Re: webfacing and competing products

----- Original Message ----- 
Martin wrote:


> > And two you will hear a lot, "thin client" and "fat client".
> > Think of the
> > 40MB browser and 10MB JVM as zero megabytes and zero install,
> > and then you
> > can have HTML for "free".
>
> To be fair, most people have at least the browser installed already.

Fair? What is fair about MSIE? What if you use Script that does not work in
IE4? What about using Netscape-compatible script? What if, what if, what if?
What if the browser is already installed - how do we upgrade it to the
latest version without doing an install? Having Windows installed does not
mean much, either - eventually we will need the features of the latest
version...

>
> > And, if someone says they have a thin client,
> > but you need
> > to install a Java Servlet or Applet - you just installed a
> > fat client.
>
> This is just not true.  First of all, servlets run on the server.
> That's why they're called SERVlets.  Secondly, if anyone still used
> applets (they don't, do they?  Apart from the IBM InfoCenter.), the
> important point about them is that they're downloaded from the server as
> required.  So while they may be fatter than a pure HTML client, at least
> you don't have to send someone to every PC to install the upgrades: the
> upgrade will happen automatically the next time the user uses the
> applet.

Servlets are DOWNLOADED from the server. To the PC. So are fat clients. I
can deploy my small footprint (thin?) rich client without user intervention,
but I am still called a fat client. Zero user intervention deployment and
fat client are two different things. Don't get them confused.