[I]t’s not Ajax or Java – it’s Flash. Flash continues its march towards world domination, if it’s not there already.
That’s Techcrunch talking about Scrybe, the hot new calendaring tool. It’s a very slick looking tool with an elegant interface. It’s also a glimpse into where we think things are headed.
As the bar continues to get raised in terms if delivering richer experiences over the wire, Ajax will hit a wall. It’s simply too difficult and time consuming to create really fluid interfaces with Ajax. Ajax, in our oh-so-humble opinion shined because it allowed developers to make important interface design leaps upon existing web applications. You didn’t have to dismantle everything and start over. Moreover, in the context of the static world of web applications, Ajax looked and felt great in that world. “It’s all relative” as they say.
But in the wonderfully wacky world of technology, things keep on moving – and like it or not, Ajax can’t match Flash’s capabilities. Take a quick look at Google Finance and you’ll clearly see where the gap lies.
Add to that Adobe’s sinister plan to unleash the power of Flash & Flex to your desktop via Apollo, and you’ve got a pretty scary proposition: rich, powerful desktop applications wired up to web content. At Arc90, where we’ve cultivated Ajax & Web talent in the past, we’re betting on this trend. The web browser will eventually give way. We’re seeing that with all sorts of gadgets, widgets and the like but the full leap is coming, and as we see it – the big players are Microsoft with their WPF platform and Adobe with their Flash/Flex/Apollo strategy.
So how do you ready your organization for these trends? Well, one option is to hire Arc90 (obviously the wiser decision if you ask us). The other is to start thinking about your applications differently. Think in API’s. Think in delivering your value in loosely coupled, discrete packages that can be leveraged regardless of the front-end context. Separation of presentation and data is finally here – and this time it’s for real. The days of HTML templates are numbered as far as we’re concerned.
What gets us all excited is that, for once, design and the end-user experience is driving a lot of this change. By having this new set of weaponry available to us, the pitch to delivering functionality and content with richer clietns just got a whole lot easier.
This is game-changing stuff folks. People thought Ajax was fluff until the competition started doing it and users started to see real value. Now even those naysayers are joining the Ajax party. The same thing will occur with this beyond-the-browser trend. You can be forward-thinking now…or catch up later.