The Web just sucks

AbhishekBK

Man........ the web rocks.

Abhishek It is impossible to change your past. But it is very possible to ruin your present by worring about the future. -Chankya

Gary Wheeler

:omg: I would be doing the anti-gravity dance on the ceiling after two espresso...

Software Zen: delete this;

Dario Solera

AbhishekBK wrote:

Man........ the web rocks.

Did you at least read my post?

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Dario Solera

I usually have 4-5 a day. :-O

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AbhishekBK

I did. Every time, you read a networking tutorial, you will come across things like standards and protocols. All these standardization really doesn’t get the stuff to work. It only makes it standardized. What you are talking about is the lack of standardization in some areas in the web development and what hell it is to put up with that mess. But I think it is ok. It is not because the web sux. It is only because, that how new technologies develop. Independently, mostly without synchronization with other technologies for some time.

Abhishek It is impossible to change your past. But it is very possible to ruin your present by worring about the future. -Chankya

peterchen

That's why I love standards - there are so many to choose from!

We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
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Dario Solera

AbhishekBK wrote:

But I think it is ok.

As a user, I say the web is great. As a developer... you already know my opinion.

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Dario Solera

Paul Watson wrote:

Desktop dev is good for desktop apps. Web dev is good for web apps.

That's a very complex statement. Could you explain it better? (Just joking, I see what you mean)

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AbhishekBK

Dario Solera wrote:

As a developer... you already know my opinion.

Yes. I see what you are saying. But "sux" as in what? "sux" as in the guys who made it did a lousy job, or lousy thinking? Or they did not care of developers enough? Where, according to you, did they screw up?

Abhishek It is impossible to change your past. But it is very possible to ruin your present by worring about the future. -Chankya

Dario Solera

AbhishekBK wrote:

But "sux" as in what?

In the fact that the web developer has to take care of incompatibilities, hacks, tricks and all the like in order to make a web application work in any context and with any browser; the developer loses the focus on the part of the development that really matters (i.e. business logic, security, performances, and so on).

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AbhishekBK

Dario Solera wrote:

the part of the development that really matters (i.e. business logic, security, performances, and so on)

That's fair enough. That's the only thing unique to the application under consideration anyway. But, I am only saying, mostly you say it "sux" if you think the guys who made it, did a lousy job. If they did well, and still web development seems be incomprehensible; then web development is just plain difficult. And complicated and may be irritating as well. But the web "sux"? That somehow does not fit.

Abhishek It is impossible to change your past. But it is very possible to ruin your present by worring about the future. -Chankya

Sceptic Mole

:cool:

CodeGuy

Steve Yegge agrees with you.[^]

Shog9 0

Michael P Butler wrote:

Or at least take back the intranet development from the web-app developers.

While i've seen far too many disastrous intranet apps, the web apps have hardly been the worst of the lot. For all the talk about how competing web "standards" cause problems for developers, the truth is there are plenty of poorly-understood desktop "standards" as well, not to mention "best practices" and "things that will almost certainly break some machines if you don't get 'em right". Got a web app that doesn't look right in Firefox? Ok, so i'll use IE. Or throw together some Greasemonkey. No biggie. Got a desktop app full of hardcoded IDs, paths, and connection strings? Ah... now there are problems. Of course, the abomination that was ActiveX-in-IE just brought together the worst of both worlds.

every night, i kneel at the foot of my bed and thank the Great Overseeing Politicians for protecting my freedoms by reducing their number, as if they were deer in a state park. -- Chris Losinger, Online Poker Players?

Michael P Butler

Paul Watson wrote:

Do you really think a proprietary system from Microsoft is going to come to dominate the web in the next 5 to 10 years? That web-apps will fall away to be replaced by desktop applications with internet smarts?

The battle won't be fought on the web first. The first shots will be fired on the "intranet". Currently the ease of deployment of "web-apps" makes most IT managers think that they should be writing their business systems to be run from a browser. As most managers are buzz-word driven, I think XAML and WPF will get its first foothold by replacing the cumbersome web-based intranet apps with easy to deploy smart-clients using .NET and WPF. Web services and business2business web apps will play a big part, but they won't have any UI or design elements. It will be pure data that is past from site to site.

Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]

Michael P Butler

Shog9 wrote:

While i've seen far too many disastrous intranet apps, the web apps have hardly been the worst of the lot. For all the talk about how competing web "standards" cause problems for developers, the truth is there are plenty of poorly-understood desktop "standards" as well, not to mention "best practices" and "things that will almost certainly break some machines if you don't get 'em right". Got a web app that doesn't look right in Firefox? Ok, so i'll use IE. Or throw together some Greasemonkey. No biggie. Got a desktop app full of hardcoded IDs, paths, and connection strings? Ah... now there are problems.

Of course, there are no bad tools just bad developers and it is about choosing the right technology for the job. Through all this discussion, I'm refering to my own personal circumstances and beliefs. My own desire is to build solutions to problems in the quickest, most stable way and reusable component way. I find that web-based solutions don't meet the first criteria. The fault is not just of the platform but of the maturity of the tools. I'm sure once the various AJAX toolkits have been bedded in then they will help speed up app development. I just want to solve my business domain problem and not have to go through hoops to do the simplest of things. Currently when I'm developing web-solutions I seem to spend far too much time writing code to make the app do something the emulates a desktop app rather than solving the specific business problem.

Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]

J Dunlap

Michael P Butler wrote:

You laugh, but it is my personal mission to bring rich-client development back to the interweb thingy. Or at least take back the intranet development from the web-app developers. Web Apps are built on the sand of static pages, despite all the cool workarounds that people have come up with. The thing needs reinventing from the bottom up.

You and I ought to get together and talk! :-D My mission involves MyXaml, VG.net, and my own framework, not WPF, though...

Shog9 0

Michael P Butler wrote:

Of course, there are no bad tools just bad developers and it is about choosing the right technology for the job.

Well, much as i'd love to turn this into a rant on VB, that's not what i'm talking about. Perhaps it would have been better if i'd just said, "most applications require a lot of obscure knowledge and attention to detail, regardless of platform". OTOH, the intranet apps i've used and worked on recently are mostly reporting and collaboration-type systems - which are sort of the bread-and-butter of Web-type apps. I'd agree that once you start trying to emulate desktop apps you'll quickly run into a lot of frustrating, time-consuming problems.

every night, i kneel at the foot of my bed and thank the Great Overseeing Politicians for protecting my freedoms by reducing their number, as if they were deer in a state park. -- Chris Losinger, Online Poker Players?

Rocky Moore

I agree with with that! Web people though were stuck for years. I remember not too long ago when most professional web designers said to never count on Javascript and more or less not to waste you time. Then Google dumps out maps with Javascript and all those same people jump in and say everything needs Ajaxed.. Maybe this is why we still have such limited standards. Shoot the CSS cannot even get a box model to work! I have only been playing with Xaml for a little while, but it does appear to have power for presentation. Kind of freaked out when I clicked on a Xaml link on a website and found it booted up and ran an animation in my browser, was not thinking of it that way until it happened. Now I am wondering about embedding some web pages. Just another hack ;) It would be nice to see the rich client back!

Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Getting up and running on Microsoft Windows Vista

Andy Brummer

Ashley van Gerven wrote:

but just getting a static page to render the same in IE & NN was about as much fun as being dragged backwards thru a cactus garden!

You left out the part about the browsers constantly crashing from static html, or taking minutes to render a simple page. Basically all the crap that scared everyone away from dhtml because html barely workeed at that pont.

Using the GridView is like trying to explain to someone else how to move a third person's hands in order to tie your shoelaces for you. -Chris Maunder