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."

Look How Rich and Thin We Are - The State of the RIA Market

I spoke yesterday with Michael Cote of Redmonk and Ryan Stewart of Adobe (the RIA blog is here, on ZDNet here podcast is here). What follows are some of the highlights of our discussion on the state of the RIA market.

Today, there are two ways to build your first Web 2.0 application:

1. Buy $300 worth of O'Reilly books and kiss the next few weekends goodbye


2. Download WaveMaker and follow the 15 minute tutorial

For anybody but the most hardcore or masochistic tech-heads, this seems like a no-brainer decision.

If Web 2.0 is about putting more power into the hands of end users, that message hasn't hit the Ajax world yet. In general, Rich Internet Applications toolkits from Dojo to Flex are well beyond the reach of anything but the most sophisticated developers (not that I am a particular fan of Flex).

WaveMaker is focused on lowering the price of admission for Web 2.0 application development. WaveMaker provides an easy on ramp to building web applications, allowing non-expert developers to build rich internet AJAX applications

How complicated an application can you build with a visual Ajax tool? Well, we built the WaveMaker studio using WaveMaker, so you can build a very complex application indeed using visual Ajax tools!

What kinds of applications are best for a visual Ajax tool like WaveMaker? We see our community building three kinds of applications:

1. Rich Internet Application prototyping. Business analysts


2. Rapid Application Development using database driven forms generation


3. Face of SOA applications. Assemble rich internet applications by combining web services and data services.

WaveMaker is the PowerBuilder for Web 2.0 - we make it easy for large community of people to get benefits of rich internet applications.

As usual, the bogeyman for all this Rich Internet goodness is Microsoft. The current fragmentation of the Ajax market and related squabbling between toolkits fanboys makes Microsoft's Silverlight solution a much simpler choice for developers.

More importantly, before the introduction of WaveMaker's visual Ajax studio, Microsoft's visual studio was winning over the novice developers by default. It's time for the open source world to provide a compelling and CIO-safe alternative to Silverlight and WaveMaker is just the company to do it!

Adobe Photoshop Express Free and Online

Adobe launched today the public beta of it long anticipated Adobe® Photoshop® Express. The free, online version of the popular photo editing software is now available on the web. Express will allow users to store up to 2 gigs of images online for free, make edits online, share photos, and up- and download photos from social networking sites.

Photoshop is a desktop software. What this SaaS-y move signals is a realization on the part of Adobe of the power of the Web's penchant for free, anytime/anywhere access versus the portability limitations of pricey software tied to a single computer. Another driver might be that many photo sharing sites already offer similar image editing capabilites. The online version of Photoshop will not have the full feature set of the traditional offline version. Will this cannibalize their desktop version? Not likely as they are targeted to different audiences - Express is to more the casual, connected end-user and Photoshop to the more serious professional. The web-based version is necessary for the company to keep up and evolve the software as well as another marketing opportunity and medium to exploit.

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.

Adobe Launches Platform For RIAs

Adobe announced today the launch of AIR and Flex 3 software for creating rich internet applications (RIAs) that can run on the desktop and on most browsers and across operating systems. "The ROI of RIAs is real. A more engaging product visualization experience in eCommerce applications for example, helps customers understand what they are buying, which leads to less online abandonment and increased average order size through cross-sell and up-sell visualization" according to Al Hilwa, Program Director at IDC.

Windows and Mac OS versions of AIR and Flex 3 and their SDKs can be downloaded for free at www.adobe.com/go/air and www.adobe.com/go/flex. The standalone version of the Flex Builder 3 is US$249 for the Standard edition and US$699 for the Professional edition.

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>>

Web Accessibility Could Be California Law

Target is being targetted for allegedly forcing users to navigate the web blindly. A lawsuit filed in '06 claims that Target has violated the California Disabilities Persons Act in that its website, Target.com, does not provide full and equal access to blind users.

The Target suit claims that alternate text and accessible image maps are missing which screen readers depend on to read through the page content and vocalize it to the user; and, the website requires the use of a mouse to complete certain functions. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) who, in part, filed this suit has also filed and won similar cases against America Online, Priceline.com, and Ramada.com.

The judge has now granted class-action status to the Target lawsuit which means that all blind people in the U.S. who have tried to access Target.com can join in the lawsuit. The judge also went a step further stating that under California state's Disabled Rights Law, websites are required to be accessible. There are apparently about 10,000 people in California who use reading software to access the internet.

This is a precedent setting case with far reaching implications for all websites. This has the potential to create new requirements for companies, new jobs, added development needs, new QA needs, retro-fitting of sites, new costs, etc. For companies with rich internet Web 2.0 apps using Ajax, this will be a bit of a speed bump for them as they will need to web accessify their apps which could slow them down. Ajax has, in the past, gotten a bit of a bad wrap for accessibility. Already, companies with government contracts are required to make their sites accessible. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has some information on this stuff and other requirements around S.508 compliance. I believe Yahoo is one company which actually has a disabled person on their UI/dev team whom they check the accessibility of their sites against. Perhaps, content management systems (CMS's) will be required to make alt text required for images inputted by content contributors.

Here are some tips for making your site accessible:
1. For flash objects, adding a 'noembed' tag with a text version of the content of the flash movie is one way around this. Macromedia has some guidelines for making flash accessible.
2. Adding text transcripts of videos are also a good practice.
3. Testing your site using a text based browser such as Lynx or turning off the graphics in your browser's advanced internet options to see if you can still read and navigate a site without graphics is another good test. People that are visually impaired will sometimes upload their own stylesheets which override the site stylesheet to help them read your site better. Many sites use fixed font sizes versus percentages which broswers such as IE do not allow you to adjust but Firefox does. Other sites have a text size adjuster for pages.

The web has predominantly been cowboy country governed by few laws. This is an example of an offline world law being enforced onto the online world. More and more internet specific laws are being created but hopefully, they won't quell innovation.

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.