The 37 Signals Blog has stirred up controversy again with a post about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript:
On the user experience side of things, we’re not even close to tapping out the potential of HTML. The majority of web sites and applications still suck.
Of course, the flame-war began immediately:
“Flex/Flash/Apollo is totally the future”
“No it isn’t”
I think that is definitely true that we have only scratched the surface of HTML. It’s only in the last couple of years that HTML, JavaScript and CSS have really become advanced, stable and widespread enough to be used for complex application development. Even features that have gained ubiquity, like auto-complete text fields that talk back to the server, are very recent additions to the developer’s toolkit.
Having worked with WebStart for several years now, the hardest problem to solve is the additional installation. Java makes this particularly hard, but when you use a runtime on-top of the browser, you will always have this additional barrier to adoption. Rather than prospective customers being able to use your application straight away, you are placing an extra hurdle in front of them.
The problem is not insurmountable, but it is there.
On top of all of this, most RIAs I have seen don’t really do much more than a “vanilla” Web 2.0 application anyway. I come from a Multimedia background (I did a lot of CD Authoring with Director in the 90s) and I’ve done far too much Swing, so I’ve seen many, many fantastically bad applications. There is a reason why software tends toward the a standard set of application principles - business applications don’t need much singing and dancing.
Auto-complete, edit-in-place, drag/drop, lists, options are all standard fare with HTML, CSS and JavaScript About the only piece that is really missing from the stack is the ability to zoom effectively.
Whichever side of the debate you come down on, you have to admit that it’s going to be an interesting few years.