omar wrote:
I came across the IntraWeb product from AtoZed and found the idea really appealing. What these people have done is build a layer over ASP.NET that abstarcts all UI issues (MVC pattern) so that you can design and build your forms just like you would do for WinForms. They have PartialUpdates (aka AJAX ages before the term caught on) and transparent session management.
I tried it and it looks very mature.
The downside is that you get a feeling that its more geared towards Delphi community (although an ASP.NET version is available).
I just can't unerstand why won't microsot do something like that and make our internet deveolpment lives that much easier???
First of all: my opinion about asp.net is that it's developed by people who think they know what their users want but have no clue whatsoever. They're bright, smart people, don't get me wrong, however they time and time again produce functionality which simply doesn't match with what seems logical or required. "Based on customer feedback", I have no idea which clueless customers they ask for feedback, but it's not the development community.
However.
It's not all problematic. The thing is, they also have a problem: their audience thinks in pages, html and scripts. (generally speaking). Add to that the completely stateless nature of a webpage (handshake over? page gone), and you have a situation in which you can't make drastic changes otherwise no-one will understand it.
I've checked out Intraweb and it seems nice, it has one disadvantage: it seems to work with controls they provide. MS would never do that, as no-one would buy it: asp.net should be a framework, not an app builder tool.
Personally, I think there is one sole reason why development of interactive, database driven webapplications still sux bigtime today: HTML. It simply sux in providing rich gui experiences (check a checkbox, other gui elements get disabled etc. ).
This will be addressed in two ways:
1) XAML + WPF (avalon)
2) AJAX
While AJAX helps, it still builds on top of the crap we call HTML and keeps it alive. XAML is new and fresh and allows you to both generate UI's which are rich and at the same time offer all the webapplication advantages. AJAX does too, but has the disadvantage that it falls flat on its face if the browser isn't capable of doing things.
This might change of course, and AJAX will be a winner. I'm not sure which of them will win, but believe me, XAML + WPF is one of the biggest challenges for microsoft: if AJAX wins, it's over: they'll lose the control over the webapplications. If XAML + WPF wins, they'll control the web and google and friends will fade away.
