Re: Re: Need help understanding desktop/handheld relationship

On Thursday 15 January 2009 01:59:54 am Ken Latham wrote:
> IF the phone has a local server it uses when not connected, AND you
> can program for *it*, I think I wouldn't worry too much about the
> apparent limitation to JS ... but then, it wouldn't be a limitation
> anymore, would it? :)
>
> So when they say "HTML, CSS and JS", I take them at their word, and
> presume that the server side is remote, and is always presumed to be so.
>
> I'm worried that there is no room for more traditional applications
> which do not *need* server access to work well, with the exception of
> backup, perhaps.  There are many things for which I would *not* want
> to depend on remote data stores to operate.

"HTML, CSS and JS" doesn't presume the existence of _any server at all_. I can 
write an "application" with HTML, CSS, and JS and run it in firefox right 
now, completely in a local directory. Of course, its ability to hold onto any 
data will be limited/none, but that's a function of the browser security 
model.

Palm doesn't need to worry about that. They can define a JS object that offers 
Palm-like "databases" that are stored on the device, have their own security 
policy that allows unfettered access to the databases for installed apps 
(after first run) and an "ask" policy for remote apps, they can... well, they 
can do whatever they want, really. Just because it's _like_ code that runs in 
a browser doesn't mean it has to be the same thing. 

Between the tidbits they've released, and some of the stuff that people have 
picked up through clever observation (for instance, they seem to be basing 
their toolkit on Dojo, and the underlying "browser" is Webkit) I'm pretty 
optimistic. I think it's going to be really sweet to develop for, or at least 
make a good shot at it. JS, done right, is a flexible and programmer-friendly 
language, and developing _fast_ JITs for it is a _really_ hot topic right 
now.

Andrew