Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Salon.com on Browser Wars, Mozilla and Internet Clients This article makes for an interesting read for a variety of reasons. The theme of the "end of the browser wars" has been active for some time, with popular opinion being that Internet Explorer won. It's been really frustrating to see this worldview. Quitely, in the background, Macromedia has been working on an agenda to re-establish the importance of the client software environment on the Internet, and dramatically evolve past where the HTML-based browser has left us (nearly stagnant for the past four years). With the introduction of Flash MX and Flash Player 6, Macromedia has released what we've dubbed "a next-generation rich client" that integrates media, communications and applications functionality into a runtime that can deliver desktop-like (better) experiences both within the browser and standalone on desktops and devices. HTML browsers are great as document display mechanisms, and for simple hyper-text based application interfaces, but fall down as the sophistication and complexity of the interface or media grows. The other thing that's interesting is the discussion about the use of Mozilla as a platform for Internet client software. There's a lot to learn from mozilla.org and mozdev.org. It's a great, active and successful open source platform that I suspect will continue to innovate for years to come. More interesting is the nascent standards around XML user interface languages, such as XUL. I think there's an inevitable intersection that will come about when the world of XML-based data and user interface languages meets rich clients like Flash and the CLR. One project I'm tracking along these lines is the DENG project to deliver a full XML-centric content runtime (CSS2/XML/XForms/XPath/XSLT) on top of Flash Player 6. 6:05:46 PM    comment []

Real-Time Collaborative Database Design This simple example application demonstrates the direction we're headed with social computing based on real-time applications. It's built with Flash MX and the Flash Communication Server, which provide an interesting platform to explore real-time communications and collaboration applications. The application is a real-time multi-user entity design system. While it is not actually functional, it shows how multiple users could in real-time create, edit and view database entity models. Give it a try and make sure you've got at least two people using it! Real-time collaborative applications have been so narrowly defined and understood --- usually as chat rooms, whiteboards, video conferencing, etc. --- but what's really interesting to me is applications that add the human dimension to them. We're starting to see some interesting explorations here. 4:12:13 PM    comment []

Rich-Text Editors in Flash This blog item from Flash VooDoo is a quick discussion about the emergence of rich-text editors written in Flash MX. I've been itching for this to happen and it's great to see people experiment. My personal favorite is the one included here: As a few other bloggers have noted in the past, the advent of a high-quality cross-platform (browser and operating system) rich text HTML edit control could help a lot more people become effective publishers in this new medium. 3:21:32 PM    comment []

DataGrid control shows rich client potential Mike Chambers has created this page with an example of the Flash MX DataGrid control. It's a great example of the richness of the client environment created with Flash MX. We're now reaching the richness of the traditional Mac/Win desktop in terms of user interface components. I know the DataGrid is one of those components that *everyone* needs in an Internet application --- it facilitates easy structured viewing/browsing/editing of tabular data; it will be interesting to see how developers extend and enhance it with custom Cell Renderers to provide really powerful data views and manipulation. 3:02:50 PM    comment []

Joining the Ranks of Bloggers I'm joining the ranks of what Jon Udell calls CXO Blogs with this semi-personal and semi-professional blog about media, communications and applications over the Internet. Over the past six-months, like many other netizens, I've become addicted to browsing and subscribing to blogs. My company has also started using blogspace as a crucial customer and community engagement mechanism. It's been amazing to see the number of Macromedia MX related blogs spring up. While I'll sometimes post Macromedia specific content here, the intention is really to explore the broad technologies, ideas and companies that are working on the converence of media, communications and applications. 2:27:53 PM    comment []

Just getting started here with my weblog. Should be fun! 1:52:49 PM    comment []