Tibco Gets On The Microsoft Silverlight Bus

TIBCO (The Information Bus Company) which sells business process management and business integration software is reportedly verbally committing to use Microsoft's Silverlight technology. The company plans to use Silverlight for their product development to create rich internet applications (RIAs) in cases where AJAX might not meet their needs.

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for creating RIAs on the .NET platform. In an interview with InfoWorld, Rourke McNamara, Director of Product Marketing for SOA at Tibco said that "Tibco likes Silverlight over alternatives, such as Adobe's Flash platform, because developers can leverage existing skill sets like the ability to develop in C#. Silverlight also presents a lightweight environment, and Microsoft and Tibco have many joint customers."

Why is there Air - Bill Cosby versus Kevin Lynch

I know I'm dating myself, but Bill Cosby had a pretty funny routine where a PE Teacher explains that the purpose of air is to pump up basketballs and volleyballs.

Now Adobe has launched their Air product (with a matching Kevin Lynch NY Times article, and GigaOm fan dance) to allow platform to allow browser apps to escape from their little Firefox and IE prisons and flit gaily across the desktop like "real" apps.

Now what exactly are the benefits here? According to the NY Times article:

1. I can click an icon on my desktop instead of a bookmark in my browser. Yawn.
   
2. I can run an application without the browser border. Snore.
   
3. I can run an application offline. Now this is cool, but hardly new, following earlier moves by Google Gears, Dojo Offline and Mozilla Prism

Excuse me, but I prefer Bill's definition of why we need air.

As I have written, Air, Flex and Silverlight are"back to the future" approaches for Rich Internet Applications that would have us believe that the future of the web lies in a proprietary animation engine (Flash) or an ancient and proprietary fat client architecture (Silverlight).

At WaveMaker, we believe open-source toolkits like Dojo are the best enterprise Ajax choice a more flexible, open-source browser choice. To be fair, we in the Ajax community still have a lot of work to do to be truly ready to take on giants like Adobe and Microsoft - but that's where the power of the community can make a difference.

Speaking of community, you can come find out more about the the Dojo toolkit at the upcoming Visual Ajax User Group meeting. On Thursday, March 20 from 12-1:30 PST, Alex Russell, one of the co-creators of Dojo, will be talking about the Zen of Dojo - how to make Dojo development effortless for beginner and expert alike. Come in person or sign up for the webinar by sending email to rsvp@visualajax.org.

What's Your RIA Strategy - Ajax or Flex

When it comes to Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies, application development professionals must choose between two paths: AJAX or Adobe Flex.

AJAX is the best bet for experienced web development shops looking to incrementally evolve existing web applications. AJAX is considered the fast lane to a better user experience. Selecting AJAX also raises the question of whether to go with a homegrown, open source, or commercial AJAX framework.

In contrast, Adobe is best for shops looking to completely transform their Web experiences. But to do so, firms must acquire the skills necessary to use Flex, which is the development framework for the Flash runtime environment. Early adopters with time-to-market concerns and comfort with either smaller vendors or open source can select AJAX with confidence. But firms that require support from a larger vendor and full-featured development tools will do better with Adobe.App dev professionals should make the selection based on their time-to-market requirements, whether they're looking to evolve or revolutionize their user experience, and whether they prefer tools from large established vendors. More>>

Photoshop for the Web

Adobe announced plans to release an online beta version of its popular photochopping software. Photoshop, traditionally a slave to the desktop, will now have an online version dubbed Photoshop Express and is expected to be available by the end of this year followed by a full feature set version of the software we've all come to know in '08. The flash based beta will have basic photo editting capabilities such as red-eye removal, cropping, color adjustment, and touch-ups.

There are reports that Photoshop Express will be freely available online as well as licensed by photo sites like Shutterfly and Photobucket. Clearly, this is an attempt to leverage the popularity of the Photoshop software and offer it as a service to tap into the huge online market.

Building brick buildings with steel and other misuses of Ajax

When builders first started using steel, they built brick buildings that had steel supports. While this incremental approach made sense for existing builders, it came nowhere near utilizing steel to its fullest potential.

In a similar way, all the folks from the fat-client world (Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe AIR, Eclipse RAP) are trying to make a rich web interface look just like a PC client interface. Ajaxian had a good analysis of the recent Eclipse Rich Application Programming announcement here.

RAP, from Innoopract, allows developerswho are used to writing fat client Java applications using SWT now build web applications. These applications look just like fat client apps, and offer no support for basic web development standards like css.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is basically a way to make the future of web development look just like the past of client/server. I gave my thoughts on where we at ActiveGrid see things going with my post, Ajax needs Eclipse Like a Hole in the Head. One thing we know for sure about the future is that it rarely looks like the past….

Adobe's All A Buzz About Buzzword

The lines between web and desktop are being blurred even more in what can be dubbed WebTop. Adobe today announced, as part of its bid for all things Web 2.0, its planned acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity, the maker of the online word processor, Buzzword. In an official statement, the company said that the "acquisition furthers Adobe's commitment to foster a vibrant ecosystem for rich Internet application (RIA) development that delivers breakthrough experiences built on Adobe AIR."

Running on Adobe® AIR™, Buzzword offers users a hybrid online/offline experience and the ability to work with both hosted and local documents. The collaboration capabilities in Buzzword enable multiple authors to edit and comment on documents from anywhere, at anytime, while document creators can set permissions that virtually eliminate version control chaos. There are reported drawbacks such as speed and lack of link support (a big oops for anything claiming online capabilities).

Adobe also added a new free file sharing service to its online doc services codenamed "Share" intended to allows people to share, publish, and organize documents online. Developers can create mash-ups with their applications, including storing and accessing files, as well as creating thumbnails and Flash-based previews of documents. For more things Adobe, visit the Adobe Labs site.