32 replies to this topic

[Romanul]

It's a mockery of standards since it has none. Flash only websites are generally slow, way too flashy, hard (or impossible) to navigate and an eyesore half the time. Give me a damn HTML page to display content.

Flash is great for specific things but an entire website is not one of them.

Yeah,well,had fun saying those first words and find out I'm wrong

Nah,but I've been recommended to work with flash,and looks pretty easy to use,tbh.

Not that I'd be any webdesigner,but for me its OK for a small website.

[Beowulf]

Flash is fine for specific elements like a video/audio player or for other bits and bobs but an entire site in Flash is a mockery of standards.

I'm not saying it's a horrible technology that should die but it's not meant for certain things. Have at learning it...

[Bart]

To be technical, they don't consist of any 'mark up' so to speak.

Yes, very good, you that was indeed my meaning

I also don't surf Thunderbird or Outlook with my webbrowser, so yeah.

The point is that proper markup makes information accessible. A web application (as opposed to a web site) does not contain information that should be accessible to machines, just to you. Something like GMail is the same as Thunderbird, but hosted in a web browser. This is exactly why we should come up with a new kind of web application platform, and stop abusing browsers.

Also note that my views on PHP have changed somewhat since I opened this topic. PHP5 has a lot of improvements which solve many of these things, such as autoloading and namespaces (5.3). Mixing functional programming with OO isn't that bad either, if you're talking about closures (I still think it's ugly to define normal functions in an OO app, mostly because you can't autoload them). The lack of exceptions from old functions can be caught with a custom error handler that wraps them in exceptions. It also has some advantages over Java in that it is very dynamic, and that you can edit->save->test without having to compile and deploy stuff.

[Beowulf]

This is exactly why we should come up with a new kind of web application platform, and stop abusing browsers.

Why? It would just be another redundant application people would need. The browser only does so much for a web application anyway since most of it all is handled by the server and not by the browser. The browser only renders the UI elements and does not interact directly with server side code short of interacting with a form and sending data. Otherwise, all else is handled through the server and its OS or Apache, et al.

I don't see the point in having ANOTHER application to process web applications.

[Bart]

Why? It would just be another redundant application people would need. The browser only does so much for a web application anyway since most of it all is handled by the server and not by the browser. The browser only renders the UI elements and does not interact directly with server side code short of interacting with a form and sending data. Otherwise, all else is handled through the server and its OS or Apache, et al.

Eh...have you ever used something like GMail, Google Reader of Hotmail? The Javascript in there is insane. Also, assumming you're not a web developer, you have no idea how much harder is is than it should be to develop an application using languages and tools that were designed tens of years ago for web documents.

[Beowulf]

That's what JavaScript is for... it's entire purpose is client-side work and interactive elements. It all ties together really well so I don't see the point a new application or any changes to the current set up until the next super great technology comes along.

[Bart]

That's what JavaScript is for... it's entire purpose is client-side work and interactive elements.

The browser only does so much for a web application anyway since most of it all is handled by the server and not by the browser.

Why do you say two completely different things on one day?

Even so, Javascript isn't that bad (though it has flaws), but the things it has to interact with (HTML and CSS) are. They're perfect for websites, but for web applications it's so hard to build a good interface and you have to use so many workarounds, it's not fun anymore. Things like Flash, Java and Silverlight own HTML in this regard as they have much more power and flexibility, but they have other disadantages (need a plugin, no open standards except for Java, takes longer to load).

(Also, your signature is too large. Make it smaller or we'll have to remove the big image )

[Beowulf]

Most of it still IS handled by the server. IE - all of the stuff that matters like the content. That's not handled by the browser and even still, the JavaScript isn't necessary since a lot of web applications that use it work without it enabled so it's just loading pages and posting back more often.

My point still stands - the browser itself doesn't handle the actual application, it just renders out the results and sends new result sets, which are still handled by the server.

[Bart]

I give up, it's pointless to argue

[Beowulf]

Meh. You could say the user is the most important element anyhow. You can't have a web app without users.

[Jeeves]

I had to do a unit on Flash last semester. It only furthered my belief in how utterly useless it is.
The only thing Flash has going for it is the userbase of the plugin.
SVG can do anything Flash can do in a much more lightweight and easy to use fashion, and without the need for propriety software that takes intuitive interfacing and practicality to record lows (I had to spend 6 months learning and still can't find a way to draw a bloody straight line).
Javascript can do anything Arsescript can do, but with DOM, so you can actually do stuff with it.
The only thing Flash can do is font-embedding, and given a majority browser share now actually supports @font-face{} thats obsolete.
So again, the only reason I can see why anyone uses flash is because Adobe also make PS. Even Silverlight is a far superior format if you need the DRM associated with Fhrush

[{IP}Gil-Galad]

Hmmm as much as I love java, I would go with PHP. With the PHP you can easily implement the MVC pattern, in java it's 'messier'. And in my opinion the MVC pattern is the only logical way to go with a website (even small sites benefit from it). I've had experience with both for large and small websites, and I always found it easier to get a PHP site up and running quicker.

Its completely up to the programmer though, If you know how to structure your PHP code you can get the same design benefits as if you were using java.

Take a look at Quercus, it's part of a java webserver and it's a PHP interpreter. You can write java code and see it in PHP... maybe useless, cool nonetheless.
Also CodeIgniter and CakePHP are nice MVC libraries.

[Bart]

Oh hi, long time no see

Anyway, since this topic is very old, I've since found ways in PHP to make it a lot more usable, alleviating many of the issues I mentioned in the first post. Still, it has many quirks that make it less comfortable to use (particularly involving error handling).

Ideally (in a project that is big enough to warrant it) I'd make a site MVC with the M in Java and the VC in PHP