MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld) [LWN.net]

MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Posted Mar 10, 2008 13:38 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263)
In reply to: MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld) by endecotp
Parent article: MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal (LinuxWorld)

Advanced graphing, complex user interfaces, entire sites.

- A lot of those "entire sites" IS promotion sites, like the sites of music bands, but IMHO
that is NOT the same as nasty commercials, as I wouldn't venture there unless I was interested
in them and and their site in the first place.

Of course, a lot of the Flash usage on those sites is just to get... Well, flashy effects, but
that isn't exactly something that I think talks against Flash, it's not all sites that needs
to be simple. (A lot does though, i.e. LWN would be terrible if things were zooming and
fading).

Also, the closer you want a web site to mimick a "normal" user application, the more you'll
need something like Flash, Silverlight or AJAX. Two of them sucks because of proprietary crap,
the last sucks (IMHO), because it's doing things it was never meant to do, and because it
increases the pain of web programming (mostly caused by differences and crappy but popular
browsers) even further.

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Hitbox, Google Analytics

Posted Mar 10, 2008 16:41 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

I had to put Flash on my work machine to see the graphs in Hitbox and Google Analytics. They look like things that would make more sense to do in SVG, though.

Hitbox, Google Analytics

Posted Mar 10, 2008 19:31 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]

In terms of functionality, SVG and Flash is almost the same.

Unfortunately, the SVG support is severely lacking in most browsers, ranging from completely
non-existing (IE), over incomplete support of SVG 1.1 Full (Firefox), to complete support of
SVG 1.1 Basic and limited support of SVG 1.1 Full.

This makes SVG development (for browsers, at least) even more of a support minefield than
AJAX.

AJAX

Posted Mar 12, 2008 14:28 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

You should check out the various AJAX libraries (jQuery, Prototype, Mootools, etc) if 
you think AJAX is painful.  They take care of the browser differences and the rest of the 
low-level pain.

BTW, I too find myself needing flash just to navigate band sites.  :-(

AJAX

Posted Mar 12, 2008 15:04 UTC (Wed) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]

I must admit to having only used GWT for going up in abstraction level, that helped a LOT (I
especially liked writing in a proper language, and the improved debugging), but the pain and
differences underneath shined through a bit too much for my tastes.

AJAX

Posted Mar 15, 2008 0:17 UTC (Sat) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

I use these libraries and AJAX programming is still a pain in the back.

It's only easy if you ignore the security requirements and decide not to check anything on the
server side and rely on the client's AJAX code. BAD idea...

Well, there's stuff like ajax4jsf (https://ajax4jsf.dev.java.net/) and similar -- but if you
look how much you have to take care of (both on the client and the server side), it's not
really an easy environment either.