Web 2.0 Expo: Bridging the Gap Between Desktop and Web

Kevin Lawver

This is a presentation. If you'd like to view all the slides like a normal web page, you can.

The Scene

• Desktop apps are using more and more web services
• The web is leaking onto the desktop in widgets and windowless browsers
• The preferred programming paradigm is more web-like than ever

Beginnings

• Modern IDEs embrace markup, javascript (or javascript-like) interfaces
• Modern desktop apps are providing more and more data through web services
  • and digesting, or built on top of, web services (feed readers, etc)

Today

• Open APIs
• Desktop apps are essentially windowless browsers
• Many more apps include renderers in them somewhere
• Byte-less applications allow for rapid deployment
  • Web: Yahoo Pipes, Ning
  • Desktop: Apple's Cocoa Framework
• Did you configure your wireless router with a client or web app?
• Even Office tools are moving online...
  • Google Docs and Spreadsheets
  • Zoho
  • Thinkfree
  • and many many more

The Web Won

• Forgiving programming model
  • Fairly easy to get started with
• Flexibility
• Upgrade path between versions smoother
  • Ever thought about "sunsetting" a website?
  • Client APIs find themselves relegated to the backend

Demo Time...

• Web APIs doing traditional client work make for easy consumption
• Focus on the UI rather than the brute forcing a protocol

Demo Time...

• Open AIM Web APIs talk directly to the AIM Cloud via JSON calls
• Custom Session type allows for game data to be sent in a back channel between web pages

Is there any hope for clients?

• Flex and Apollo do not provide high quality P2P solutions
• Development tools are still better for clients
• Clients are more sticky then web apps (push vs. pull)

Demo Time part II...

• COM/ATL APIs acknowledge javascript so web APIs can play nicely
• User interface tools on the client side are becoming more like web pages
  • XML-like Windows Presentation Foundation and Boxely, AOLs toolkit for internal and external consumption

Demo Time part II...

• Open AIM API that AIM Lite uses allows for javascript plugins to be injected
• Javascript hooks both Open AIM as well as Flickr's REST API
• Results are displayed is a simple Boxely UI control

The "semantic web"

• Apps are already more aware of semantic data in web pages.
• Upcoming versions of modern browsers will be microformat-aware and allow you to do useful things with semantic data embedded in today's web.

Demo Time part III...

• Install Firefox and the Operator extension.
• Go to a story on ficlets
• Export my hcard to your address book
• Or, browse that story's tags on other sites.

Tomorrow's Browsers

• This kind of thing will be seamless
• Provide true web-to-desktop integration

Tomorrow

• Better browsers
• Offline DOM storage in Firefox 3.0
• Better scripting standards and tools
• Better markup standards (Web Formats, XHTML+)
• Easier to use IDEs
• Straight-from-the-web compilers (see Amnesty Singles)

And Now for a Couple Announcements...

• No really, these are good.

Contact Info

• Main AIM Developer Web Page
• AOL Developer Network
• Greg's Blog
• Kevin's Blog

What's Next?

• What do you want to see?
• What can we do to help?
• How does the relatively slow rollout cycle of desktop apps keep up with the ever-amorphous web?