Neil McAllister
Today's Web sites are another matter, however. Gone are the static pages and limited graphics of 15 years ago. In their place are lush, highly interactive experiences, as visually rich as any desktop application. The Web has become the preferred platform for enterprise application delivery, to say nothing of online entertainment and social software. In response, new kinds of online experiences have begun to emerge, challenging old notions of what it means to browse the Web.
Take Twhirl, a desktop client for the Twitter online service. Double-click its icon and the application launches in seconds. Its window is small and stylized, with an attractive, irregular border and configurable color schemes. What few controls it has are convenient and easy to use. It's sleek, fast, and unobtrusive. In short, it's everything that navigating to the Twitter Web site with a browser is not.
But don't be fooled. Although it looks and feels like an ordinary desktop application, Twhirl's UI is rendered with HTML, CSS, Flash, and ActionScript. Essentially, it's a Web app.
Twhirl is built on Adobe AIR, which has a lightweight client library that allows Web developers to use familiar tools and languages to build first-class desktop applications. Software created with AIR is fully interactive and network-enabled, with a rich UI. But unlike traditional Web applications, AIR apps gain the immediacy and user engagement that come from running outside the browser window.
[ For an in-depth look at rich Web frameworks, see our reviews of Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, Curl, WaveMaker Visual Ajax, open source AJAX toolkits, and other rich Web development tools. ]
"The browser is terrific for transient experiences ??? things that a user might do once in a while, or for a short amount of time," says Ed Rowe, director of AIR engineering at Adobe. A frequently accessed service like Twitter, on the other hand, cries out for a lightweight client. AIR allows the same developers to build both.
But AIR is only one branch in the Web's ongoing evolution. Already, Google, NetSuite, Salesforce, Zoho, and others are using Web tools and infrastructure to deliver full-fledged enterprise software, defying the limitations of today's browsers. As the static Web gives way to RIAs (rich Internet applications), client software must continue to adapt and evolve; and in some cases, this could very well mean stepping beyond the traditional browser altogether.
The Web, refracted
Adobe isn't the only company working to push the Web beyond today's browser. At Mozilla, platform evangelist Mark Finkle explores new ways for current browser technology to better meet the needs of today's Web apps.
With Prism, you can capture your Facebook session into an SSB, for example, and then launch it from an icon on the desktop, just like native software. The site appears in its own window, without any extraneous bookmarks, menu bars, or navigation buttons.
"It's still a Web application, and it's still running on the Web," Finkle explains. "Prism is just a different way to view that application."
That seemingly trivial distinction can make a big difference. After a few hours, it's easy to forget that an application running in Prism is hosted on the Web and not the local machine. By shedding the traditional browser UI, Prism offers an increased level of user engagement that is particularly attractive for Web applications that displace traditional OS-native software.
"Personally, I run my Web mail and calendar in Prism and use a Greasemonkey-like script to pop up OS alerts for incoming mail and meeting alerts," Finkle says.
And users can often install Prism applications the same way they would other desktop software. For example, Ubuntu 8.04 offers a number of Prism SSBs in its standard software repositories.
Getting creative
While Prism's SSBs are really just stripped-down browser windows, however, Adobe AIR takes the concept of stand-alone Web apps a step further. AIR combines an HTML rendering engine with Flash, ActionScript, and a local storage mechanism. Together, these components allow applications built with Web technologies to offer all the luxuries of traditional desktop software.
GoogleGoogle GearsShare alike
Adobedraft HTML 5 specificationTomorrow's Web
open source code
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