Daily Archives: October 3, 2007

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John Resig makes the case for standards-based Rich Internet Applications

John Resig is a brilliant developer who is the creator of JQuery, a fast and lightweight JavaScript library. He is also JavaScript evangelist at the Mozilla Corporation. He spoke here at The Future of Web Apps on the future of FireFox and JavaScript.

It was a fascinating presentation which demonstrated that it is not just Adobe (Flash, AIR), Microsoft (Silverlight) and Sun (JavaFX) who are in the Rich Internet Application game. Resig began with a tour of new features in JavaScript 2.0, most of which was familiar to me as it seems to be essentially ECMAScript 4.0 a.k.a ActionScript 3.0. In short, JavaScript is becoming more like Java, complete with full object orientation, optional strict typing, and a Just-in-time (JIT) compiler. Adobe has donated much of its code for the ActionScript runtime, in the form of the Tamarin project, which will eventually be part of FireFox 4.0.

My interest perked up when Resig started talking about three monkeys. These are:

  • Action Monkey – Tamarin in FireFox 4.0
  • Screaming Monkey – Tamarin in IE, via the Flash runtime, enabling developers to use it cross-browser
  • Iron Monkey – Python and Ruby for Tamarin

This was new to me. Resig continued by showing some of the work Mozilla is doing to support advanced graphics and multimedia. The Canvas element in HTML 5 interacts with OpenGL to support 3D effects. There is even the possibility of embedding C code in the browser for raw performance, though the security implications mean this is unlikely to be used for general Web pages. Resig also showed generic audio and video support built into the browser. This will integrate with SVG, and we saw how live video can be played back in SVG elements even while they are being dragged around a canvas. Just like Microsoft demonstrates for Silverlight, as it happens.

After showing us how Mozilla might make Flash and Silverlight unnecessary, Resig went on to tackle offline applications. He told us that Mozilla is working to “converge” the three popular offline APIs – Mozilla’s own, Google Gears, and WHATWG. “A final amalgam will be in FireFox 3”, he said.

Resig also described plans for offline applications. This includes Webrunner, a desktop host for XUL applications, and Prism, which lets you install a web application as a desktop application. XUL is Mozilla’s XML user interface language – analogous to Microsoft’s XAML and Adobe’s MXML.

None of this is coming out soon. By the time it does, won’t Adobe and perhaps Microsoft have wrapped up the market for rich multimedia in web applications? And isn’t Mozilla on collision course with Adobe, despite the Tamarin collaboration, since much of what Resig demonstrated competes with Flash, Flex and AIR? After all, Adobe ceased supporting SVG after its acquisition of Macromedia and thereby Flash.

I asked a question about this, and Resig answered tactfully:

Adobe and Mozilla are two separate beasts. They sometimes have very similar goals, like getting the Tamarin virtual machine out. Sometimes the goals differ a bit. We have a pretty good vision of the open web as a viable platform for anyone to develop on. HTML, CSS, JavaScript. This is the core that people should be developing with.

It would be great to see Mozilla disrupting the progress of these two proprietary internet plug-ins, Flash and Silverlight, by providing an open alternative, but it does look as if it will all come too late.

Update: Resig has posted his slides here. He has also clarified the timing:

Of the features mentioned in the presentation, the ones that are coming in Firefox 3 are: SVG Foreign Object, Offline Web Apps, Webrunner/Prism, and JavaScript 1.6-1.8.

internet, web authoring

90% of web sites are illegal

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That’s according to Robin Christopher of AbilityNet, who is speaking on accessibility here at FOWA. He is referring to UK legislation that is 8 years old, requiring web sites to meet certain accessibility standards. The bonus for developers is that accessible web sites are also generally better for all users, not just those with disabilities – Christopher quotes a 35% improvement, though I’m not sure how you measure ease of use in percentages.

Why don’t developers make their sites accessible? The problem I suspect is two-fold. First, lack of resources; many sites are thrown up quickly and it seems that some developers don’t go beyond testing that it looks kind of OK in Internet Explorer. Second, a lot depends on what the standard tools and libraries produce by default. I know Adobe has done significant work on this in Dreamweaver and in Flash. Is a typical WordPress blog accessible? A good question for Matt Mullenweg, whom I will be meeting shortly.

internet, software development, web authoring

Web identity, Facebook, iPhone debated at Future of Web Apps conference

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I’m at the Future of Web Apps conference in London. Ryan Carson is interviewing Om Malik and Mike Arrington about – you guessed – the future of web applications.

Organizers Carson Systems seem to be testing the size of the market for their conference. This one follows another in London earlier this year, at a smaller venue. I suspect it is reaching its limit, though Carson consistently attracts high quality speakers. The conference aims to be an incubator for startups, though it attracts a wider audience than that implies.

As for the debate on stage, it is all pretty inconclusive as you would expect, but I’m interested in how the discussion keeps coming back to web identity issues. “Google pushing its identity mechanism, so is Yahoo, and so on,” says Malik. Carson asks how the problem of multiple identities will be fixed? Malik immediately turns pragmatist.  Developers should “support them all, what do you care? Let them fight it out”.

The conversation turns to Facebook. The participants flail around. Nobody knows how significant Facebook will prove long-term, or how viable Facebook applications are for developers. There is concern that Facebook itself may just copy all the good ideas. Further, Malik is dismissive of what has been done so far. “It is amateur, preliminary stuff,” says Malik. “If it is such as great web OS, where are the smart applications? I haven’t seen any.” Asked where Facebook will be in a year’s time, Arrington says it will go public; Malik says it will be embroiled in legal issues.

Malik is not altogether negative. He sees the real value of Facebook as an identity system. “”One application which shows the potential of Facebook is Free World Dialup [FWD]. Facebook becomes a directory service. That would be my idea of a disruptive application.” FWD integrated VOIP into Facebook.

Has Google been beaten by Facebook? “I don’t think the game is over with regard to social networking,” says Arrington.

What else? I liked Malik’s comment that “You should be building web-apps that are brain-dead simple.” According to him, many web apps “don’t address the principle of fixing someone’s pain point… a lot just do too much and it’s not clear who they are for”.

Malik also noted that European startups have an advantage over the US, though not necessarily Asia. “Europe has a much better broadband infrastructure. You are seeing the next broadband platform. Second, most European startups have the ability to incorporate mobile into their business plans.

Carson touches on mobile development. Is the iPhone a viable development platform? “Why support a platform where the guys who own it don’t want it to be supported?”, says Malik. What about iPhone vs Google Phone? “Google Phone is tackling the emerging markets. iPhone is the upper end of the market.”

One more quote from Malik. “Please stop doing offlice clones. However you might thing Google docs are great, people are not using them.”

Arrington’s big tip is not to spend much money. The beauty of the web is that bright ideas can be tested cheaply.

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