idea for every case either. Anyway
>the linearity of a solution may be bad or good depending on how many
>other solutions the architecture supports and on how that architecture
>allows the solution to interact with other solutions in its space. 

>From my perspective, the browser is a classic 80/20 (or better).  It
offers 20% of the capabilities of richer hypertext systems and GUIs
generally, maybe even less.  It turns out that there's an incredible
amount of stuff (probably more than 80%) you can do within that tiny
capability subset.

The Web did force a lot of work onto the back end, where interaction
with other solutions was a lot easier.  I have a hard time seeing that
as a problem for most applications.

On Len's question, I don't see hypertext as "the only realistic client
for the Web".  For certain, it's the cheapest client out there, and I
can't say I see much benefit to building other systems except in a
relatively small number of cases.  From my perspective, XForms takes
care of about 90% of my remaining Web-interactivity problems - though
I'm still concerned about the odds on its widespread implementation. 

If you need something else, though - build it.  For all the effort the
Curl and Flash folks have put into Rich Internet Apps, though, I don't
see much need for a generic toolkit with powers beyond the existing
Web+XForms.  Custom clients, though - sure.  Sounds good.


-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org

• References:
  • the web client interface was RE: Two link questions
    • From: "bryan" <bry@i...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Xquery and XSLT?
• Next by Date: How did "public identifier" get its name...
• Previous by thread: the web client interface was RE: Two link questions
• Next by thread: Please Remove me.
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread