On 12/21/05, Hubert Rabago <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 12/21/05, Alexandre Poitras <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think bookmarks are a bad idea in web applications even when not built > > with Ajax. After all, an application is stateful and need a *state* to > run. > > Bookmarks in my mind are made for informational sites wich are staless > and > > not applications. Do you expect to be able to return in a precise > windows in > > a desktop application like Open Office for exemple? > > In my opinion, this type of reasoning is flawed. You should not limit > applications in one platform only to what another platform provides. > This is like saying colored TV programs should not worry about how the > colors look because radio programs don't even provide images. They > are different mediums, different platforms, with different > characteristics. Each will have different capabilities, and being > able to go to a specific page is a basic an ability of web > applications. > > Besides, I may not expect to launch Open Office in a precise dialog > box, but if I know I want to open a specific document in open office, > I want the ability to double click on that document and have it open > right away. I don't want to go through several windows and dialog > boxes to search for something I already have in my sight.
Interestingly, this example confirms the counter argument that Hubert is raising :-). Double clicking an Open Office document causes that document to be opened, but *not* where it was when you closed it, or what you might have captured in the clipboard. That is the difference between an identifier (a URL for the web, a document path for the word processor) versus the associated state information that needs to be kept about the dynamic "position" you are with respect to that document. Put another way, please show me how a Swing app is supposed to handle bookmarks (or the back button, for that matter). "What?" you say? "There IS no such thing!" My point exactly :-). In a Swing world, it's totally up to the application to maintain and restore any state information it wants to deal with. But, for applications that do *not* care about such state, dealing with URLs is a distraction to accomplishing the goals of building the app -- for those folks, let's PLEASE not make it harder. Craig
