Powerpoint, Obedience and Conformity: Why do smart people feel compelled to use Powerpoint when it's no longer "best practice"? If it ever was... Great subject... thoughtfully explored. I do hope some people who are willing to think for themselves occasionally take the time to read it.

ZDNet.com » Don’t try to do interactive graphics with Ajax This guy Ryan Stewart is on a campaign to convince developers that Ajax is too limited to do really advanced graphical applications... that you should use Flash or---heaven forbid---Windows Application Foundation instead.  Heck, if that's what you want, why not just chuck the browser and build a desktop client?

Guys like Ryan Stewart don't understand that the web is built on open standards, and that the web browser is a client that understands how to interpret and display those standards.  The standards themselves have matured greatly since the early-to-mid 1990's, and more standards have been added to the web browser's repertoire.  But the fact is that Flash is not a native content type that the web browser understands... it does so only through plugins.  Folks who argue that the rich-interface web should be built with native standards like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are making the case for continued reliance on open standards in web application development.  Why?  I know the reason it matters to me is that I don't want to see the web fractured along proprietary-standard lines.

 

Although Flash is widely deployed, well respected, and powerful, it's not an open standard.  It's a legitimate foundation for application development, but it's not web-based development... web as in World Wide Web... as in Tim Berners-Lee and his NextStep HTML browser.  

At least Flash is cross-platform, however.  To talk about Windows Presentation Foundation in the same breath with talk of web application development is simply a commercial argument for Microsoft Windows.  Folks who think this way don't care about non-Windows platforms, and in fact would likely prefer that they just go away.  

Apollo and Flex are more likely to work cross-platform, but they are still commercial products from one company--Adobe.  To allow any one company to usurp the power of open standards on which the web is built is simply to argue against the web browser itself.  Ever since Microsoft engaged Netscape in battle 10 years ago, companies have tried to lay claim on the "standards" for web development, and I sincerely hope that web developers continue to resist those efforts.  

It may be that SVG and Canvas are too young to build fancy graphical apps with.  But they won't be young for long!  In the meantime, I have no objection to pulling in a flash object now and then as the need arises, just as I think it's fine to use java or QuickTime or other plugin objects.  But let's remember they are plugins.  HTML does not plug in to Flash, folks... it's the other way around, or it's no longer a web application.

Macworld: Opinion: An Apple for the enterprise? Tom Yager steps out of his comfy InfoWorld role to offer this risky editorial in MacWorld. Of course, I completely agree with him... but the guy has gotten scorched lately with his support for the Mac platform. Scorched from both sides... Linux and Windows. I really hope some people pay attention this time... he's one of the few mainstream IT guys who gets it. Breaking through the wall of fear, suspicion, and loathing regarding Apple in enterprise IT is certainly proving tougher than I'd realized. Yager tackles many of the myths that PC guys simply don't want to see dispelled, including some I've been tackling in this blog:

1. Macs are so expensive
2. A PC is a PC; who cares who makes it?
3. It's a proprietary platform
4. Why invest in OSX when Vista is going to wipe it off the map?
5. I can't manage a network of mixed platforms
6. OS X Server is unproven in critical, high-availability, and large-scale deployments. It's an enterprise wannabe
7. Apple controls the availability of systems, parts, upgrades, and service
8. Apple's got a smoke-and-mirrors hack that makes Macs run Windows
9. Apple's product line is tiny. All other Intel OEMs focus on choice.

Tom, thank you for tackling these myths so publicly. It's time more people in positions of IT influence did the same.

SeekingAlpha: Microsoft's Current Situation: Like IBM in the '80s Everybody likes to draw parallels in time... this one seems pretty dog-eared at first, but the author is drawing a parallel that's not quite like others before him. It resonates in a very positive way with me, though I'm sure you won't see the Microsoft IT guys he talks about resonating very much at all.

iTWire - Microsoft a victim of centralized thought processing After taking Microsoft off the hook for various obvious problems, Stan Beer at itWire puts the company back on the hook for its failure to attract "the best and brightest" programmers to the Windows Cause as the reason for the company's apparent technical stagnation. One reason that is, Beer thinks, is that Microsoft makes everyone move to Redmond... and most of the really good programmers don't want to. Of course, my question is, "Why does anyone care what problems Microsoft may be having?"

Jonathan Snook: What's wrong with innerHTML? This lively discussion presents pretty much all the pros and cons on both sides of this divide. I ran into the divide myself today and discovered innerHTML is simply the only practical approach... it's the default in the Prototype library I use anyway, but I was investigating alternatives.

SitePoint: The JavaScript Library World Cup Here's a really useful article... it's not often that someone actually comes out and tries to objectively rate the top Ajax libraries. My past attempts were only possible because they focused on one narrow attribute--cross-browser support--but here, Dan Webb describes each of four top libraries--Prototype, Dojo, YUI, and Mochikit--and gives his candid opinions of each. The "winner" may surprise you!

Daring Fireball: And Oranges and Dive Into Mark: Juggling oranges I'm anxious to read this back-and-forth between two long-time, experienced Mac users. Recently, Pilgrim decided to abandon Mac OS X and switched to Ubuntu, a popular Linux variant. Gruber takes him to task, and Pilgrim explains why he's right and Gruber's wrong.

Bastion is an upstart start-up software developer dedicated to the notion that good software can be inexpensive... I'm just bookmarking this page because the author, who's the programmer behind Webarchive Folderizer, does a remarkable job of explaining his decision to pursue Mac OS X software development rather than Windows development. He follows that with a wonderful set of statements about truth, honesty, and opinion-mongering that expresses what I feel very accurately. Hats off, here!

How To Backup Your Mac Intelligently The author, Tyler Hall, goes through each basic kind of file you have stored on your Mac and describes ways of thinking about the backup needs for that kind of file. This looks like an excellent excercise in useful thinking, one that we all need to do more of.

Gene Steinberg: Perpetuation The Myth of Expensive Macs Here's a short but sweet attempt to put down the continued myth that Macs are more expensive than PCs. Some people just won't believe it, and they keep making up irrelevant arguments to prove their point. Why? Are they mad because they didn't buy a Mac originally? Why does the truth hurt so much?

Unraveling the Mac OS X Microkernel Myth This is another intelligent essay by Daniel Eran on his Roughly Drafted website, addressing the question that keeps getting raised about whether Mac OS X has a good enough kernel or not. And whether there's some value in combining Linux's kernel with Mach.

Web-based alternatives to PowerPoint | Jon Udell Udell discusses the problems of PowerPoint and "points" to a couple new web services that can build attractive Ajax/DHTML-based presentations.

The love/hate relationship with Apple - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) This is actually pretty interesting, and the subject of how we Mac users feel about Apple is very pertinent to our everyday discussions about the computers we love. It's often difficult to explain to Windows users why we hold Apple in such high regard, since, as the author points out, it's rare for "brand loyalty" to reach so high a pedestal. It's a subject I'd like to ruminate on at length about myself one of these days...

Subtraction: How Much Is That Browser in the Windows OS? Very interesting, short article about the actual cost of Internet Explorer to Windows users. The discussion that follows is also quite lively... there are the usual dolts (some guy refers to Safari as a "proprietary" browser "lurking" in OS X, not even yielding when acknowledging that WebKit is open source!) and also some good defenders of good browsers.

Neutrality of the Net From the web's inventor comes a brief but eloquent statement of the web's original purpose, and an appeal to keep it free and open. Free from discrimination for or against any particular platform. Do you hear that, Steve Ballmer? How about you, Gates?

Jon Aquino: Comparison of Dojo and Prototype (javascript toolkits) This is interesting, if all too brief. Aquino draws an interesting analogy, calling Prototype like a Porsche and Dojo like a Hummer. Both good and powerful in their own ways, but he has a slight preference for Prototype's elegance.

Otaku, Cedric's weblog: Why Ruby on Rails won't become mainstream This is an interesting treatise on the importance or Rails and its technical virtues, followed by a list of reasons the author thinks it ultimately won't catch on. Then a long discussion follows...

pseudorandom: Cringely on OS X for PCs Cringely, ever he of unshy views, predicts that Apple will release a version of Mac OS X that will run on any PC. Jon Reed, the author of this blog, writes why he disagrees. I saw the posting of his disagreement on Slashdot.

Daring Fireball: The iPod Juggernaut It must be very satisfying to be John Gruber in 2006. Totally vindicated for his outspoken prophecy about the iPod in his 2004 article, Why 2004 Won't Be Like 1984, here Gruber ponders what's next for Apple now that it has a virtual monopoly in the music download biz.