The Web just sucks

CodeGuy

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

Rocky Moore

Mindflow wrote:

Word of advice, when setting sizes/widths/heights use Pixels in CSS for everything where you can. Why?... Coz it helps make proportions look the same on all monitors and resolutions.

Actually, that is what "em" is all about.

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

J Dunlap

Michael P Butler wrote:

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.

It's funny: I spend a lot of time when I do web apps making my apps emulate the UI functionality that desktop apps have (and have succeeded in doing a rich menu, a data lookup control, fake "windows" that look and act like the real thing, adaptive treeviews, etc), and a lot of my time when I do desktop apps trying to do rich content presentation like what can be done on the web. Neither one has what it should. But the desktop platform can be built upon to make an ideal platform much better than the web can. Where the web shines is rich content presentation and automatic layout (well I wouldn't say "shines" for layout but it's better than the desktop as far as what's available out-of-the-box). The desktop is far better for everything else. WPF addresses those things on the desktop, but I find it to be bloated, convoluted, and inadequate - so I'm aiming for something better.

El Corazon

Dario Solera wrote:

I think that the "web" is the most incoherent bunch of technologies and platforms ever built. It's a paradox, the web is the worst nightmare for a software designer and developer, and it's all developers' fault.

I think this is an oversimplification of the issues. I am not a web developer, and probably will never be, because I am one of the niches, probably one of the larger niches. However, what you are describing is all technology in general. VHS vs. BetaMax battle and the eventual outcome of VHS was tossing technology at the consumer and the consumer decides the battle. When you take your car to the shop, there are different parts for different cars. Claim as they will a "standard" the standard is more or less in method, a turbo charged sports engine is different from a monster sized engine for a truck hauling a 5th wheel. Wheels look the same, but are different widths, sizes, number of bolts holding them on. All technology is a jumble, because it is always "in motion." Only when a technology stagnates, it becomes static. The primary reason people complain about software is because its velocity in change of technology is much faster than something that requires physical manufacturing. Software is, in the end, only a bunch of binary numbers, which means its relative velocity of technological advancement is limited only to the creativity of its developers. This is good and bad, consumers demand change, developers feed change to the consumers, consumers demand more change. We live and die by the consumer sword. We can build the worlds greatest technological achievement (to us) and there are no guarentees that consumers will accept it. If a marketer ever finds that perfect formula for predicting the chaos of consumer opinion, they will make a fortune. Right now, the only way is to make something, get consumer feedback, channel it through to the developers somehow. Which means, that ultimately, technology is a bunch of changes "developed by a committee" of consumers. we may have written it, but the surviving culling of technology is done at the consumer level, so there is blame enough to go around. No one is innocent, no one is guilty, it is just how things are....

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Michael P Butler

J. Dunlap wrote:

My mission involves MyXaml, VG.net, and my own framework, not WPF, though...

I have a split mission. I still want to use MyXaml and my own framework for my personal stuff, but I'm taking the corporate shilling at the moment and so have to tow the party line. I don't currently have the time to build my own toolset so I'm having to borrow Microsofts to get my job done.

Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]

Mindflow

Rocky Moore wrote:

Actually, that is what "em" is all about.

Yep, but how many parts of a web page can be sized by "em"? eg. If I have an images of set sizes only, then set table widths to apply to the images, the fonts that use "em" would sometimes be out of proportion on 800x600 and top end 1600px or 2000px width screens. Maybe desktop applications have the same problem, not sure.