Lost!

I decided awhile back that I would start coding a new web application. I can’t say anything about it now, but some of the future “web desktop” environments have been catching my eye. Today, I installed Mozilla’s Prism and Adobe’s Air. I’m impressed with one and annoyed at another…

Mozilla Prism
Prism was officially released yesterday (Oct 25th 2007) and received interest, but I’m guessing not as much as the Mozilla foundation wanted. Prism is branded as an extension of the web, but not really a new OS layer. After downloading the Prism application and installing, you run it and get presented with this window.

After typing in the required info and checking the boxes you want, you’re presented with a website inside a window - thats it. Nothing fancy, no special cool things - nothing but a window. Unfortunately, if I wanted this type of application, I’d fire up IE and use the F11 button with auto-hide activated. Then I’d just have a website with no border. About the only neat thing is that I can have an icon for said website. I chalk this up to a fancy internet shortcut. Actually, thats exactly what it is. Enter C:\Program Files\Prism\prism.exe” -webapp google reader@prism.app into your Run bar and *poof*, shortcut works. I’m sooo not impressed.

Adobe Air
After Prism, I wasn’t really in the mood to try something else, especially something that Prism is and isn’t compared to. Lets just say, theres no comparison - period. Wait, I’m sorry - they both have borders around the web application, thats it. I decided to download the eBay Desktop for Air and wow. As much as I absolutely hate eBay these days, they did a good job on the application. I would say that it has the functionality of AJAX, Flash and a few other things, all rolled into one. One other neat thing that kills current web applications is that properties boxes are not limited to the window that opens them. In a standard web browser, you might be able to drag an AJAX popup “properties” menu around but it stays inside the browser window. Air, however, allows the box to be anywhere on your screen. Right now, I’ve got a properties box up on one monitor, the application up on the other and I’m impressed. Stupid, yes, but Air actually makes it feel like a real application.

Since it’s cross OS, I can create an application for any OS, but as a website and pretty much know that it’ll roughly look the same and act the same. No more crying about Javascript and other issues. The other pretty cool thing, it installs as easily as flash (no restart required) and applications install even easier - one click, type in any security password (if you’ve got Vista or XP Security profiles) and the application installs itself after making sure you want to install said application and where.

The sample applications show some of the neat stuff it can do. I personally installed the Employee Directory since I’ve seen those inside several Corps I’ve worked for - blew me away.

The winner? Hands down: Air. I’m sold and I’ll be using it for my next web application. In fact, I have an application I might port over to it…hmmmmm.

For those wondering about Silverlight technology from Microsoft, it’s pretty much a direct competitor to Adobe’s Flash.

MySQL is an Open Source success story. It’s used at home, on your ISP’s server and in many businesses but why isn’t it more popular on the Enterprise side? If you think about it, there are thousands of MySQL servers setup on the ISP side of the world that are in daily use. If you would believe Microsoft, each one of those ISP’s crash as often as Windows 95 and 98 did AND they’d be out of business due to costs - not true. Continue reading…

First, what is SQL? Structured Query Language, or SQL for short, is the “standardized” way of querying a database. Funny, but the word “standardized” really doesn’t fit into anything SQL since every database uses its own interpretation of SQL. There are several databases that just don’t play well with each other. Each database company, whether it be Microsoft, Oracle, or the Open Source DB’s like MySQL (technically a company) or PostgreSQL all have their own implementation of the SQL language. Each has their own quirks with different queries or keywords. After years of SQL being around, it’s still difficult to run a decent SELECT statement over multiple databases - why? Continue reading…

This takes the cake on some of the crazy website User Agreements. I stumbled across a Slashdot Article that led me to a Techdirt Article (see - why can’t I just get to the damn story!) that led me to a user agreement that just blew me away:

For instance, we are the creators of all of the text on this website, and own the “look and feel” of this website. We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so. In addition, you should not make any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us. We also do not allow any links to our site without our express permission, except that you must maintain the link in our Copyright Infringement Warning Button as it is designed. Original

Continue reading…

Ah, another Windows Vista bashing article, right? Not really. I’ve managed to find more and more complaints for Vista over the last few weeks and I’m actually a little surprised by most of them. While my main computer, a Toshiba Laptop with Vista Preloaded works fine, without a hitch or complaint day after day, my “TV”, a PVR with several Terra bytes worth of storage, gives me several headaches a month. Continue reading…