

Atlas: a visual IDE for desktop-like web apps - arockwell
http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2009/03/atlas-a-visual-ide-for-desktop-like-web-apps.ars

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adammarkey
This could be a killer app for business applications.

Having the development environment hooked up to the visual mockup designer is
a key element for quickly bringing apps that the business likes and IT
approves of.

If they can get this right, there is a lot of money here. Especially
considering the amount of lazy IT shops out there.

~~~
wmf
Atlas must appear pretty killer to people who haven't seen Flex Builder.

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adammarkey
Flex is very nice, but Flex uses a flash plugin as it's runtime. A flex
application is compiled binary sent to the browser - doesn't sound very
dynamic or open web to me.

Cappucino uses good old XHTML and javascript. If you look at browser
advancements in Javascript just in the past few months alone, 2 years from now
technologies like flash may only be useful for very niche circumstances.

~~~
wmf
_Cappucino uses good old XHTML and javascript._

Does it really? When I view source on <http://280slides.com/Editor/> I don't
see much HTML. Does Atlas generate HTML or something else? In what ways does
Cappucino participate in the open Web?

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tolmasky
Yes, it does really use HTML and JavaScript. Cappuccino "participates" in the
open web as much as any other application written on top of open web
technologies.

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jauco
Isn't objective-J translated to javascript by a sort of compiler? in that case
you can't easily re-use pieces of code and use them in your javascript
application.

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jcromartie
Obj-J is run by, yes, a JavaScript file! It can be reused anywhere that
ObjectiveJ.js will run.

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rjurney
Every web app that I've ever created in my five years as a web developer has
been ugly as hell, because neither I nor my employers could or would ever pay
a good designer to make it pretty. I've spent literally years creating ugly
things.

This could change that. I likey. I likey a lot.

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dan_sim
Why does so many people want to create desktop-like web apps? It's not a
desktop, it's the web. It never worked and it always looked bad and unusable.

~~~
wmf
Laziness. We know what desktop apps are supposed to look like, but designing
good Web apps is still more of an art.

~~~
DenisM
reusing learned behavior is good for usability.

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grinich
As the world shifts from desktop software to web-based software, tools like
this are going to be huge.

Atlas is going to enable nearly every single cocoa developer to start making
webapps instantly. No learning Rails or self-teaching JavaScript.

Apple should have done this already. 280north has a huge headstart.

~~~
Timothee
What does Apple have to gain in having Cocoa developers developing web-apps
instead of desktop apps? (serious question)

If anything, I feel like it would actually be a bad thing: a web-app that
looks like a (Mac) desktop app doesn't sell more Macs since it would run the
same on any OS.

~~~
grinich
Why do they make iTunes for Windows?

~~~
Timothee
For iTunes, they do it because it makes them money by selling iPods and music.
A better question to me would be "Why do they make Safari for Windows?". I'm
not sure... is it to show different Apple software to Windows users and lure
them into buying Macs? That sounds doubtful to me but I might be wrong.

But my question was a serious question: what do you think Apple has to gain
from getting the Cocoa/Obj-C developers to write web-apps in Obj-J?

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lubos
I'm not impressed. Building RSS reader without writing a single line of code?
This is not important at all. We all know anything else will take lots and
lots of code to write.

Also what's up with emulating desktop GUI on web? That's just dumb. When users
see desktop GUI, they expect it to behave like desktop GUI as well. If their
drag-and-drop and context menus fail, they think application is broken. Why
would any sane developer want to confuse its users like this.

No matter how good this IDE is... it's still for desktop-like web apps, failed
branch of web-development, so it's already FAIL and waste of time of these
talented programmers.

~~~
boucher
Who says that drag and drop, or context menus, need to fail? And why would any
sane user, who's spent the last 15 years getting used to the way desktop
software works, want to switch to a completely different, entirely text based
user interface?

Any existing user of Office will feel far more comfortable in 280 Slides than
in Google's presentation app. Desktop-class applications are not always the
right answer, but to say they are _never_ the right answer seems pretty silly.

