Hi to all, and excuse me for the delay ... I agree with Greg that RIA is a term a little outdated now so probably even the R(Rich) part of it is not-so-much a strong point of interest of Pivot (as could/will be for example in JavaFX, or Flash/Flex). And even with the general idea that anything now should work inside the Browser (Apple is trying to push this with HTML 5) and that Ajax, Comet,the new Canvas, etc are best solutions for all problems ... but (I could be wrong but) I don't think this. And for this many people usually thinks as RIA in Flash/Flex or HTML5 and some amazing demos from Google or Apple ...
I like the idea of something like a variation of RIA, but probably it's better to have something different and if possible a totally different acronym. Even terms proposed by Niclas, or something like "Universal Applications" (too strong) ... so maybe here we need some marketing guy :-) ... Only one thing: I think no on rapid-prototyping because on the idea that they remains only prototypes and get never finalized as real applications ... but interesting idea. > So, you find the transition from prototype to finished product fairly > straightforward. That is good to know. And this is very interesting. Could be useful some term on this field ... In my experience even ad System Administrator I think that main points that we have to address with pivot are: - Internet-connected/enabled Applications, and this is already true (we can improve, but I think we have a good degree today) -- and on this, I'm working to simplify interaction with some web frameworks, but this is another story ... - Install via Internet (the Installable part of the probably new acronym) ... and here I agree with others that probably here we have to improve this part, that's why I push so much for example with re-enabling Web Start support in our Web Site and in our Demos (I have a ticket on this for the 2.1 but if it's more important I can move in a 2.0.x) ... but on this, the real world problem is not-so-much the Installation (done one time per client), but the keep-Upgraded part of installations (always required, day by day by any client) -- so on this I'd suggest if it's possible to insert something to put in evidence the Upgrade part (if it makes sense). -- a little idea on this (maybe for a future Demo), something I call "Enterprise Desktop", where like with Apache Maven, the user download (manually or in other ways) the base installation, and then any other content is downloaded (like user applications, handled by this common package) from Internet. In this way for example a Company could Group many Applications inside it, but for this maybe we have to improve some parts of Pivot ... and if/when isolates will happen in the JVM this could be the best ... - Interactivity, no latency at any click (like page refresh now much improved with Ajax or some trick like Javascript compressing and precompiling) but only when the client ask for data. - Fast Interaction, like the previous point, but with the focus here on how the framework let users to interact fast with application features, for example with the keyboard (accelerators, consistency of standards, etc) ... and here we have to improve in my opinion, if possible starting for the 2.1 - Load-balance between the client and the server, using the same language, and sometimes reusing (parts of) the same code - Cross-platform ... but we are no more in J2ME/CLDC/etc days, so I hope for the 3.0 we will be ready for modern Mobile platforms (mainly Android 2.x, and maybe others but Open :-) ...) - the multi-platform, thanks to Java - the multi-JVM language support, this is an important field for us for next years but mainly for gain Developer's attention - to compete with Microsoft tools (but not only, in the JVM world the is even the amazing Griffon), the ability to realize fast CRUD applications ... maybe with some contribution we could improve this in a few time -- but on this, please keep in mind that NOT anything is on a DB (i work many times in decoupled SOA environments where only few times I make queries to a relational DB) -- and on this I like very much the approach taken by Grails (and later by Griffon), to put constraints inside Domain classes with a custom DSL thanks to Groovy dynamic features. For Pivot 3.0 I'd like to have features like these (and the ability to have skeleton of applications created/updated by shell commands, etc) ... but this is another story. -- what I'd like to have in Pivot 2.x on CRUD is (if not CRUD features in the base package) at least features that enable related sub-projects to be able to do this in a short and good shape (removing constraints if any, and improve what is necessary, but maybe anything is already good). -- last on CRUD, probably we should compare at the moment if not with the future JavaFX 2.0, at least with Griffon (currently 0.9.2), but close gaps on something complex like this requires much community work, so any help is appreciated. And this is definitely something that the community has to discuss better, to solve the next level in real-world applications. - etc ... I agree with calatus that we have to improve giving some more shell script or class to simplify execution of demos outside the browser. Even in Eclipse, I think that adding a dedicated folder (maybe under examples, so outside any release) with eclipse launch files could help ... I have already many of them in my development environment. But I agree with Greg that for most cases the Eclipse plugin is enough. >> Not entirely sure what you mean. All of the demos and tutorials are >> developed first as desktop apps, then deployed to the web. > >The current Pivot site does not provide such development steps. Just providing >final web based application. Yes, probably on the Site we could add some zip/tar.gz for some demo inside (with shell scripts), but we have to think where to put it to not break our build scripts. Or could be an addition to our binary zip/tar.gz ... What I really think it's missing (due to lack of time, funds, etc from any of us) is something that really uses the full power of modern Desktops, for example like accessing local storage (some of this will be possible with HTML 5 and even with Flash today). We have some signed Demo, and of course we have the JVM constraints, but I think that in the framework we could do something (at least to show what/how to do something like this). On this, I prototyped some code years ago but was too complex and has been dropped ... maybe we can revise it and maybe move in a secondary project. And one important point is that while for not-full-time users of the same application (or occasionally users) the Browser enabled content (dynamic pages and/or RIA/Applets) is good enough, it ISN'T for full-time users of some applications (where more interactivity and fast answers is needed). By direct experience in last 10 years I've seen (and I currently see) this many times, but customers ask for dynamic web pages (and sometimes some RIA), so we have to make them ... but I'm sure that our is the right choice (at least for full-time users). So, to finish, even to me "IIA" doesn't say so much, but why not ? Comments ? Sorry for the long post, I hope to put inside everything :-) ... Bye, Sandro
