A Scorecard For Building The Rich WebNew web development platforms have been sprouting up like flowers the last few weeks, as developers race to trump each other and keep up with rising user expectations. AJAX applications (such as Google Maps) have raised the bar by behaving more like traditional desktop apps, with robust interfaces and quick, seamless screen refreshes. To aid in building these applications, vendors are releasing new development suites that marry full-fledged programming environments with a focus on easing web development and deployment. Among the latest moves: Two weeks ago, at Mix07, Microsoft showed off a beta of Silverlight, it's new browser-based engine for deploying rich web apps. Stacey Cowley previewed Silverlight earlier in April: "Sliverlight is Microsoft's new technology for delivering online rich-application features like video and animation. Its programming model incorporates Web standards such as XML (Extensible Markup Language), JavaScript and a subset of technologies from the WPF graphical presentation system that underpins Vista." To promote Silverlight development, Microsoft released its Expression Studio suite also at Mix07, which offers richer options than previous Front Page tools, but with more of a focus on web solutions than the mammoth Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft is clearly trying to challenge Adobe's domination of web apps, built around the Flash technology Adobe picked up with its Macromedia acquisition. But Adobe has not been idle, either, announcing in April that their Flex Development toolkit will be released under the Mozilla Public License. This should help to attract open source programmers to develop for Flash. In addition, Adobe's existing authoring tools, Flash and DreamWeaver, have been upgraded in Adobe's new Creative Suite CS3. The CRN Test Center's Mario Morejon tried out CS3, and reports: "Flash CS3 is perhaps the most noteworthy product in the suite. In addition to the new and expected ActionScript 3.0 editing and debugging capabilities, Flash CS3 further simplifies the interchange of animated objects and code behaviors." Don't confuse any of this with Adobe Apollo, Adobe's upcoming runtime engine for running web apps as standalone desktop applications. Finally, Sun, who expected Java applets to dominate this wild web world, is back at bat again. Its brand new JavaFX, announced this week at JavaOne, is a scripting language to build applications that run on the Java runtime engine. It differs from Groovy, an existing scripting language for the Java runtime, in that it's even more focused on interface building. (Groovy, meanwhile, is not to be confused with Groove, Microsoft's peer-to-peer file sharing application.) Sun's free Java Studio Creator provides for easier web app coding than either Sun's NetBeans or the open source Eclipse IDEs. We talked to Sun's CTO for software Bob Brewin in February about Java Studio and Web 2.0. He told us: "Project Rave (a.k.a. Java Studio Creator), that was one example of where we were trying to make the process of developing a Web application simple. I think if you take a look across what we've done with platform APIs or tools, the goal it to try to make it more accessible for more developers." This is going to be fun. Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:49 PM, May 11, 2007 This is a public forum. United Business Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. United Business Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers. Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of United Business Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in United Business Media's Terms of Service. Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business. |
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