Growing Pains - Render This
Engineers and Designers fight so hard to build rich interaction into their Web interfaces only to face roadblocks presented by the limitation of the Web Browser. You know, maybe if all of the smart people involved in the multitude of organizations to establish at least a rendering standard for Web Browsers could band together and build the Un-Browser, a platform not dependent upon a Web Browser’s renderer yet parseable by search indexes, real innovation would blossom. We are so limited by browser constraints that the tiniest workaround for building a dynamic interface (ajax?) is regarded as groundbreaking.
So I have been thinking; in addition to building sites with Web standards I also write applications in Macromedia Flash (no, not for the Web as I have refused) for quick mock-ups, testing user interaction with interfaces, etc. because I can build quite powerful applications rapidly and without the limitations of other clunky (Microsoft) development options. In Flash, it is easy to build an interface rife with drag and drop (and all the other interface bells and whistles we seek to incorporate into Web interfaces), communicate with an external codebase or hardware, etc. Is Flash the best darn answer to building a rich interface today?
When I put on my Web design hat and begin to build a Web interface it is difficult enough to ensure my visual design will be rendered consistently across most browsers/platforms. What the heck? No, I won’t be building any Flash sites anytime soon as I insist on presenting information with a semantic blueprint and xhtml/xml and the like are the best answer for now.
As for building a super-renderer or some other brilliant means to communicate information from an IP to a client without the limitations presented by current Web browsers, an app is underway for the Information Commons which is a completely different architecture from the Web in which every piece of data is treated as a thing and is identified by a unique ID (UUID) and stored in a universal database as opposed to segregated databases. This is by far the most compelling answer I know of yet is currently out of reach to individual developers or bleeding-edge technologists. So, to build universally accessible interfaces today, the Internet browser/Web combination with all of its quirks and challenges is the only answer.
What was that IE hack again?
prototype and script.aculo.us go a long way to help.
Aaron Blohowiak