Comments on: the high cost of some free tools http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/ noise from signal Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:40:58 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Mike Linksvayer » RIA marketing follies http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-110263 Mike Linksvayer » RIA marketing follies Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:58:02 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-110263 <p>[...] I suspect that an AIR application can accomplish the same limited functionality with just a bit more code than hello world and that AIR provides much more. But unless Adobe can effectively communicate what the heck AIR is and exactly how it works with open standards, it will be eaten for breakfast by the slow (for good reason — more fully featured web/desktop integration will raise all kinds of thorny security, synchronization and software update issues) web juggernaut. As some commenters pointed out, the obvious thing for Adobe to do is to “work with Mozilla and other players to standardize these features.” [...]</p> [...] I suspect that an AIR application can accomplish the same limited functionality with just a bit more code than hello world and that AIR provides much more. But unless Adobe can effectively communicate what the heck AIR is and exactly how it works with open standards, it will be eaten for breakfast by the slow (for good reason — more fully featured web/desktop integration will raise all kinds of thorny security, synchronization and software update issues) web juggernaut. As some commenters pointed out, the obvious thing for Adobe to do is to “work with Mozilla and other players to standardize these features.” [...]

]]> By: Blocking Firefox | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-108269 Blocking Firefox | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:20:10 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-108269 <p>[...] Things are looking a little brighter. While it’s still not good for the web, Silverlight and Flash seem to encourage much more compatibility across browsers/platforms than Windows Media Player ever has. Flash has been a major win for Firefox. Flash is rather consistent across browsers making it a popular choice for media (think YouTube). It’s leveled the playing field, since lets face it, Windows Media historically has been lacking in Firefox, though recently improving. On Mac OS X it is awful at best. h.264 support will make Flash even more attractive to content providers in the near future who are still holding out because of quality. [...]</p> [...] Things are looking a little brighter. While it’s still not good for the web, Silverlight and Flash seem to encourage much more compatibility across browsers/platforms than Windows Media Player ever has. Flash has been a major win for Firefox. Flash is rather consistent across browsers making it a popular choice for media (think YouTube). It’s leveled the playing field, since lets face it, Windows Media historically has been lacking in Firefox, though recently improving. On Mac OS X it is awful at best. h.264 support will make Flash even more attractive to content providers in the near future who are still holding out because of quality. [...]

]]> By: Dan Brickley http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-95504 Dan Brickley Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:40:33 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-95504 <p>Very well said!</p> Very well said!

]]> By: BSBlog » Blog Archive » What made the web great can make the client great, too. http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-89015 BSBlog » Blog Archive » What made the web great can make the client great, too. Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:42:34 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-89015 <p>[...] Shaver is right: the web is great because it has fostered open cooperation, viral programming, coding by view-source, mashups and “being able to jam jQuery in the hole that used to have Prototype in it”. The internet provides an excellent medium for viral and open markup and programming. But this kind of programming does not need to be unique to the web, and the Mozilla platform is a great bridge between these two worlds. [...]</p> [...] Shaver is right: the web is great because it has fostered open cooperation, viral programming, coding by view-source, mashups and “being able to jam jQuery in the hole that used to have Prototype in it”. The internet provides an excellent medium for viral and open markup and programming. But this kind of programming does not need to be unique to the web, and the Mozilla platform is a great bridge between these two worlds. [...]

]]> By: Coding Horror http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-84727 Coding Horror Tue, 22 May 2007 00:47:40 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-84727 <p><strong>JavaScript: The Lingua Franca of the Web...</strong></p> <p>Mike Shaver, a founding member of the Mozilla team, has strong feelings about how the web became popular: If you choose a platform that needs tools, if you give up the viral soft collaboration of View Source and copy-and-paste......</p> JavaScript: The Lingua Franca of the Web…

Mike Shaver, a founding member of the Mozilla team, has strong feelings about how the web became popular: If you choose a platform that needs tools, if you give up the viral soft collaboration of View Source and copy-and-paste……

]]> By: Jordan http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-84242 Jordan Sat, 19 May 2007 17:47:43 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-84242 <p>What happens if you view source and the first line says "eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d)"?</p> What happens if you view source and the first line says “eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d)”?

]]> By: 0xDECAFBAD » Cilantro of the web http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-83516 0xDECAFBAD » Cilantro of the web Tue, 15 May 2007 23:45:22 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-83516 <p>[...] “When the tool spits out some bundle of shining Deployment-Ready Code Artifact, do you get something that can be mashed up, styled, scripted, indexed by search engines, read aloud by screen readers, read by humans, customized with greasemonkey, reformatted for mobile devices, machine-translated, excerpted, transcluded, edited live with tools like Firebug?” - Mike Shaver [...]</p> [...] “When the tool spits out some bundle of shining Deployment-Ready Code Artifact, do you get something that can be mashed up, styled, scripted, indexed by search engines, read aloud by screen readers, read by humans, customized with greasemonkey, reformatted for mobile devices, machine-translated, excerpted, transcluded, edited live with tools like Firebug?” – Mike Shaver [...]

]]> By: Ophir Radnitz http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-83388 Ophir Radnitz Tue, 15 May 2007 10:43:41 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-83388 <p>Great post, but...</p> <p>It is important to distinguish content from application. Most of your valid points are relevant to content only. JavaFX, Flex, Silverlight and the likes are application platforms.</p> <p>HTML was born for content and raped to allow applicative use. The semantic web which builds upon open, standard markup is relevant to content only. It excels at distilling pure content from design, that pure form of content can later be propagated and enriched with metadata and transformed and so on.</p> <p>Not so with applications (as in RiA). Application have different needs. Application GUI is not content (though it may produce and serve content). GUI needs more than XForms for views. It needs good context handling, conversions, flow handling, rich event model, data binding and etc. Many of those needs can be better addressed by a platform that designed for applications.</p> <p>Maybe application platforms need a better common denominator upon which the community can build to achieve greater collaboration, reuse and so on. Some of the web service hype is an attempt at distilling behavior from GUI design to achieve something along those lines.</p> Great post, but…

It is important to distinguish content from application. Most of your valid points are relevant to content only. JavaFX, Flex, Silverlight and the likes are application platforms.

HTML was born for content and raped to allow applicative use. The semantic web which builds upon open, standard markup is relevant to content only. It excels at distilling pure content from design, that pure form of content can later be propagated and enriched with metadata and transformed and so on.

Not so with applications (as in RiA). Application have different needs. Application GUI is not content (though it may produce and serve content). GUI needs more than XForms for views. It needs good context handling, conversions, flow handling, rich event model, data binding and etc. Many of those needs can be better addressed by a platform that designed for applications.

Maybe application platforms need a better common denominator upon which the community can build to achieve greater collaboration, reuse and so on. Some of the web service hype is an attempt at distilling behavior from GUI design to achieve something along those lines.

]]> By: A Frog in the Valley » Blog Archive » Pipes output plumber please http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-83057 A Frog in the Valley » Blog Archive » Pipes output plumber please Sun, 13 May 2007 15:34:26 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-83057 <p>[...] This is a lazy web request. I got caught this morning in creating a Yahoo Pipe for almost all of my outputs. Quite easy. Except some of the feeds have their output not rendered correctly (shows html tags in the final view). I know it’s an encoding problem. I should be able to fix it. I can view source and know this stuff. [...]</p> [...] This is a lazy web request. I got caught this morning in creating a Yahoo Pipe for almost all of my outputs. Quite easy. Except some of the feeds have their output not rendered correctly (shows html tags in the final view). I know it’s an encoding problem. I should be able to fix it. I can view source and know this stuff. [...]

]]> By: shaver » the high cost of some free tools « A Frog in the Valley Internet Stream Pulse http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-83053 shaver » the high cost of some free tools « A Frog in the Valley Internet Stream Pulse Sun, 13 May 2007 14:48:18 +0000 http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/#comment-83053 <p>[...] shaver » the high cost of some free tools [...]</p> [...] shaver » the high cost of some free tools [...]

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