While I am generally very skeptical of half-assed reimplementations of existing tools with a stamp "now in the browser!!!", 280 was probably the first case when I said to myself "this is damn nice!"
Very well done. So much different from the typical crappy and laggy "online app" experience I've seen before.
I agree. But not only are the technical problems with most rich applications fixed by 280 north, but the UI is beautiful, easy to use, and awesome as well.
I don't understand why Flash is so bad. The general concept of having a plugin with a rich built-in API makes sense for a lot of reasons (natively compiled code in the plugin, smaller download of additional code). The problems with Flash are: (i) it's proprietary, and (ii) it's not on 100% of browsers. (i) is mostly a complaint from developers based on principle, and (ii) -well- isn't true for Javascript either if you include mobile browsers.
Disclaimer: my app is built on Flash.
P.S.: 280slides is great! And very impressive this was done with JS.
Flash sucks balls if you have an older mac (1ghz). I don't know how it performs generally on an older pc, but for me, its just aweful. I hate anything online that uses flash.
Flash sucks balls because it only works well where Adobe wants it to work well, as opposed to openly accepted standards like HTML/CSS that work good enough on nearly every computer in operation.
A JavaScript application is a client-based app. The only difference is that you go to a url that loads your client app, versus having it already installed on your system.
I see two levels in the hierarchy: first there's "desktop" vs "web", then within "web" there's "client-side" vs. "server-side" (or more commonly, some combination of the two).
Straight up HTML and CSS pages powered by your favorite server-side technology (PHP, Rails, J2EE...) are clearly server-side web apps. I'd say page-based web apps that add some dynamism via JavaScript (like Hacker News, Reddit, etc) are still mostly server-side with a little bit of client-side stuff.
280 Slides is still a web-app, but it's almost entirely client-side.
However, the lines are blurring with things like Google Gears (err... "Gears") and Adobe AIR.
Hrm, I've always used the verbage 'web-based app' for anything that funneled its way over to the Internet and was stuck in my browser. (Versus something that hung out on my hard drive.) Do you guys think it's inaccurate to call an app like this one that is 95% Javascript 'web-based'? If not, what is a more accurate word?
How? Don't you consider Flash, Java, and Silverlight applications to be downloaded software? What if it's an AcitveX application that's served through your browser, is that a web based application?
That looks technologically impressive. I heard they will be releasing their Objective-J tools as open source, is there any truth to that? I'd love to see what's running behind this.
Congratulations! It is impressive product. The site is little slow but expected. I like how clean the editor looks and you added all the necessary functionalities without using Flash. Wish you great success in future.
i don't want to be the mean guy and although I realise the technical challenge, it feels very slow and unresponsive (i tried it on IE 7, AMD Turion 64 which should be more than enough)
Very well done. So much different from the typical crappy and laggy "online app" experience I've seen before.
And THANK YOU!!! for not using Flash.