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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Unfounded Panic Ensues

The panic continues from really smart people (more than one), for some unknown reason...

how is that different than the bad old days when a site was developed for one particular browser?
I really have trouble understanding the concern. When I read about Flex and Apollo the first and most important aspects that caught my attention was the *emphasis* on being web compliant.

The point *is* to write web compliant services and run them through many kinds of web clients. Apollo is just one and should not be leading to locked in service providers.

That would be dumb and missing the point of the web.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since I've unwittingly made myself a part of this controversy, I have to persevere.

I took a few minutes to get smarter about Apollo, thinking I must be missing something. And indeed my understanding of Apollo was somewhat off. But not enough to alter my fundamental opinion. So I need you, Patrick, to educate me.

I get that Apollo can be used to render pure Web-based applications (i.e. HTML, CSS, JS, etc.) as it incorporates the WebKit rendering engine.

So, lets say you write a Web compliant app; it's RESTful, its pure standards based, and so on. Now I can exercise your app in any old browser.

In addition, you creat an Apollo client for this app. Presumably, its going to take advantage of Apollo features (mxml, actionscript, and thus flash).

It's here where I'm probably getting caught up. Do you envision such an Apollo client to be a sexier, slightly more functional version of the app that renders in my browser? Or does the Apollo app contain sufficient functionality that it is the only meaningful client?

If the latter, then that is what I, at least, have a problem with. If it's the former, then that tracks with your argument, but it seems there's a very fine line between a somewhat better client and the only client--a line too easily (even accidentally) crossed.

It would also help if you can describe how you're using Apollo today, and how you're keeping from making Apollo-only apps.

Thanks.

Bob Haugen said...

What Pete said. That's my concern exactly.

Plus, I expect that such Web apps most commonly *will* be developed to require Apollo or Silverware, at least for full use. That is, they will be developed using those toolkits from the git-go and they will be baked in.

As always, we'll see what happens...

Patrick Logan said...

I cannot control what other developers do. There are plenty of non-web-like applications on the internet already.

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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.