o hai! I can haz a browser and a thin client... I callz it Operating System. Iz no VNC or RDP! srsly, kthx bye.

*lol*... Funny how they call "real" applications for "legacy PC apps" haha... nice one. As someone said, these "legacy" apps most of the time are THE reason people even use a PC... and they want to get rid of them. HTML5 will save us all!

Funky stuff.

That being said... put Windows RDP client and Silverlight on that thing... and I'll buy one.

I appreciated it when people found ways to create user-interfaces in HTML and JS because it was attractive for certain use-cases - no extra software to install on client; updates are made once on the server; works on a variety of platforms. Originally what they could do was limited, and gradually browsers have been improved to make more and more possible without questioning: if the original goal was creating a technology to make application user-interfaces work cross-platform, and remotely, would you end up where we are now with HTML5?

I think the answer is emphatically: no. You'd probably end up with something more like Silverlight. But because Silverlight isn't a 'standards based effort' and also because it's not very ambitious (MS sees it as competition for Flash rather than as a replacement for the web), most industry effort is behind HTML5.

rhm said:

Yeh, a future where the default way to use an app is via HTML5 makes me sad because it's just so *-backwards.

 

I appreciated it when people found ways to create user-interfaces in HTML and JS because it was attractive for certain use-cases - no extra software to install on client; updates are made once on the server; works on a variety of platforms. Originally what they could do was limited, and gradually browsers have been improved to make more and more possible without questioning: if the original goal was creating a technology to make application user-interfaces work cross-platform, and remotely, would you end up where we are now with HTML5?

 

I think the answer is emphatically: no. You'd probably end up with something more like Silverlight. But because Silverlight isn't a 'standards based effort' and also because it's not very ambitious (MS sees it as competition for Flash rather than as a replacement for the web), most industry effort is behind HTML5.

Indeed. It's so insane. It feels like going back to DOS and trying to make buttons and windows and what not from scratch... then came Windows... and the rest is history.

Maybe this is what web is trying to do... or I don't know. It's so silly trying to make full applications in HTML... maybe not silly but actually pretty insane.

Maybe the issue started where "almost regular" users felt like they are developers and made "home pages"... somehow, as soon as it's the web we talk about, all people think they know what is best since they know a little HTML.

Annoying. I'm glad Silverlight is here though.

I'm learning Silverlight not because Windows WPF apps are bad, but because I see Silverlight as what the web should have been from the start. I frankly hope that Silverlight someday becomes the replacement of Windows applications. I almost think that is where we are headed right now... but very very very slowly to not kill off the ecosystem of Windows too quickly so everyone can adapt.

20 years from now... maybe everything will be running in something like Silverlight.

Flash tried but failed because it was kind'a "script"... but Silverlight + C# + VS can not even remooooooootely be compared to Flash. Maybe Flash was a test run... who knows.

One thing I'm sure of though... although we see all this "fight" going on between the big giant corps... in the background, most likely they are buddy buddy at some level.

rhm said:

Yeh, a future where the default way to use an app is via HTML5 makes me sad because it's just so *-backwards.

 

I appreciated it when people found ways to create user-interfaces in HTML and JS because it was attractive for certain use-cases - no extra software to install on client; updates are made once on the server; works on a variety of platforms. Originally what they could do was limited, and gradually browsers have been improved to make more and more possible without questioning: if the original goal was creating a technology to make application user-interfaces work cross-platform, and remotely, would you end up where we are now with HTML5?

 

I think the answer is emphatically: no. You'd probably end up with something more like Silverlight. But because Silverlight isn't a 'standards based effort' and also because it's not very ambitious (MS sees it as competition for Flash rather than as a replacement for the web), most industry effort is behind HTML5.

RHM: almost agree totally... one thing though:

I think MS does see Silverlight as more than a flash competetor, I think it may have started as an "MS Version of Flash" but i bet at HQ they see a *LOT* more than just that by now.

just my impression but i think they see a lot of uses for Silverlight and will just keep cranking out new versions for a while and expanding on what it can do.

rhm said:

Yeh, a future where the default way to use an app is via HTML5 makes me sad because it's just so *-backwards.

 

I appreciated it when people found ways to create user-interfaces in HTML and JS because it was attractive for certain use-cases - no extra software to install on client; updates are made once on the server; works on a variety of platforms. Originally what they could do was limited, and gradually browsers have been improved to make more and more possible without questioning: if the original goal was creating a technology to make application user-interfaces work cross-platform, and remotely, would you end up where we are now with HTML5?

 

I think the answer is emphatically: no. You'd probably end up with something more like Silverlight. But because Silverlight isn't a 'standards based effort' and also because it's not very ambitious (MS sees it as competition for Flash rather than as a replacement for the web), most industry effort is behind HTML5.

I wonder if the reason HTML5 and other gimmicky frameworks are becoming so popular for application frontends is because of the lack of any native, sane, modern, and first-party UI framework in Windows.

Terminal Services Web Access:  Run applications through web browser. 

 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771908(WS.10).aspx">http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771908(WS.10).aspx

app-v:  virtualized application backend.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/cc721196.aspx

Anytime, MS wants to counter Google they can.  With the improvements with remote FX and virtualization, there's no need to port applications to html 5.  Eventually legacy code will die or be reinvented and resold. 

W3bbo said:

rhm said:

*snip*

I wonder if the reason HTML5 and other gimmicky frameworks are becoming so popular for application frontends is because of the lack of any native, sane, modern, and first-party UI framework in Windows.

lack of any native, sane, modern, and first-party UI framework in Windows.

And what exactly are WPF and Silverlight, then?

Sven Groot said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

And what exactly are WPF and Silverlight, then?

Non-native.

RLO said:

Two bits:

 

Terminal Services Web Access:  Run applications through web browser. 

 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771908(WS.10).aspx">http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771908(WS.10).aspx

 

app-v:  virtualized application backend.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/cc721196.aspx

 

Anytime, MS wants to counter Google they can.  With the improvements with remote FX and virtualization, there's no need to port applications to html 5.  Eventually legacy code will die or be reinvented and resold. 

Terminal Services Web-Access (aka Remote Desktop Web Connection) uses an ActiveX control and only works in IE, and there isn't much point in that since if you have IE then you're going to have mstsc.exe installed too.

VNC is better in this regard because there are loads of Java applet clients for that which are inherently more cross-platform than ActiveX.

W3bbo said:

RLO said:

*snip*

Terminal Services Web-Access (aka Remote Desktop Web Connection) uses an ActiveX control and only works in IE, and there isn't much point in that since if you have IE then you're going to have mstsc.exe installed too.

 

VNC is better in this regard because there are loads of Java applet clients for that which are inherently more cross-platform than ActiveX.

Except for the fact that VNC is a more fractured set of features/capabilities spread between countless different implementations and extensions.

While at first glance RDP is officially tied to ActiveX or mstsc... there are plenty of other implementations out there as well for various different OSes & devices.

W3bbo said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

Non-native.

You think that people who want to program using native code but don't find MFC, ATL or just plain Win32 adequate, would rather use Javascript HTML5 than WPF/Silverlight? I suppose there is a train of thought that says 'if I can't go fast then I'll go as slow as possible instead', but it's not a very logical one.

In reality, outside of games development, nobody is queueing up to write native code.

rhm said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

You think that people who want to program using native code but don't find MFC, ATL or just plain Win32 adequate, would rather use Javascript HTML5 than WPF/Silverlight? I suppose there is a train of thought that says 'if I can't go fast then I'll go as slow as possible instead', but it's not a very logical one.

 

In reality, outside of games development, nobody is queueing up to write native code.

That's because native Win32 code isn't a pleasure to develop in.

I disagree with your "outside of games development" because you overlook iPhone/iPad and OS X development where the Cocoa API and ObjC environment present a modern OOP platform to build on with a strong class library to boot.

W3bbo said:

RLO said:

*snip*

Terminal Services Web-Access (aka Remote Desktop Web Connection) uses an ActiveX control and only works in IE, and there isn't much point in that since if you have IE then you're going to have mstsc.exe installed too.

 

VNC is better in this regard because there are loads of Java applet clients for that which are inherently more cross-platform than ActiveX.

RDP is so much more better and advanced... and faster and 1000 other things that I'm afraid VNC doesn't come close to it. I would NEVER work via a VNC client but working with RDP is a pleasure.

But yeah, that web thingy won't run on these "thin" clients so :/

W3bbo said:

rhm said:

*snip*

That's because native Win32 code isn't a pleasure to develop in.

 

I disagree with your "outside of games development" because you overlook iPhone/iPad and OS X development where the Cocoa API and ObjC environment present a modern OOP platform to build on with a strong class library to boot.

I considered mentioning Apple but thought we were talking about Windows. But since you did, have you done any development for MacOS or iOS? MacOS is the last holdout of people who enjoy writing GUI desktop applications in native code. iOS apps are written in native code mostly with high reluctance by people who grew up with Java (or in many cases Javascript) and had never written a line of C before they got attracted by dollar signs.

I think you're overstating what you get from Cocoa. The way they API gives you objects for windows/views and distributed messages isn't very different to the way ATL wraps window handles to give you objects. Of course you have the Core Animation system on iOS which is what gives the UI most of it's zing, but it's still much closer to a traditional windowing system than WPF/Silverlight is. For example, when it comes to actually drawing in a view you are still writing procedural drawing code no different to GDI. Many of the subsidiary frameworks are either C or behave like C and don't have much object-orientedness about them. And then there's the language that is Objective C. It's clearly a lot better than trying to write OO code in plain old C, but it combines the slow compilation of C/C++ with the lack of compile-time type checking of Javascript.

When I went to learn iPhone development I decided that I'd go in with the right attitude and learn the 'proper' way to do everything there. Having done that my opinion is that the APIs are OK, but boy do I wish I could program it in C# instead. Which is one of the reasons I was so disappointed the new app store rules forbid that (along with the fact that telling a programmer what languages they can use is as offensive as a government telling imigrants that they must speak English at all times).

stevo_ said:

Like Google's idea of rebuilding an OS inside a browser, almost as ridiculous a concept as building an entire application inside a button..

*looooooooool* made me chuckle. I'll steal that quote.

W3bbo said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

Non-native.

You have a problem with managed? The native used in Google's context is not referring to the way an application is executed, but where it is executed.

turrican said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

RDP is so much more better and advanced... and faster and 1000 other things that I'm afraid VNC doesn't come close to it. I would NEVER work via a VNC client but working with RDP is a pleasure.

 

But yeah, that web thingy won't run on these "thin" clients so :/

RDP has better throughput than VNC, yes; but the RDP framerate in the official Microsoft clients leaves a lot to be desired. The open-source rdesktop client uses a much higher frame-rate that makes the experience seem more fluid, whereas mtsc.exe is artificially hardcoded to something like 20fps. For this reason, in LANs at least, VNC gives a better zero-configuration experience.

W3bbo said:

rhm said:

*snip*

That's because native Win32 code isn't a pleasure to develop in.

 

I disagree with your "outside of games development" because you overlook iPhone/iPad and OS X development where the Cocoa API and ObjC environment present a modern OOP platform to build on with a strong class library to boot.

Apparently Windows CE/EC7 includes a version of Silverlight with a native C++ instead of managed API.  I suspect this will be included with Windows 8 as well and will become the new recommended native UI toolkit for Windows, replacing USER32.DLL (as Direct2D/DirectWrite replaced GDI).  They'll probably even rewrite the shell UI in it.

MS lab I am refering to is the one you can try MS product on their server.

.Net Passport = login using your .net account.

App installation previlige to install your app in MS Lab machines.

I think this  is a cool idea to have cloud OS like this.

I wonde if Google is doing this? But, I do see this a good alternative to lagacy solutions. However, most legacy apps on server based, which doesn't seem to be a good choice using cloud OS somewhere else. And many legacy apps like my father's VCD burning software requires to communicate with CDR directly, so not sure this would work either.

Seems like this only works for games because other apps should be upgraded instead keeping legacy copy. If that's the case, might as well use onLive because games often game requires CD validations as well.

W3bbo said:

turrican said:

*snip*

RDP has better throughput than VNC, yes; but the RDP framerate in the official Microsoft clients leaves a lot to be desired. The open-source rdesktop client uses a much higher frame-rate that makes the experience seem more fluid, whereas mtsc.exe is artificially hardcoded to something like 20fps. For this reason, in LANs at least, VNC gives a better zero-configuration experience.

Frankly, I have NEVER seen even ONCE that VNC would work better than RDP and I have used both in all kinds of scenarios.

contextfree said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

Apparently Windows CE/EC7 includes a version of Silverlight with a native C++ instead of managed API.  I suspect this will be included with Windows 8 as well and will become the new recommended native UI toolkit for Windows, replacing USER32.DLL (as Direct2D/DirectWrite replaced GDI).  They'll probably even rewrite the shell UI in it.

Whooh, now wouldn't that be something!

turrican said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

Frankly, I have NEVER seen even ONCE that VNC would work better than RDP and I have used both in all kinds of scenarios.

It depends on what client and set-up you've got going.

In one scenario I had in late 2005, TightVNC clients and servers gave a very fluid 60fps over 100mbps LAN. I get similar performance using rdesktop as opposed to mstsc.

You can download rdesktop for Win32, give it a try and tell me if you can feel a difference. Other people I've shown it to also say they feel it too.

contextfree said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

Apparently Windows CE/EC7 includes a version of Silverlight with a native C++ instead of managed API.  I suspect this will be included with Windows 8 as well and will become the new recommended native UI toolkit for Windows, replacing USER32.DLL (as Direct2D/DirectWrite replaced GDI).  They'll probably even rewrite the shell UI in it.

Interesting, but is that a C++ interface to the (still managed) Silverlight runtime, or is the Silverlight implementation C++ as well?

W3bbo said:

turrican said:

*snip*

It depends on what client and set-up you've got going.

 

In one scenario I had in late 2005, TightVNC clients and servers gave a very fluid 60fps over 100mbps LAN. I get similar performance using rdesktop as opposed to mstsc.

 

You can download rdesktop for Win32, give it a try and tell me if you can feel a difference. Other people I've shown it to also say they feel it too.

...rdesktop is MUCH better, yepp. cool.

turrican said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

...rdesktop is MUCH better, yepp. cool.

Amazing, turrican agrees with me for once.

W3bbo said:

turrican said:

*snip*

Amazing, turrican agrees with me for once.

*lol* ... ya... oh well, I'm not a fanboy. hehhe... if a solution is good, eventhough not my own solution, then it's good. No ifs or buts about it.

and... yey! Friday!... Cheers!

W3bbo said:

contextfree said:

*snip*

Interesting, but is that a C++ interface to the (still managed) Silverlight runtime, or is the Silverlight implementation C++ as well?

To my knowledge,  the core of Silverlight is native code - with managed bindings connecting to it.  It could explain why Silverlight is faster than The Hog (i.e. WPF) as there is a large amount of managed code inside WPF which talks to native Milcore.