The web is broken, please fix…
Posted in Uncategorized on June 6th, 2009 by admin – Be the first to commentThe web is really broken right now. It takes all sorts of elegant hacks and skill with CSS and Javascript to take something originally intended as a document and turn it into an interface for a fully-functioning web application. The fact that Google have already managed to pull of Google Maps and GMail so brilliantly is nothing short of amazing given the underlying mess they have inherited to work with.
I think HTML5’s canvas support could change a lot as it becomes possible to render directly to screen. I wouldn’t be suprised if Google or some other big organisation release a new kind of markup more suited to laying out application interfaces than HTML to make this easier – some kind of CanvasML (Update: In fact Mozilla Thunderhead seems to be pursuing this).
Mozilla’s Bespin looks like an awesome project but the decision to use Canvas as the rendering layer to avoid the overhead of HTML makes me realise why I like developing with Flash and Flex and why Silverlight looks like a great option too. OK so Flash’s text handling isn’t brilliant but on the flip-side it’s going to take years before there is the same level of Canvas to the same level of rendering capability as Flash and even then there’s the whole networking and data binding layers. Javascript just isn’t as nice to work with as a compiled language like Actionscript 3 or C#. So, with Canvas applications, aren’t we just starting over for the sake of “standards” ? Maybe propietary plugins aren’t so bad after all… or perhaps haXe + xinf is the open-source answer waiting in the wings?
Seems I’m not the only one thinking about this.