Moonlighting Linux: the future of rich web apps

by David M Williams

Thursday, 08 May 2008

Page 1 of 4 ! As we know, static HTML web sites are passé. Yet, Java applets never turned out to be the killer online application platform they possibly could have been. The modern introduction of Ajax has undoubtedly improved the web experience but it’s not a panacea. Here’s how to get started using the Moonlight development technology from the Mono Project. Ajax is a combination of JavaScript and XML and has been revolutionary. It makes web applications much more responsive. It’s brought about a more desktop-like experience to the web. This highlights the divide between the two major application models: web apps are ubiquitous; they place few barriers on the user except to have a web browser and Internet connection. However, desktop apps can have richer functionality but have far more dependencies. Early web applications involved round-robin trips back to the web server. A page would be delivered to the user, they filled in forms or selected options and then the browser sent this back to the web server for processing. Prior to client-side scripting technologies like JavaScript all form processing had to be on the server which often meant a couple of seconds waiting just to be told you’d entered invalid data and had to do it again. Macromedia’s Flash – now Adobe’s Flash – turned things around by allowing software developers to write, in a sense, “real” applications for the web. And designers too; Flash is perhaps even more widely used by graphic designers. Flash chose to work in a different way; rather than have a server generate page content – which may not render as expected on the mix of different web browsers and operating systems – a Flash program is a semi-compiled piece of code coupled with resources like graphics and sounds. The app runs within a specialised browser plug-in, to which the web browser effectively delegates control. This harks back to the Java model and indeed even Microsoft’s ActiveX. For the most part, when you think of Flash you largely think of games or cheesy web site animations. It’s hard to find any real, hard-hitting genuine application programs written in Flash. Part of the reason for this will be that Flash so optimised the user experience on the web browser side that its interaction back to the server – including persisting data to databases – was never heavily expanded or exploited. The current generation of web app development technologies take a different view, attempting to apportion tasks to different tiers of the web browsing experience. That is, user interaction takes place on the user’s computer, in their web browser. Business logic and data storage occur on the server. This is the model put forth by the evolution of Java and Flash, namely Sun’s JavaFX and Adobe’s Flex, as well as newcomer Silverlight by Microsoft. Of these, Flex is a commercial offering; the designer tools must be purchased although the resultant apps can be freely used and deployed and the run-time environment is at no charge. JavaFX may need some proving; although Java really hit a market with mobile phone games and programs on the desktop it still suffers from a reputation, whether merited or not, of being bloated and slow. So, that leaves Silverlight for us to play with. Let’s check it out. CONTINUED << First page <   1 2 3 4 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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