Unintentionally Blank

I know I am quite slow in posting my response to the above, life is very busy at the moment, but I wanted to make my feelings known. The story is that Mozilla has launched Prism as a Mozilla Labs project. Prism, carrying on from WebRunner, is a program that lets you take web applications to the desktop, with their own icons and windows. It is not meant to replace the web, but it has been created to blur the lines between the desktop and the web by allowing access to web services via icons on the desktop or in quick launch or the dock.

And…?

No, that is it. Prism allows you to access Gmail or Twitter, for example, in their own windows (like a browser but without the buttons or address bars) and with their own icon. The post on the Mozilla Labs site compares it to Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, but says that Prism is better as it is not a proprietary platform that is trying to replace the web. This is where I start to have a problem with the whole idea.

No-one Is Trying To Replace The Web

For a start, AIR and Silverlight are very different. From what I know, Silverlight is a competitor to Flash and has nothing to do with this argument as it relies on a browser plugin. Secondly, as Mike Chambers points out, “You could describe Adobe AIR in exactly the same way (just replace Prism with Adobe AIR and Firefox with Webkit).”. In fact, I actually found a web site that produces AIR apps from URLs just like what I expect to get out of Prism and after a quick look I was disappointed.

As far as I can see, AIR is not trying to replace the web, it is trying to extend the web. Creating AIR apps allows you to use desktop functionality such as dragging and dropping files and saving to a local database for offline use. I was disappointed with my brief look at Airifier because it added nothing to the web experience and that is the same for Prism. If I had a desktop version of Gmail I would expect to be able to read my emails when offline, AIR can do that, Prism can’t, do you see what I am getting at?

Web Sites For The Browser, Desktop Apps For The Desktop

I admit, I was excited earlier this month by the potential of Adobe AIR, but this isn’t why I am bashing Prism. There is a lot of interest in bringing the web to the desktop at the moment, but I want it to be for the right reasons. Having an icon I can click to access my favourite sites in different windows doesn’t really impress me, having a program that extends what I can do with my favourite sites does. Which is why I think that web sites should stay in the browser and if you can do more with them on the desktop then go ahead and make an app for it.

Perhaps Prism’s simplicity will be what attracts users (especially since there may be a 1 click option in upcoming versions of Firefox to create a Prism app from a site), but I want more from my desktop/web hybrid apps and will stick to following the progress of AIR for now.

What do you think? Is an icon and a separate window for a web site an exciting prospect or, like Read/Write Web, do you need more?

Last week saw the Future of Web Apps conference come to London. I was there for day 2, listening to presentations from Facebook, Adobe and Yahoo! among others. With any luck, I also figured out what the future of web apps is from just one day, here is my impression of the presentations and exposition after a few days to think about it.

Continue reading “Future Of Web Apps: Day 2 In Detail” »

I was at the Future of Web Apps conference today, enjoying the sights and insights of today’s web apps and their creators. I had a really great day, only wishing that I’d made it to the conference, the diggnation filming and the Carsonified party yesterday. The whole day gave me a lot to think about, so here is what I got up to and my first impressions of my first conference.

Adobe Vs. Microsoft

Two of the biggest companies, the biggest sponsors of the event and those with the biggest products saw widely different results today. I saw near enough the same presentation on Adobe’s AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) three times, along with a crowd of people each time. The only crowd around the Microsoft stand that I saw was when they were handing out freebies and prizes and I saw no demonstrations of Silverlight. The big winner for Microsoft seemed to be their row of XBox 360s playing Halo 3, but whoever had the bright idea of having the proper exhibition stand separate to the consoles needs shooting.

Future of Games Consoles

Which brings me to another point. Today I saw 4 XBox 360s, 3 Nintendo Wiis, 2 competitions to win an XBox 360 and 1 competition to win a Wii. I thought this was about web apps, not gaming!

Facebook Platform, Dapper, Dopplr, FireEagle

I spent most of the day watching the presentations on the Developer Stage, and all the above web apps had someone talking about them as well as web apps in general. I will go into more detail on each of the apps, but out of those 4, 3 impressed me and one didn’t, but I want to sign up for all of them anyway.

The Rest Of The Exhibition

I caught some great open mic presentations around lunchtime, on accessibility and on tumblelogging. Also around the exhibition floor were some interesting social network ideas and some useful tools alongside others that failed to ignite my spark.

Nothing all day beat Simon Wardley’s presentation on how the future of web apps will eventually benefit ducks though. Nothing.

So What Is The Future Of Web Apps

I think I have a pretty good idea of where the future is going, but, in the interests of suspense, I will tell you all about that when I have covered today in just a little more detail.

The Future of Web Apps conference is in London and I am lucky enough to be going along for the whole day tomorrow.

There are some incredibly interesting presentations, and I’m particularly looking forward to Dave Morin talking about the Facebook platform, John Aizen & Eran Shir from Dapper talk about the semantic web, assumedly along the lines of the top down approach recently analysed over at Read/Write Web.

Also, after spending a good deal of time looking at various AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) applications today and being very impressed by the potential, I will be visiting as many Adobe presentations as possible.

If you happen to be reading this blog and are attending tomorrow too, look out for me and say hi. I’ll be easy to spot, I’ll be the one lugging the massive and old looking Dell laptop around looking for power slots as the battery lasts no longer than 20 minutes at a time. If you’re not going, look out for the podcasts and videos after the event as well as my reactions, which I will post later this week.

I am going to upgrade my computer. My current PC isn’t the flashiest box out there at the moment, in fact, with a Celeron processor and 256MB of RAM it’s pretty sluggish. I am due an upgrade.

What’s with the title then? Well I have been considering my options for this upgrade and I am leaning towards the idea of getting a Mac. I was hoping you could help though. I’ve never had a Mac and I have never seriously used one (wandering into the Apple Store and playing about on one doesn’t count). I have always used PCs (except for my old Amiga 500, those were the days) and need some help deciding what is right for me.

Can You Help?

Do you have experience, good or bad, with Macs? Can you tell me why I should be getting one? Can you tell me why I shouldn’t, why I should stick with a trusty PC?

I like coding and making websites, listening to music and surfing the web. My girlfriend loves uploading digital photos. Should we stick with what we know or change things up a bit?

If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. I’m a little confused right now as I try to justify spending almost double on an Apple over a PC. I hope you can help me out, or at least point me in the right direction.

Thanks!