reboot for the year ahead.
MY THREE WEB WISHES FOR 2011 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1. MICROSOFT WOULD RELEASE IE9 ON WINDOWS XP
Microsoft is obviously excited about HTML5. Their conferences,
articles, and products are all pushing the technology as the next
"big thing." So why produce an HTML5-aware browser which can't be
installed by 60% of their users? HTML5 could be held back years
if Microsoft do not release a compatible browser for their most
successful and widespread OS. The main arguments for not
releasing IE9 on XP are:
1. IE9 uses Windows Vista/7 rendering technology. I don't doubt
it, but there's no fundamental reason why it can't be ported to
XP. Isn't DirectX supposed to be a solution which solves OS and
hardware incompatibilities? Besides, all the other browser
vendors support XP without whining -- and several offer IE9-like
video acceleration. If others have the resources to support XP,
Microsoft certainly does.
1. XP is a ten year-old OS and support is being phased out.
That's true, but it's currently Microsoft's most popular OS. If
they were really serious about scrapping XP, they could stop
selling the OS and release Vista/7-only versions of Office!
If you think IE6 development is tough now, consider how bad
it'll be supporting IE8 in 2018.
2. WIDESPREAD AVAILABILITY OF SERVER-SIDE JAVASCRIPT
Desktop application developers have it easy. They pick a single
development language and perhaps add a sprinkling of SQL for
complex systems. However, a half-decent web developer must learn
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, a server-side language such as PHP, SQL
and possibly XML for good measure. Wouldn't it be great if we
could use JavaScript on the server and reduce the workload?
node.js [2] may be the best solution, but it's yet to achieve the
widespread appeal and is dwarfed by the availability of PHP and
ASP.NET. Perhaps that will change in 2011?
3. WEB DEVELOPERS WOULD BACKTRACK ON BANDWIDTH-HOGGING WEBSITES
There's an annoying web development trend which considers
bandwidth to be unimportant. Why do some sites insist on
multi-megabyte pages? Why is the total file size larger than the
browser used to render it? I have some sympathy for those
developing complex web applications, although there are few
excuses. Google and other vendors can provide full online office
suites in a few hundred Kb, so there's rarely a need for larger
applications. But it's an entirely different matter for
content-only websites. Bandwidth is not necessarily cheap or
unlimited -- especially for those using mobile devices. Trim that
bulk or have your web development license revoked!
