10 January 2008

REBOL 3, where art thou?

Nearly a year since I blogged about my anticipation of REBOL 3 and its imminent release, and I'm still waiting. Anyone else waiting too? The latest status update was last October. Now the reason things "appear" to be so quiet on REBOL 3 is simple. Since I'm not an active participant in the development of REBOL 3, I don't have access to the information flow. This cuts down the noise the actual, active developers need to deal with, and the promise of new, open AltME worlds once 3 is released all makes sense.

As I was waiting looking in from the outside, I took a quick look around the REBOL sites and found (from here) the alpha is available. (scroll to the bottom of the blog entry to get the link). Kudos to the REBOL 3 team! (and many thanks too!)

04 January 2008

Sun's Lively Kernel - Old Tech Refresh

Sun ( I used to work there for many years) has a Labs project called Lively Kernel which builds on old OO technology that is very advanced compared to much of what is out there today. The heritage is Self, Morphic and Squeak. Self is one of the best unknown languages ever....from Sun Labs who has taken this early 80's language and updated it a few times this century.  Lively Kernel takes these advanced OO concepts and blends them with JavaScript for a very rich internet Web 2.0 solution.

Self is a prototype-based with traits language. Very different.  Follow the Self link above for more info on the language and actually download it (if you don't have a Mac OS X or Solaris SPARC(tm) machine, oh well, but you can read about it. If you are a smalltalker or squeaker, it will be interesting for you!)

It is great to see these concepts refreshed for the Web, where hopefully many developers will find value for the mainstream.

Native Web Apps

Here is an example of taking Web Apps native on the Mac. Its called Fluid. It uses a concept called Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) to run web apps as separate desktop apps. A bit of an inverse to what I was describing in my last blog entry. It requires Leopard which I have not had a chance to migrate to :(  So at least I can take my Web apps native, now I need a tool or framework to make lightweight native apps that work like Web Apps!

Another interesting project that I have used in real life (and been following for a long time) is for Java (the .Net version is lagging), is Naked Objects.  Your domain model objects (POJOs) are reflected to generate the UI which is user customizable. The Model (that contains behavior) is used to generate the View and Control. Works great for internal apps for knowledge workers that know their domain. You can easily switch from client app to web app. It has come a long way. Very RAD! A good framework to have in your Java toolbox.

Rich Internet Applications: They're Great! But Not Enough

The Rush to the Web is really amazing. Google Apps, gadgets, Yahoo pipes, and a plethora of RIA (Rich Internet Apps) technologies are making great strides in making the Web experience as rich and powerful as native, local applications. This is great if you live in technology metro-centers where you always have a connection. Without a connection, you are out of luck. There are a few people out there making the Web experience work offline...which begs the question: If I'm working offline, why am I using Web apps? There are many good reasons to do this, for me the most important is seamless user experience: there is little visible difference from working online vs. offline other than the obvious lack of connection.

Still, there is the contrarian curmudgeon in me that says there is something amiss with this. And, as a P2P practitioner there is another model. Smart apps for the local machine / OS...or Java, etc., if you want cross platform. Why not use the power of the local application environment with all the look and feel comfort of the local OS not to mention the computing power of the local machine. I have a tough time making this case for Windows, but it certainly works for UNIX, Linux, BSD and most especially for the Mac. I mean, I paid top dollar for the Mac experience and now I'm limited to what I can run in Safari? Not enough, thanks.

My Macs, combined with a .Mac account provide what I need and want to use. What I want is an easy way (dev tool) to mash-up (and consume, process, apply logic, etc.) data from various sources across the Web and my local machine / machines on network (ala Bonjour) using an easy-to-create native UI toolset for Mac OS X. 

The closest thing I've found to gather the data is RSSBus Desktop. Unfortunately, it is .Net centric. It also doesn't offer a native UI builder either, which is what I want...for the Mac.

A prime example of a rich local application that works connected or not is iTunes. Many Widgets in OS X work the same way. I can build my own special client-side apps using Xcode but that is more heavyweight ( a real programming IDE ) than what I want and need for simple apps. So, how do you build local client UI applications for Mac OS X without Xcode that can mashup data sources using a lightweight Web 2.0 toolset approach? If you know of any tools (preferably open source!) please let me know!

Web 2.0 web-based rich Internet applications hosted on remote servers are fine and valuable but I also want something richer and more native to my Mac that takes advantage of my investment in my local machines. I want it all!