• The browser is the platform.
• Microsoft has embraced this and has released Office as an ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax application for enterprises.
• Microsoft is continuing its push into ‘Software as a Service’
• You can now rent Office XML Application Server for Windows Server 2007
• All of your enterprise users, using IE7.0, Firefox 2.1, Opera 16, or Safari can now access all their office applications from their desktop. (No, IE8.0 still won’t be out, but Firefox will be at 25% marketshare, and I’m not even going to guess at what Firefox will be alled then — how about ‘Burning Rabbit’ ?)
• Here’s the catch — When users click on that ‘Microsoft Word’ button (or any of the office apps), a local application doesnt load. It loads a rich web application that closely mimics what we now think of as word.
• All of the users have their own document storage on your Windows Server
• All of the users have access to their documents seamlessly through existing methods (the remote storage automatically shows up in a user’s ‘my documents’ subfolder, apple’s finder/searchlight, etc)
• Users can specify permissions on these centrally stored files, and they are easily shared — people don’t have to navigate to a random person’s desktop to get a document they shared, and a person doesn’t have to email it to them. The documents on the server are all searchable by the user’s local desktop (depending on permissions).
• When it’s time to upgrade to a new version of Office XML Application Server, the upgrade is done on the server, once, and all clients automatically have their update.

I know some of this isn’t new OR likely, but it’s fun to take an old idea that was once pure ‘out there’ thinking and bring it down into the realm of “I see how this is possible even if it’s not either soon or likely”

Also, who knows if it will even be microsoft who does this? Maybe it’s SUN, maybe this will all play out on linux desktops first, with “OpenOffice Network Server” — who knows. I think the day of the browser as a platform IS coming, and I think we’re going to see REAL productivity applications created this way, and I think it’s going to come to the enterprise first.

They’re the ones who can see the real cost savings and increased productivity — through ease of deployment and upgrades for the former and ease of collaboration in the latter.

Tags: microsoft, office, xml, web3.0, openoffice, deployment, safari, opera, firefox, burningrabbit

Anyway, to the idea. If you stop thinking of javascript as a way to enhance a webpage and start thinking of it as more of an actual language you can use to build a small application inside of a webpage, it sorta “changes everything.” With the popularity of ajax and the rise of advanced widget systems (like script.aculo.us/) and rich web application frameworks, it’s becoming more and more apparent that you *can* build very functional applications on the web. And, for that matter, you can do it all inside a single webpage.

So, you can build a mini application, so what? Well, how about building a “Lightweight Plugin.” Here’s the flow of things:

1. Browser downloads page with little markup, but much javascript
2. Javascript loads a data file from server
3. Javascript parses data file and displays to user
4. User can interact with the javascript display to edit data or view new data

See, it’s just like having an acrobat reader or flash, but you’ve got ZERO downloads, and you can have it do whatever you want, completely customized to your way of doing things.

But wait, the thing about plugins is that there are only a few of them that people have, so everyone has to stick to using the big ones — acrobat reader & flash. We don’t have to stick to that anymore, since there’s no installation of software to worry about. I keep coming back to “The browser is the platform” — Once you’ve got the idea of the lightweight plugin, it becomes apparent that anyone can just build whatever lightweight plugin they want, and the browser just becomes the platform for running and distributing the application.

The browser is the platform.
The browser is the platform.
The browser is the platform.

We’re not getting rid of regular apps anytime soon, but we’re going to start seeing the web become a very different place, full of big and small applications.

Tags: web3.0, xml, script.aculo.us, platform, ajax, openrico, browser, firefox

If you don’t know, TopJax is basically the unix Top command ported to the web with Ajax techniques. It’s basically a, “hey let me do something that gets my feet wet w/ Ajax while also doing something potentially useful”

Tags: topjax, top, unix, ajax, xmlhttprequest

I mean, that’s not all that interesting. It’d be more neat if what we were using it for now was totally not what was expected, but I guess the tool is being used for what it was invented.

Full article about that, the Microsoft Atlas project, which I’m guessing is Visual Web Developer 2005 + ASP.NET 2.0, you can go to ScottGu’s Blog. There, he talks about the upcoming Atlas Client Script Framework, which will provide ajax support to ASP.NET

Next, we need to have System.Windows.Forms implemented in XHTML+CSS+AJAX. Wouldn’t that be something?

Tags: xmlhttp, xmlhttprequest, OWA, outlook, web, access, scobleizer, paoli, visual, developer, 2005

I’d like to point out that many of the “rich application frameworks” that are out there (many of which are described in my rich application frameworks page) have been at this for a while, working on their technology out of the limelight.

It’s just that several powerful trends have collided, and the naming of the beast has, well, given everyone a focusing point. Naming something like this gives everyone a common frame of reference. Not that “XMLHTTP” wasn’t a good name for the idea, it’s just that, well, it’s not as sexy as AJAX. The naming of the technology, the very prominent use of it in Google Maps, the already-breeding realm of rich application frameworks, well, all of them collided and produced this idea in everyone’s head that Javascript isn’t as bad as we had all thought, and that using “modern” javascript could really produce some highly functional, powerful web applications.

Part of it is that javascript left such a nasty taste in people’s mouths that it was relegated to the, “only use if it you have to” realm. I know that’s where I was, having beat myself over the head with the javascript stick back in the day when Netscape still had >50% marketshare. I think a lot of people are seeing this technology and are realizing that we’ve come a long way since then. Really, for the most part, now you *CAN* have one codepath (for most things), and you don’t have to hack, hack, and more hack your way to getting things working on various browsers. Part of it is that we don’t have to test on Netscape 3.0 anymore, and part of it is that the technology has matured enough to not give everyone headaches.

There’s more to this, for sure, but I think i’m hitting the key points.

Some of this was ‘researched’ at various places around the web, but i found the Wikipedia AJAX article very helpful

Tags: ie5.0, web3.0, xmlhttprequest, google, oddpost, ajax

TopJax might be for you.

TopJax is essentially the “top” unix utility ported to the web via Ajax using Sack of Ajax. It provides the ability to view system processes, sort processes by various fields, pause/unpause monitoring, and hide idle processes.

TopJax is released under the GPL.

Note: This is probably highly insecure. I don’t encourage you to run it on a public server.

• See TopJax in action
• See the Documentation
• Download it

The permanent address for TopJax is http://emergent.urbanpug.com/topjax

If you’d like to keep up-to-date on the progress of the project, you can subscribe to this site’s RSS feed –

Notes: I’ve separated all styling information from the code, because I know I’m not the best person with CSS. If anyone wants to help by providing alternate stylesheets, I’d be very happy.

If you want to help out by making a small donation, that would be cool.

You could also buy a Threadless shirt using me as a referral.

Tags: top, unix, ajax, topjax, xmlhttprequest

What does this actually get you? Well, alone, you might be able to do some system administration w/o having to use SSH, which might be an “ok” thing — but really, the key concept is really to provide a new way of accessing old applications. I know there are companies out there that have been really pushing hard to get old green screen applications pushed into the present by doing various things like wrapping the old “screens” in HTML, using java to interface w/ the old application, providing a slightly fancier interface to the old app.

Now everyone’s got a new choice for doing this kind of thing. What i’m more interested, being a linux guy, is the ability to do with ajaxified methods some of the basic things i would normally have to do by opening up a shell, logging into a server, and running some commands.

I’m working on a little utility that i myself will find useful, and i hope others will too.

Also, after macromedia’s recent announcement of flash-javascript interoperability, now comes flashjs.

Both of these are added to the Ajax Toolkit and Project List. I think i’m going to start calling it something else — maybe “rich web framework toolkit and project list” — because it doesn’t really cover “just” ajax anymore.

1. Tony Soprano — How many times do you hear the mobsters mention the ‘RICO’ laws?
2. Rico….. Suave!

Now, I think Rico is exactly what the “Rich Web Application” community needs. Not because of what it is, but because of who is behind it. Sabre is a fairly large company, and they’ve been sponsoring Rico, finally releasing it into the wild. It’s nice that toolkits exist, but you really need an all-encompassing package that supports lots of functionality.

It’s hard to develop an application with lots of little pieces. Prototype is nice, but it doesn’t have all the pieces there. Backbase is great, but it’s not open source, and costs some real money. Dojo will be nice, when/if it gets here. I’m not criticizing, they’re new — they just need time to get everything put together.

For something as complicated as a rich web app framework, you really need some financial backing to put enough people on the project to make it worthwhile. Lone developers go so far, but we need more. I think that’s what we’ve got with Rico. Dojo might have it, i’m not sure how many people from Jot work on Dojo, and how much money Jot has / will have to develop with.

Anyway, I think Sabre’s shown some “enlightened self interest” with releasing Rico, and I think that it’s going to take the web app framework community to new, very good, places.

Oh yes — i’ve added Rico, Drag and Drop w/ Prototype, the Javascript Gamelib, and CPAINT to the ajax toolkits list.

Yes, google’s got em already, but the average joe doesn’t have the manpower to put all the pieces together himself. These toolkits are still very rough around the edges, and it’s going to take some time and some painful development of applications, some aborted projects, some cross-flow of ideas between projects, but we’ll see the browser be what microsoft feared it would be from the beginning — the browser is going to become the platform.

Why is this happening? We’re at a point now where the tools for web development, your databases and your server side scripting languages / application servers are already written, and they’re pretty good. me, as a developer, I can’t go out and hack together a PHP/FI version 1.0 and have it be of any use to anyone. What I’m saying is that because the tools are there, we’re now able to build tools on top of our tools, to make what we build even better.

I’ll give the Ajax toolkits another 6-9 months before they’re really mature, and the javascript widget-based toolkits, well, my guess is they’ll need at least another 12-18 months before there’s anything that’s highly polished and usable to a wide array of people.

Now, i haven’t actually played with the likes of Backbase, and they might be closer than anyone, I just don’t know. I think a project for tomorrow is to go download the backbase community edition and see what i can do.

Tags: ajax, backbase, php, qooxdoo, javascript