PC World ran down a list of top 20 innovations for 2006. It ranged from Farecast to the Nintendo Wii and at the end they gave a list of top 5 innovations to look for in the next year. One of those was offline Ajax applications:

Offline Ajax applications: The Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming technique has enabled increasingly more sophisticated online e-mail and Web pages that can preload data and update information on the fly. This year the power of Ajax will move offline, giving desktop-based clients a significant usability boost. For example, Zimbra, the open-source Web e-mail service, has demonstrated intelligent caching code that will let its users browse e-mail, calendar, and RSS feeds even when they’re not connected to the Net.

 They didn’t bring out Apollo by name, which I think is weak, but they did acknowledge that offline Ajax applications are going to be important. In the end, I hope that Apollo makes Ajax developers wake up and realize how much better an application written in the Flash Platform can be, but for right now, I’m planning to welcome our Ajax brothers with open arms as they explore Apollo.

[tags]PC World, Adobe, Apollo[/tags]

I’m sitting at a bar in Silver Star, a ski resort in Canada trying to answer as much email as I can before I go back out and brave the cold. As I went through it, I saw a suggestion by a friend to do a top 10 news stories of Rich Internet Applications for 2006. I just started brainstorming ideas and realized what a great year it’s been in our small industry. Adobe released Flex 2 and announced the Apollo project. OpenLaszlo announced “Legals” which will enable RIA developers to deploy both Flash and Ajax applications with relatively little changes in the code. Microsoft jumped in head first starting with Windows Presentation Foundation and then releasing a CTP of “WPF/E” that really impressed a lot of people.

I’m excited to work on the full top 10 this week in between skiing because it’s going to be a lot of fun revisiting all of the announcements and news. I think 2007 is going to be even more exciting than 2006 was, but hopefully we look back in a few years and see that 2006 helped lay the groundwork for a world beyond the browser where people interact with data instead of visit pages.

Everyone have a happy new year and stay tuned for the top 10 post on ZDNet. If you have any suggestions for things that should make the list, I’d love to hear them in comments or over email.

[tags]Rich Internet Applications, Adobe, Microsoft, OpenLaszlo[/tags]

Andru Edwards, who helps run Seattle Mind Camp and is a big part of the Seattle Tech community lost his father this week. He sent out a note to the Seattle Mind Camp list asking if we could link his father’s eulogy with his name. Rest in peace George Budabin.

[tags]Seattle, George Budabin[/tags]

Shane Morris over at Microsoft had a post about a possible designer shortage if Rich Internet Applications take off in 2007 even more than they have already (he linked to my 2007 predictions on ZDNet). I’ve talked about this with a lot of people and a good number of them disagree that the Developer/Designer workflow is that important in the long run. But I think the point Shane makes about a lack of designers who can fill the need makes it all the more important.

In the end, he’s right; we won’t have enough designers who can work with developers to create great experiences. As a result, less seasoned designers are going to have to step up. In some cases, developers are going to have to take on the role of “devigner”. For those people, a good workflow is going to be of super importance. Being able to move seamlessly between their development tools and their design tools is going to result in better projects overall. Sure, a rock star designer and a rock star developer can find a way to coexist, but for those of us stuck somewhere in the middle, good tools can go a long way towards helping us build applications that look good and meet the expectations of users.

To me, that’s what the designer/developer workflow helps. It isn’t the awesome designers, it’s the people in the trenches who need to live between both worlds. A great designer can overcome bad workflow, but with a good workflow an average designer can be part of a project that looks like it came from a great designer.

[tags]Developer, Designer, Workflow, Devigner[/tags]

I would say by all accounts the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe couldn’t have gone better for those of us from the MACR side of things. In fact the “fun” side of Macromedia seems to have permeated through Adobe and there are a bunch of exciting things going on. I mean would Adobe have released Photoshop to open beta before acquiring Macromedia? No way Jose.

But one thing gets me – the Adobe bloggers have full feeds while the Macromedia guys have partial feeds. I don’t know if this is hard wired into the TypePad system that Macromedia used or what, but it kills me. Now, I realize to 99.9% of the people who follow the blogs this doesn’t really matter, but for a guy like me watching a bunch of feeds, full text is the best way to go. And as it turns out, Adobe is getting a lot of attention from other bloggers. It’s much easier for those bloggers to follow news with full text feeds than it is to wade through he partial text feeds.

The day JD gets a full feed I will cry tears of joy. (Okay, maybe that was too much information).

[tags]Blogging, Macromedia, Adobe[/tags]

I love working from home. One one hand, you never leave the office. On the other hand, you never leave the office, so when inspiration strikes, even if it’s 8:00 at night, you can go right into your work environment. I think I’ve had Eclipse open for 48 hours straight at this point.

But while I was putting the finishing touches on getting my home machine setup, I had a thought about Apollo. TextPad is my lightweight text editor of choice, and I need to have it on any machine I’m doing work with. When I went to download it I got to thinking about how Apollo might work as a platform for applications like these. After thinking about it a little bit more, I wondered if it would be possible to bring people like the guys who make Textpad into the Apollo fold and see if they’re interested in help with building an Apollo-fide TextPad.

Adobe is already working with some big names (including eBay) with Apollo, but it would be interesting to see if these guys who have very useful desktop applications might want to check out Apollo.

[tags]Apollo, Desktop Development, TextPad, Adobe[/tags]

Richard MacManus and some of his guest bloggers put together their 2007 web predictions (Update: I forgot to link this) and one of their big predictions for web development is Rich Internet Applications.

Rich Internet Apps will be a major force in 2007 (a continuation of the Hybrid web/desktop apps theme we focused on this year). In particular watch out for Adobe’s Apollo platform, but you can be sure that Microsoft will also be very active in this domain with its Windows Presentation Foundation. Also in the mix will be Laszlo with its open source OpenLaszlo platform. The general trend going on here is that platforms that leverage both the desktop and the Web will be compelling next year, in terms of offering rich functionality that usually can’t be found on purely browser-based apps.

It’s going to be an exciting year for anyone following these technologies.

[tags]Rich Internet Applications, Read/Write Web, Apollo, WPF, OpenLaszlo[/tags]

Kendall Whitehouse just showed me Fauxto, a really, really kick ass Flex application that has quite a bit of Photoshop-like functionality. I don’t know anything about the team, but I think the app is really slick. They have a blog up, so I’m hoping I can get them to talk with me, but I wanted to make sure it got some attention. It’s well worth checking out!

Update: Mike Potter has a lot more information as well as links to the Digg thread and the Lifehacker link.

[tags]Flex, Fauxto, Photoshop[/tags]

If you missed it, over the weekend Mike Arrington posted a podcast with Kevin Lynch in which they talked about Apollo. He followed that up with an Apollo post on TechCrunch and that got a lot of people talking. For me, the flash of public sentiment that posts like his provide is interesting because of the comments they bubble up. There are 44 comments (as of this writing) over on TechCrunch, and a lot of them are positive. What also struck me was that people are digging into these technologies and seem excited. Here are some that caught my eye:

DannyT

December 17th, 2006 at 2:11 am

The key advantage Apollo has over WPF is that it will be cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac). Design for one platform deploy to all. And the difference between Apollo and Java is that Apollo apps can be built using Flash, HTML, Javascript, XML (”AJAX”) and any combination therein, this allows the already massive web app development community to be able to jump straight in. As you can probably tell, I think this approach is going to work well for Adobe and for us as developers.

Judah

December 17th, 2006 at 1:50 pm

So it begins…

(i’ve been waiting for someone to say that)

@Derek – I see a lot of apps moving online but at the same time there are advantages to a desktop app. For example, files system access. There are certain apps, for example, image manipulation apps, where there is a disadvantage to having it online, as you mentioned. You would have to upload the image, use bandwidth while making changes, share the cpu of the server with other users, etc.

The reason I originally, as developer, chose to work with Flex is that whatever application I wrote, would look the same and run the same across platform (including linux), cross browser. Now with Apollo my apps can be cross-connected â„¢ all rights reserved blah blah blah jk. Your app works online or offline.

And so far since I’ve been working with it, its fast to develop and it makes sense (html is a hack remember) and I don’t have to worry about anything but the app.

“Apollo – now with browser begone!”

#13 Lemon – There is a real language in it and a new engine. I don’t know the intricate details of the engine but it is 20 times faster than Flash 8. The same test in Flash 8 that takes 20 seconds before now takes 250ms. Apollo will be at least this fast. But regardless of what I say, I’d like to see the same app created in WPF/e (windows page fault / error) next to the same app in Flex / Apollo. (Man this is like the console wars all over again).

But what do I know. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

The TechCrunch post also ended up on Digg. Now, I’m of the opinion that the commentary on digg is only slightly more useful than hitting yourself in the face with a hammer, but it does mean exposure and this particular thread brought out some thoughts on WPF/E as well as Apollo:

industrealis 18 hours ago

I was under the impression that Apollo was a sort of wrapper around web technologies like AJAX, Flash, and Flex. It’s supposed to allow the typical web application to run on the desktop as a desktop application would. This would allow you to use gmail like thunderbird as long as Google (or whoever provides the app), giving it the ability to run offline and perhaps have access to some of the desktop that web apps have traditionally been barred from (disk I/O, network interfaces, etc). Vaporware marketing bullshit? If that’s marketing, then maybe I should be studying that instead of computer science.

Soulhuntre 15 hours ago

WPF/e is a seriously kick ass technology. it looks great, it can interoperate with other technologies and the developemnt is pretty easy AND the tools to develop with are all free.
You can see a Flash / WPF/e integrated app below.
http://www.thewpfblog.com/examples/wpfe/microbe/Default.html

MySchizoBuddy 21 hours ago

Flash already has a huge existing market. ur acting like its going to go puff when WPF/E is released. C# is for desktop applications. Developers are going to write code that was meant for desktops not online, resulting in crappy online products coming from C# developers.
Just imagine all those C# developers with desktop mentality now making web apps. Disaster.

How valueable is any of this? Debateable, but at the very least it’s a snapshot of one small section of the tech world and they seem excited about Apollo.

[tags]Adobe, Apollo, digg, TechCrunch, Kevin Lynch[/tags]