Brandon Paddock's Blog

Dare says not to call it AJAX

Dare Obasanjo and Ian Hixie say “Call an Apple an Apple.”

Fine.  I don't really care what it's called.  I don't care if it's been around for ages, or who made it.  Okay, well, I'm happy to know more about it... because I'm a geek like that.  But that's not why I'm talking about it.

I'm talking about it because I think it's going to be important this year.

Why?

Well, think about what Mark Lucovsky said when he went to Google. 

What's the best part about developing a Web Application?  Deployment.  There are no prequisites (other than the browser), there is nothing to install, and you'll never be using an old version.

There are countless, and I mean countless programs for which this model makes absolutely no sense at all.  Picture this: Visual Studio as a web application.  Painful, I know.  Sorry, I promise won't do that again.  And that was the problem with Mark's argument... You can't say that “fat clients” are obsolete.

On the other hand, there are probably some places where Web Applications can viably replace traditional desktop programs, with real benefits.  But I'm more interested in the new stuff.  I'd rather try to picture the new kinds of things you can do with Web Applications that just didn't work elsewhere.

Got any ideas for a killer Web App?  Post 'em.

posted @ Tuesday, March 22, 2005 1:40 PM