[ale] OT: Google releases new OS browser - CHROME

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 03:02:51PM -0400, Brian Pitts wrote:
> Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> > think, the better.  While not all applications could or should be
> > written to be rich Web applications, zero-install apps via the Web
> > browser are a decent thing to be able to do (and do speedily).
> 
> At the point where many developers code websites in Java with Google Web
> Toolkit then compile it to Javascript, you have to wonder why
> technologies like Java Web Start and .Net ClickOnce haven't caught on.
> 

I have often wondered about that.  Java, at least, I can understand:
client-side Java is painfully slow.  But now that .NET is truly
cross-platform, and well, it really *is* a decent thing---the first from
Microsoft in years, possibly in the whole of its existence (though it
does, like anything else, have its issues)---I don't see why it isn't
something that is heavily used.

Mono will probably implement ClickOnce fairly soon (the only thing that
is needed before it can be properly done is CAS, which as I understand
it is a work-in-progress ATM), and so ClickOnce will become as portable
(or more) than JWS application deployment.  ClickOnce applications
should not use native system calls, so they should be more portable than
.NET applications that are distributed with an installer and depend on
the Win32 API, though I have actually only run into a few of those (and
some of those can actually be run under current Wine without too much
trouble).

Though, even that isn't really necessary.  It's entirely possible to
write an application server in C# that implements the server-side
functionality for an application, and leave the runtime be JavaScript
executing in a Web browser (or even as a downloadable b-code binary for
an alternate frontend) without using something as hefty as ASP.NET.  All
that is needed is a FastCGI-compliant Web server, a managed mode FastCGI
library, and the code for the server-side API... and that's not terribly
hard to do in C# or any other .NET-targeted language (though I have only
used C#).

   --- Mike

-- 
My sigfile ran away and is on hiatus.
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