On Mar 4, 2010, at 9:36 PM, P Kishor wrote: > 5. clean URIs (routes) without screwing around with bazillion settings
To me, this seems to be more of a current programming fad than a real user issue. I've never had a single user complain that long or ugly URIs bothered them. If hiding URLs from users is a design goal it also seems like it is easily solved by using AJAX to update content. Web Apps I've been reading Apple's guidelines for "Web Apps". They describe how HTML5 has added client side features for web apps and Apple's support for them in their Safari web browser running on both Mac and Windows, and their "iDevices". When a user starts a web app from their "Home" screen on an iPhone the app controls the entire screen, just like a native app, so no URLs are displayed to the user at all, ever. I think this is relevant to all of us because all content updating must be done with AJAX on web apps optimized for Apple's iDevices. If the user clicks a standard web link it opens the URL in a new Safari browser window and leaves your application. This is a feature. This is important to us all because because almost all the mobile device makers announced last week that they will be creating a common standard for developers to create platform independent apps to run on these devices. It seems likely that they will adapt the same open standards that Apple is supporting on the iPhone platform. All web app developers would do well to start implementing the techniques needed to take advantage of the features and accommodate the requirements of these devices and optimize their content for display on them. Personally, I think the CGI Application Framework project goals might do well to include how the framework can integrate tighter with the client side features available now and those coming in HTML5. This would obviously require making the inclusion of javascript in output something that is easier to do. HTML::Prototype is a good example of what I mean. Helper tags for JavaScript are needed to really take advantage of all the upcoming potential for web app developers. The client side data storage features in HTML5 go a long way past cookies. Among other things, this will add some offline feature capabilities to our repertoire. Here's some info from Apple on client side data storage, but this info is not necessarily Apple specific: http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/iPhone/ Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html It won't be long before we can't ignore these mobile devices. Google boldly stated this week that "In three years desktops will be irrelevant". That's because everyone will be using web apps. Apple is certainly moving that direction with the MacBook Air, iPhone/iTouch, and now the iPad, and of course there are "Netbooks". The great thing is, CGI-App developers are likely doing 95% of everything they need to do to create an iPhone web app now and those apps should run in most all other mobile devices soon. Right now, if you incorporate the Apple guidelines for web apps when you start a new project, and that doesn't take much, all you have to do is create a new set of "Views" for your MVC app and your done, your web app runs native on an iPhone/iTouch/iPad. Here's a link to those guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/referencelibrary/ GettingStarted/GS_iPhoneWebApp/ That's more than I've said here than in the past five years. I do hope some of you find it useful. Kindest Regards, -- Bill Stephenson ##### CGI::Application community mailing list ################ ## ## ## To unsubscribe, or change your message delivery options, ## ## visit: http://www.erlbaum.net/mailman/listinfo/cgiapp ## ## ## ## Web archive: http://www.erlbaum.net/pipermail/cgiapp/ ## ## Wiki: http://cgiapp.erlbaum.net/ ## ## ## ################################################################
