Frank W. Zammetti on 25/08/08 05:36, wrote:
Don Brown wrote:
This is a nice design, when you can do it. GWT is also a good way to
build these types of apps. Unfortunately, they can easily break much
of what makes the web what it is - the back button, unique,
addressable URI's, accessibility, search engine crawling, etc.
It's always interesting how often you hear the "this breaks the web"
sorts of statements. I'm not arguing the factuality of the statement, I
just find it interesting. It's also interesting the way you put it
here... you don't say anything like "this breaks the web", nor do you
make a value judgment on it (well, I suppose the word "unfortunately"
implies a value judgment, but it's not explicit).
I think we're at an interesting point in time right now... many people
are kind of mentally stuck in the sense that they see the ways in which
RIAs (can) break things like the back button and they think "well,
that's bad". But, maybe we shouldn't be asking if RIAs are the way to
go, but we should instead be asking different questions like "is the
back button as a navigational metaphor something we really want to be
perpetuating anyway"?
It's kind of like if someone came up with a hydrogen-based fuel system
for cars but for some reason (work with me here!) you could never use a
cell phone in the car or it'd explode... I don't think we shouldn't at
that point be asking if the fuel system is the right answer or not, we
should be asking whether the limitation it imposes is something that
should factor into the decision at all in the first place. Wouldn't we
be better off if you couldn't use cell phones in cars anyway?!?
Note that I'm not making a value judgment here either necessarily,
although I suspect my opinion is fairly obvious :) I do think we're in
the midst of a paradigm shift to a large extent, and I think there's
some fascinating consequences of that shift.
Frank,
do you not use the back button?
I reckon I use it from around 5 to 50 times a day.
I think the paradigm shift is less a shift and more of a paradigm split. Web2
and javascript-based apps have taken their place (after 10 years finally) at the
top of the web food chain. What's the best term? Rich client?
But Web2 hasn't replaced bog-standard HTML as its version number suggests, it
complements it, leaving a big space for low-Javascript clients which just use
the barest minimum or no javascript.
It's obviously only the former websites which need no back-button, and obviously
the latter where the back button is very useful.
Maybe W3C has already thought of this - I don't know - and we'll see
window.disableHistory appear in the DOM (or something similar)
Regards
Adam
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