"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

Search This Blog

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Navigation in Avalon

Ed Kaim writes about Avalon...

If you look at how the Web works, it's a "Web" because of the way you can hop from one site to another and criss-cross your way from anywhere to anywhere else. The integration isn't complex--it's basically HREFs, POSTs, and GETs. What these enable, however, is a way to write large systems to address business needs in such a way that they are really a set of smaller building block applications that can be glued together (often dynamically).

In contrast, Windows client programming today (Win32, .NET, J2SE, whatever) has a programming model that is much less conducive to integration... While there are tons of sexy features coming in Avalon, my money is on navigation as the single most important feature.

2 comments:

Chui Tey said...

Yeah, except all self-respecting web developers have had a crack at making a half-baked attempt to make web-pages return like a subroutine.

Patrick Logan said...

Well, there are all kinds of issues with back buttons and transactions, etc. That's more of a programming language and technology issue.

The basic concept of navigation "forward" and "backward", diverging branches, and REST-based hyperlink state transitions is sound and beneficial.

Blog Archive

About Me

Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.