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HTML is so 1990

Yesterday I was on a meeting with some people from Microsoft and other companies working with social media and communication etc. We talked about the future of the web. I have developed web applications since 1995 or something like that and I’m so tired of is HTML, CSS and client-side script. During the last years people have done incredible web application with technology like AJAX to increase user experience. But HTML, Client-side script and the Browser we are using have limitations, it takes time to build application with rich and good user experience, some stuff are impossible to do because of a limitation both in the HTML, CSS, Client-side script and browser to create Rich Internet Applications. We need a new solutions, a new better way to build applications, and we have two “tools” we can use today to create richer web/internet applications, Flash and Silverlight.

More and more applications are moving to the web and more and more need better user experience. For me the Internet Browsers are moving far far away from me, I start to use more richer client-side tools. For example Messenger, TweetDeck, LiveWriter, Blog readers, RSS readers etc. I don’t use the Browser as much as I did before, for example I don’t use the Browser to write my blog post or publish pictures to the cloud, I use richer applications. Now when Silverlight 3.0 can run out-of-browser, and the increasing demands on richer clients and also the need to create better user experience I think we need to start moving forward. The Browser and HTML will still exists in the near future, but I think it’s time for web developers to take the next step toward RIA.

11 Comments

  • Hi, it was nice to meet you yesterday. :-)

    But I can´t agree on this. The browser is great for ordinary web pages. I really don´t want to see this pages in Silverlight.

    One thing that makes the browser really important is that we got some great standards like (X)HTML, ECMAScript, CSS 2.1 (almost done) and so on. We can use these standards to browse pages on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux (even in the terminal with Lynx), mobile phones, etc. Try to do that with Silverlight!

    I think that RIAs written in Silverlight, Flex etc will be used for different kinds of applications. We can use both Silverlight 3.0 and Flex in both the browser and on the desktop. What we need are more ways to be able to use these applications _everywhere_. I want to get my data from all my devices, not only on this specific computer, but on my friends computer, my mobile phone and my other gadgets.

    One of the benefits with using an ordinary browser is that I can expect to see the same content in the same way, without thinking about the platform I´m using.

  • I seem to recall everyone saying that HTML and client scripts were dead a few years ago. Flash, ASP.NET and a number of other technologies were the way of the future. Then AJAX became very popular. Ooops, it makes heavy use of HTML and client scripting, too. ;)

    The bottom line: You might be correct but I'm not attending HTML's funeral just yet.

    As for the browser, I think that we might be rethinking the traditional definition of a browser (i.e, a tendency towards a lightweight browsing platforms that can run on a wide variety of systems/devices) but that's all.


  • @Greeg:
    I absolutely agree with you.
    @Wimpyboy:
    There are two known kinds of trends, moving the app to the web, and increasing user experience, and HTML with AJAX etc have limitation. More and more web sites are using Flash, more and richer user experience web apps are using Silverlight and Flash. If we should make it possible to use touch, new UI experience etc, new technology is needed.  More and more devices are connected together and use the internet to communicate. For 10 years ago we used the Browser for so much more than we do today, richer applications are now instead used, mobile devices etc. This will in the future increase more and more.

  • Yes, we use applications more nowadays than before. I still don´t belive that the web will actually die (if not Skynet is for real). We can do a lot with just javascript (both IE 8 and Firefox 3.5 provides API:s for cross domain data access). Web pages are still really easy to create, and it´s not hard to implement HTML support in our products since it´s so simple.

    RSS feeds are also really simple and we can easily write an application to read it.

    Silverlight is growing really fast, and the applications we write here can only be used on Windows and Mac OS X. Ok, Linux users can use Moonlight, but it is still far behind Silverlight. What is most important, the number of functions or the number of potential users?

    Don´t get me wrong - I love Silverlight and WPF and is really looking forward to see more of these, especially with Silverlight 3.0 around the corner. Actually, I still have a screenshot of my first XAML application written on Windows Longhorn Build 4051:
    http://member.webforum.nu/3938/xaml.JPG

    ;-)


  • @Wimpyboy:
    No, the web will not die!
    To satisfy the needs and fulfill the two trends and the increasing demands on better user experience, the use of HTML need to be changed.

  • I can agree in some ways. But don't you think we have to walk the W3C route in some way? I mean HTML5 with CSS3 looks pretty cool and address some of the more frustrating aspects of modern web development.

    But of course. To build a rich application like a word processor and so on i don't see the point spending the time getting it to work in 5 different browser.

  • The Flash and SilverLight have to be "hosted" by some container. The container is, no matter you will or not, a internet browser. Internet browser is a powerful platform for quick application deployment. The application can be written by AJAX or Flash or SilverLight.

  • I agree in that the current 'Web 2.0' has bastardized the web scene. I agree above that html needs to stay, it has it's place, html/css, etc...

    There are 'pages' then there are 'applications'. I think RIA tools will replace the current ajax technologies, as they are easier to maintain, compile, etc...

    Even with great tools like jQuery it's way too easy to introduce bugs in javascript. The tooling for javascript has not really advanced how the other tools have.


  • @Morgan Cheng:
    There is a new feature in Silverlight 3.0 called, out-of-browser, which will make sure we can run Silverlight apps out of the browser ;)
    We alos have Flash Air.
    @Steve:
    HTML doesn't need to stay, but it will stay for a while.

  • I'm not sure why people always think that "The Web" is equal to a browser and web pages. It might have started out that way but have outgrown it's initial purpose to be something more powerful. That power can simply not be wielded by HTML and Javascript alone, those technologies where built and architected around the notion of docuements and hyperlinks. The next genearation of web applications will use "the web" with concepts like Mesh-Ups, RDF, tripple storage and SaaS.

    The browser will probably stay around, but it will be a document reader and not where the innovarion and great applications will be built.

    I encourage everyone to download and install the times reader (built in WPF) for an example of web power that simply can't be done with HTML and javascript.

  • Until both Silverlight and Flash is embedded into websites with all their syntax-sugar directly in the source, they won't be proper solutions to replace the HTML markup. One of the main reasons for the web's success is the clean-text HTML syntax, which is easily parsed and understood by client- and server-software.

    HTML and JavaScript has come a long way and it will continue to be the main delivery framework for web applications. There are still a lot of stuff that neither Flash nor Silverlight can do, that you can easily do with the existing web tools.

    Looking forward, I think we will see a lot of interesting things happening in the space of the semantic web, with better formatted HTML-content we can add intelligent renderinger, so for example this blog could have the same HTML-syntax but depending on the users rendering engine, it could be rendered with Flash, Silverlight or any other rendering engine.

    Flash/Silverlight are great for RIA, though you really need to consider all the disadvantages and advantages both technologies has compared to existing web tools.

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