On Sep 6, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Jared Spool wrote:
For anyone interested in trying to revive the IxDA dead horse called Google Chrome, Steve Gillmor had an excellent interview with the product manager and UI developer. Lots of things we discussed here were talked about in the interview, confirming my thinking on where they are going.
They keep saying they want people to make cool web apps, but that they are still going to operate fundamentally as Web Browser #4, they'll be OpenSource and they'll follow web standards. I have to believe they are being honest. Nothing tells me they are trying to be devious here.
So... The only way I think they can begin to believe that premise is that they also believe that an SDI application model is sufficient for everything that can be considered a "web application." That Google Docs, Spreadsheet, Maps, and a whole host of certain kind of apps can be sustained in single window interfaces and be completely self- contained.
That's where the breakdown occurs for me. Web apps currently work in an SDI mode, and a fairly limited SDI mode at that. You can't take over the keyboard interaction, you can't make floating palettes or slave windows that are aware of each other to pass data via a common pipe, and you can't do other things like use OS alerts, OS dialogs, etc. And web apps in that SDI model have to worry abut the address bar, the back button, and other "browsing" interactions resident inside a web browser that have nothing to do with more tool oriented application interactions.
Given all of that, they are basically building Browser #4, and all innovation will stop there, or at least innovation done there will be done across the browsers, and nothing will be done for Chrome specifically. Their route is certainly legit (even Photoshop Lightroom works largely in an SDI conceptual model so that type of interface approach can certainly do a lot if the task at hand is reasonably specific), but in going this route, it will be clear that the RIA+ route of AIR will be very different, as the RIA+ route will head back towards more fully fleshed out little desktop applications.
Who will win? Not sure I care. I don't pick sides in these sorts of things. I just design what I have to for whatever I'm asked to do it for.
But there is a big difference between Chrome being Browser #4 and Chrome being a new application platform that happens to use OpenSource web technologies but plans on making a clean break from being a browser. As I'm sure you might have guessed... I wish they'd do the latter.
If they did, we'd have a lot of choices going forward to make software: traditional web browser for more service like applications, richer web application platforms for more robust tool-like apps, RIA+ using proprietary tech for even more complex tool-like apps, and good old traditional desktop application built right on the OS itself to do whatever the heck you want.
But Chrome in its current trajectory is clearly not going to help me with what we design anytime soon, as being Browser #4 will only mean for me that things will largely be faster. It won't solve the problems of trying to build multi-window, rich interaction based web applications that just happen to use a lot of web technologies at its base instead of a proprietary technology like Flex, et al. Ah well.
-- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
