techno.blog("Dion")

I am going to start posting some frustrating user experiences as I come across them. Them seem to have happened a lot recently. Maybe it is my mood :)

I was at the United Red Carpet club and a nice lady couldn’t work out why she couldn’t login to the (now) free WiFi. She put in her mileage plus number, and this came up:

The solution didn’t take long. I scrolled down the page, which then showed a “Terms and Conditions” area that you had to check. This was awful as the flow is all wrong. You see the area you need to fill in (mileage plus number) and then you see the other option, the complimentary access that doesn’t apply to you. You stop, and you submit the form.

Since you can only submit one of the areas, you could do several things such as:

• Put the damn terms on top
• As you fill in one of the forms, the terms popup close by

Here is the full form that makes it obvious:

As I was watching “24 hour party people” on DVD, I heard the main character talk about the ebbs and flows of the music business. He is talking about the scene in Manchester at the end of the 70’s, and into the eighties. Moving from Joy Division to Happy Mondays and New Order.

I think that we are in a new chapter for the web, and as is often the case, the wheel of time is repeating history for us.

There are a few dimensions to the current war though. They are on the client side (DHTML Ajax vs. simple HTML vs. Flash/PDF vs. XAML) and on the server side (Rails vs. Java vs. PHP vs. .NET).

Let’s start at the beginning.

Perl: Birth of CGI

Do you remember how the web changed as it moved from static HTML connected content to dynamic websites? That came about due to CGI, and how our nice web server would now fork off our programs to generate the HTML.

I remember my first CGI programs were written in C, and Scheme. I quickly moved on though, and found the beauty, and craziness of Perl.

I spent quite some time with Perl, trying to get by without writing too much NSAPI and ISAPI code (oops, I guess that core dump hurts the entire server?).

I really enjoyed the community at that time. #perl was interesting (some of the time), and CPAN became the holy grail. As soon as you thought you needed something, someone had kindly put that functionality up into CPAN. I even have some of my own modules hanging out there, and helped with others.

Over a short time period, we had developed some fairly rich web modules. We didn’t have to work with $ENV{’SOME_CGI_ENVIRONMENT’}, or STDIN or the like. Our framework abstracted all of that for us, and gave us a simple model. We lauched at the folks who generated html via methods such as b("whee") and we stuck close to HTML itself, allowing our design teams to simply open the html files and see what their stuff looked like. We even had the notion of components, and special tags that you could create. <$mytag name=”…” /> was nice because the name of the tag was the key for the framework to dynamically discover that functionality. No config files, or interfaces, in the strict sense. The coupling was based on a name.

In retrospect, life was pretty simple for web development, a lot simpler than some of the frameworks we have today!

But, we moved from Perl. CGI was not the nicest for our high load servers. It was crazy to think that we would fork a process for every little request that came in, and that a Perl interpreter would start up, load the program, do the work and then die off.

We naturally moved to solutions such as mod_perl, and that helped. It was so new though that it was buggy and we had a lot of problems. Some of the problems had nothing to do with mod_perl itself, but due to laziness and side-effects.

When you work in an environment like CGI you can be a very bad man indeed. If you don’t close something correctly, or don’t play totally nice with resources, baaaah who cares? The server is going to kill me in 2 seconds anyway, so I will get my job done and have him kill me. In mod_perl world though, these programs start to live longer, and they get fat and oily.

Java: No more stinking processes!

Remember the beginning of Java (Oak!). We were building applets, and feeling the pain very early on.

Servlets were the big thing though. We ported our Perl based framework over, and were able to see significant performance improvements at the time. Some of the team loved the change, others hated the verboseness and static typing.

The nice threading model that Java gave us was huge though, even with the poor JVMs back then (Microsofts was by far the best remember!).

This is when we moved from the world of Perl to having Java start to take over. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t competition. In the waters we saw the lurkers of ColdFusion, ASP, and the beginning of the PHP revolution. Java came up with JSP to compete with these tag based approaches, but it was the advent of the rich MVC style frameworks that really spurred everyone on.

In my opinion Java is still in the hot-seat, especially in the corporate world.

Preparing for the server war

The troops are being gathered. Strategies are being worked out. We are currently getting ready for a new battle on the server side.

What’s happening?

• Ruby on Rails: Whatever you think about Rails, it has lit a fire under the server side web development community. Many have jumped on the bandwagon, claiming real productivity improvements. Some of the PHP converts enjoy a richer language, which is still nice and dynamic, with a framework that enforces clean MVC techniques. Some of the Java community are frankly a little bored of Java, and enjoy the new challenge. They also love the freedom of the language, and the fact that they now have just ONE stack to worry about. Will the Rails buzz keep growing? Will it be the Perl of Web 2.0?
• Java: Java isn’t going down without a fight. Some argue that the problem with web development in Java is that it has been too complicated and heavy for much usage. I have personally called for the need of a common stack for Java, and people have stepped up to the plate. On one side we have companies that will certify a set of technologies (JavaServer Faces + Spring + Hibernate). Then we get frameworks taking on simplicity themselves (WebWork now embedding Spring). Finally we have initiatives like JBoss Seam, which is trying to combine the component models of JavaServer Faces and the backend. Seam aims to give you the power of the Java tier, but also giving you a simple productive environment. So, Java frameworks are rising to the challenge of Rails, and we will soon see how much of the success of Rails is Ruby, and how much can be duplicated in other platforms.
• PHP: We can’t discount PHP. A lot of “serious engineers” (read: anyone who isn’t a PHP developer thinks they are serious) poo poo the PHP world. Yet, by all accounts, there is a LOT of PHP development going on out there. PHP has the advantage of being something written JUST for the web. Take a look at how Wordpress came along (PHP based blogging software) and in no time at all there were thousands and thousands of plugins that you could simply drop into your Wordpress system. Literally, you drop in a file and you are done. There are numerous PHP frameworks that are aiming to mimic, and compete with Rails, so we can’t forget about these guys. The question with the PHP community is: will it grow more into the enterprise, or will it be for script-kiddies.
• .NET: Never discount Microsoft. ASP.NET keeps getting more productive, and it is hard to compete with their end to end story, which includes fantastic tooling in their latest Visual Studio. And, we get Avalon and XAML along for the ride, as well as the futures of C# 3.0 which takes a lot of ideas from the dynamic languages and puts them into a static structure (such as: var foo = new Bar(); and the relational/xml integration)

It is going to be an interesting couple of years, as all of these platforms mature, and take eachother on, trying to get mindshare!

Client Side: JavaScript is cool again

But what about Ajax? The battle for the client side is going to be just as hot as on the server. And they will even intertwine with eachother.

Firstly we have the big debate of how far Ajax is going to go. Is it a one hit wonder? or will it become a standard part of our toolbox and even just be called dhtml again?

As an Ajaxian, I obviously have my thoughts on this matter. But there is a lot of competition inside and outside of Ajax:

• Flash/PDF: Adobe/Macromedia are a definitely force to be reckoned with. Flash is almost ubiquitous, and PDF is used everywhere. Now the companies are combined, what do they have in store for us?
• Avalon/WPF/E/XAML: Microsoft announced WPF/E, which is a subset of XAML that will be ported on various platforms and available in many browsers. This means that you can build your rich application in the .NET set of tools, and have it run in Safari on Mac OSX. Impressive. When are we actually going to see this in a form that we can deploy to the real world?
• HTML: How much do we want to work in the open (ish) world of HTML. A large group of developers do not want to jump into any monopoly, and will therefore want to stick to a more open environment. But, another set will just want to use the best tool to add business value. What will the split be?

JavaScript will play a big role in this war. JavaScript 2.0 offers big improvements, that many people will cheer for. Also, the same people who poo-poo’d JavaScript in the past have come to realise that it really is a great language. It may not be what they are used too (it uses prototype-based OO vs. class-based OO), but it is powerful and robust. There are some features missing, and a big question around libraries. JSAN and others are trying to build a CPAN for JavaScript. We also worry about the black box of the JavaScript VM in the browsers, and cross-browser bugs are truly real painful. Fortunately, frameworks like Dojo and Prototype are trying to help us out on that front.

We are also seeing that we need to take JavaScript from the former:

“That is just crappy code that the web dood View-Source’s and pastes into the web pages”

to the future:

“JavaScript also needs to be engineered, and is a first class citizen”

Thus we finally see more unit testing of JavaScript code, and professional ways of creating modules and namespaces for our code. We also see great advantages with features like E4X where XML becomes a native type.

JavaScripts increased popularity, thanks to Ajax (and Flash/ActionScript) has also drawn it into the server side. Mozilla Rhino gives you a quality Java-based approach, so why not use a cool dynamic scripting language for certain tasks on the server side? You don’t have to use JavaScript for everything, but it has its place, and that place is growing.

The Battles Join

This is where the battles are joining. We have JavaScript bleeding across the layers, and we have the need for server-side frameworks to support the new Web. It isn’t enough to generate simple HTML and be done with it.

Today’s frameworks need to be able to help us build Ajaxian components, and help us write this applications quickly and cleanly.

There are various directions that frameworks are going in here.

• JavaScript Code Gen: Why not give you a simple macro that splits out the ugly JavaScript that you would have to write?
• JavaScript Framework Code Gen: Spitting out low-level JavaScript is too much work. Many frameworks are writing on top of a higher level JavaScript framework like Dojo or Prototype. Now the code-gen is less, and you get the benefits of the rich functionality, browser compatibility, and visual effects available from these frameworks.
• Tools and Widgets: Should developers even care if a piece of their page is Ajax or not? Some frameworks give you drag and drop editors that let you setup widgets or components. Some happen to be ajaxian. Some are not. Who cares?
• Markup based: A lot of frameworks are giving us markup based solutions. That is one of the strengths of Microsoft Atlas, not the fact that they added support for $() etc. Are we going to want to build using markup or via programatic APIs?

Conclusion

It is hard to predict the winners of the new battles, and the losers will not die off totally, but it is an exciting time to be watching web development. The dynamic languages of Ruby, JavaScript, and PHP are making a big run, and people are realising that they aren’t just cheesy scripting languages that can’t be used. It’s time to take them serious.

We are going to start really working out what makes sense for usability on the web with rich interfaces. And, at the same time we will get simpler and simpler backend tools to make the generation of rich web experiences easier and easier.

I am looking forward to seeing this battle!

NewsGator updated their Outlook Edition. One of the many changes, is that now your email client view of your feeds sync’s up with the web view. This is good, as you get your feeds with you simply in your email client (especially offline), yet if you are on another computer somewhere (say, at a conference), you can simply check-in to your normal world.

One of the problems is that now if you rename a folder in Outlook, NewsGator is sending data back to the service to tell it to change its metadata on that entry. This hangs outlook. The user is never told that a simple rename, which we are trained to think of as a simple local operation, is an expensive one.

Feedback in the UI is good.

Ben and I have been talking about tweaking our Ajaxian RSS Reader to be a SVG application. The problem has always been that SVG is plugin based, and just isn’t hugely used.

I think that will change with the announcement that:

But perhaps more interesting than that is the possibility of mixing SVG graphic elements directly into the markup of regular XHTML pages, freeing vector graphics from the small rectangle of a browser plugin and opening up a host of exciting new possibilities for web developers. This is enabled by the integration of SVG directly into the Gecko rendering engine, instead of as a browser plugin.

Now we just need the IE team to put SVG support into IE 7 (come on guys!), and we will be rolling!

The IE team could map SVG to XAML and be done :)

As I was following a car which was swerving all over the shop, I wondered why we hadn’t seen smart windscreens like we were promised.

The screen should be like a HUD. It could have a video feed of the rear (better than a read mirror), and other angles.

One small addition would be to project where the wheels are in the road. For the first time, people would REALLY see where their wheels are, instead of guessing. This would also help with parking the car.

Of course, if you think about it a ton of features could be added :)

If you go to Google Maps! you will see that the world has grown. Now, there is more than the US and oceans. Scroll to the right and you will see that Tony Blair has a place on the earth ;)

It was fun to visit the homeland. I was looking forward to seeing the satelite view of my old house, but that data isn’t there yet.

You can go to Google Maps! UK directly.

Which country will be next?

ps. I know Canada is there… but that is Bush’s 51st state right? :)

Kayak.com is a website that allows you to search for airfare and travel needs.

It has an interesting search UI.

Go ahead and do a search for a flight, and you will see that instead of the usual:

“I am searching, be back in a minute”

you get:

• I have done x out of y
• Here they are
• Feel free to stop me at any time if you have enough info
• Oh, and I am done now so here is everything

The funky changing display on the left is fun too. This is a lot nicer for me the user. I get feedback at the right time (when available), and I am engaged.

We have had simple web based email, Outlook Web Access, GMail, and more. Now Lazlo has gotten into the fray to create a rich Web Email application for Earthlink.

It will be interesting to see how a Lazlo-based system can give us some innovation. One thing I would be keen to know is if the app is available when offline, and if ‘tagging’ rather than the folder based system is applied.

I love my TiVo. However, one item that I really wish I could see in a OS upgrade would be a better way to handle season passes.

At the moment, if I add a season pass to a show, TiVo dutifully goes off into its data and does a nice sort, to see what conflicts exist.

At the end of this piece of work, I get shown where the conflicts are, and get a choice of:

• Record the shows which don’t have conflicts
• Record all of them
• Cancel the season pass

This just isn’t enough. I want TiVo to be able to show me the conflicts individually, and let me make a choice “A or B”. Then, if I choose one, go out and try to find the show I *didn’t record* on another time (this is why I wish big shows would run at 4am and the like so TiVo can find them then).

It is particularly annoying when you have shows like the Daily Show, which doesn’t seem to offer metadata. This means that if you have a season pass, TiVo will be recording the daily show every other bloody hour.

I wish we could force networks to give up the metadata, or maybe TiVo could do a hash of the show stream, and then if the new one matches, don’t record it again!

Ben had to add another CMS acronym didn’t he. He has been talking about the idea of taking the tough threading stuff out of the path of the Swing developer.

Now, after badgering us all about it, he blogs about it.

If a project can pull of the vision, it can only be a good thing. It is arguably necessary for Swing to be what it wants to be. With all the complexity that EJB brought, one of the nicest features was that the container would handle threading for you.

Let’s bring that to Swing, but let’s not call it CMS ;)