In some recent columns, Jon Udell at InfoWorld has been praising some of the nifty things the Google people are doing with DHTML in Gmail and Google Maps. I would invite both Jon and the people at Google to take a look at what is happening in three other arenas with their use of DHTML and JavaScript.
First, the BI people starting with Cognos and Business Objects are putting together amazing GUI interfaces using primarily DHTML based methods. Second, the first edition of RUP-Rational Unified Process documentation is also a DHTML tour-de-force. Finally, Adobe and Macromedia are both extending JavaScript with new objects in interesting ways as they make JavaScript their cross platform scripting language of choice. In this latter case that has resulted in some redundant and/or proprietary objects – but the delivery of cross platform macro capability which could be adapted for online and as well as offline operation – this sounds like a very robust Presentation layer solution set. And Trolltech has a nifty cross platform JavaScript macro-language as part of its Qt C/C++ product suite.
Admittedly, the kids travel plea ” are we there yet” cannot be answered in the affirmative as Jon Boutelle points out in his excellent discussions on JavaScript RIA capabilities – but like Javas write once, run anywhere pipedream – its still a worthy goal.
(c)JBSurveyer 2005