Re: Pete's web5250 was->Re: Business Developers was ->Re: IBM Gives RPG Devotees Their Own Café

Hi Evan,

That's where popularity plays a big role. There isn't much to download if a framework was built with Flex as 90%+ of all users already have the runtime installed. And the framework we are talking about is a single program that works for all data feeds being sent to it vs. the model where separately compiled screen definitions need to be downloaded (i.e. in the case of Flex/Flash it would be a completely different .swf file).
I have only developed a single Flex application (for charts in the browser) so my experience is very limited as far as how stable it would be if relied on to be a significant player (to Nathan's point).

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

Evan Harris wrote:

Hi Aaron

My experience to data is that all these products - JavaFX, Air/Flex/Flash,
Silverlight, Curl, etc - require hefty downloads and/or support libraries
like .NET framework/Java. I may be stating the obvious here :)

Looking past the marketing hype and the individual implementation details of
each plug-in, it seems to me that what they are trying to do is deliver a
rich environment to the end-user, but more significantly, they are providing
(or moving towards providing) a development environment that is more akin to
that of programming to a terminal device - with all the inherent or missing
capabilities - that that implies. Since the "terminal device" is delivered
in software (the plug-in) they are able to upgrade it by simply updating the
software.
So, the way I see it, you use the methods and options that the selected
environment provides to generate your web page - you program to the device -
as opposed to hand crafting the css, html and javascript, which seems to me
more like handbuilding your own terminal for each implementation, with all
the loss of productivity that implies.

Maybe another way to look at it is, programming the individual components is
like working in assembler; choosing a RIA is akin to buying a compiler and
programming a 3gl.

BTW, no reason I'm responding to you specifically - you just seem to have
ended up providing a specific point when I am monitoring the mailing list :)


Regards
Evan Harris


Aaron Wrote:
<SNIP>
How is JavaFX originally delivered to the users desktop? Is it similar to a "browser add-on" like Flash or Silverlight, or is it more like downloading the .NET framework (guessing the latter). If that's the case then I can see it working for internal apps, but that still leaves the need to do public web sites where the viability of your business can depend on how easy/non-intrusive it is to use your website - hence why HTML+CSS+JavaScript will seemingly forever be trying to mirror what other "thicker" technologies can do better.
</SNIP>