Re: Pete's web5250 was->Re: Business Developers was ->Re: IBM Gives RPG Devotees Their Own Café

[Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Evan,

That's where popularity plays a big role.  There isn't much to download 
if a framework was built with Flex as 90%+ of all users already have the 
runtime installed.  And the framework we are talking about is a single 
program that works for all data feeds being sent to it vs. the model 
where separately compiled screen definitions need to be downloaded (i.e. 
in the case of Flex/Flash it would be a completely different .swf file). 

I have only developed a single Flex application (for charts in the 
browser) so my experience is very limited as far as how stable it would 
be if relied on to be a significant player (to Nathan's point).

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

Evan Harris wrote:
> Hi Aaron
>
> My experience to data is that all these products - JavaFX, Air/Flex/Flash,
> Silverlight, Curl, etc - require hefty downloads and/or support libraries
> like .NET framework/Java. I may be stating the obvious here :)
>
> Looking past the marketing hype and the individual implementation details of
> each plug-in, it seems to me that what they are trying to do is deliver a
> rich environment to the end-user, but more significantly, they are providing
> (or moving towards providing) a development environment that is more akin to
> that of programming to a terminal device  - with all the inherent or missing
> capabilities - that that implies. Since the "terminal device" is delivered
> in software (the plug-in) they are able to upgrade it by simply updating the
> software. 
>
> So, the way I see it, you use the methods and options that the selected
> environment provides to generate your web page - you program to the device -
> as opposed to hand crafting the css, html and javascript, which seems to me
> more like handbuilding your own terminal for each implementation, with all
> the loss of productivity that implies.
>
> Maybe another way to look at it is, programming the individual components is
> like working in assembler; choosing a RIA is akin to buying a compiler and
> programming a 3gl.
>
> BTW, no reason I'm responding to you specifically - you just seem to have
> ended up providing a specific point when I am monitoring the mailing list :)
>
>
> Regards
> Evan Harris
>
>
> Aaron Wrote:
> <SNIP>
> How is JavaFX originally delivered to the users desktop?  Is it similar 
> to a "browser add-on" like Flash or Silverlight, or is it more like 
> downloading the .NET framework (guessing the latter).  If that's the 
> case then I can see it working for internal apps, but that still leaves 
> the need to do public web sites where the viability of your business can 
> depend on how easy/non-intrusive it is to use your website - hence why 
> HTML+CSS+JavaScript will seemingly forever be trying to mirror what 
> other "thicker" technologies can do better.
> </SNIP>
>
>