Nexus

It's interesting the way things come together.

Here it is, my first official blog entry. But is it really?? Back in the day (1997-ish) the Internet was where the 'everyman' could publish his thoughts and be heard. It really wasn't that way, but it sounded good.

On my pre-blog ISP hosted personal website, now lost in the bowels of the Internet, I ruminated on the state of browser applications. As I said then, it was not good. Web applications were all the news and what everyone wanted. They could be run everywhere on any desktop. There would be no installation or configuration issues. All would be good.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. When users realized what web applications would be like, they were really disappointed. It this all I get for all that hype?? They wanted more, they wanted a desktop application in a browser. With the technologies of the time, this meant downloading embedded objects and worse, browser limitations and configuration issues. We were right back where we started, only with a hobbled development and user experience.

Leap forward to 2007. The combination of technologies and ideas referred to as Ajax fulfills the promise. In addition to the smaller uses of Ajax showing up all over the web, we now have web applications with the functionality of a desktop application. And best of all, they can be used by the majority of web browsers in use today. With the new technologies we were finally able to develop a web application that rivals and sometimes exceeds our desktop application. (I may talk more about that in future entries.)

It's been ten years, and the subject of my first blog entry is the same as my first 'pre-blog' entry. It's been ten years since the original release of Timeless Time & Expense.

Worlds colliding or the nexus of the universe?????