I’ve been diving deep into CouchDB lately, since I finally found a problem I can use it to solve. That led me back to jQuery. A few days ago I started to follow CouchDB and jQuery on Twitter, which led me to find out about the jQuery Conference, which led me to Sammy.js, and writing this post.
Aaron Quint is the creator of Sammy, which is “a tiny javascript framework built on top of jQuery inspired by Ruby’s Sinatra.” In Sammy.js, CouchDB, and the new web architecture, Aaron talks about the new age that we on the web are entering into. He writes that the current paradigm for web apps is:
Aaron says that the model is now shifting to this:
I couldn’t agree more.
The Near Future of Web Apps
For more than 6 years, we’ve been happily developing Ruby on Rails applications at Atlantic Dominion Solutions. That isn’t going to change soon. However, we continue to stay on the bleeding edge. Currently that bleeding edge is what Aaron describes: an application consisting entirely of HTML, JavaScript, and a REST-accessible database such as CouchDB, CloudKit, or Amazon SimpleDBâ„¢. Imagine, one less thing to learn to be able to develop rich, interactive web applications. Personally I’m a fan of removing rather than adding. Heck, I don’t even need Flash to create awesome looking charts anymore. And hey, who doesn’t like shiny charts? I know I do.
Much like corporations will soon wake up and realize that they are not in the IT business, so to will we web developers wake up and realize that we can leverage this new web paradigm for creating powerful online applications.
But… We Can’t Stop Here
The above described paradigm works well for a great many web applications, which are essentially forms. We fill out forms all day. Rather than filling out paperwork, we fill out forms on the web. Forms forms forms forms forms. It still the same thing, only a bit better thanks to the magic of auto-complete, and thankfully spell check. But seriously, we need something better than what we have now. We need to get away from forms. So how do we do that?
I’ve read that technologies tend to leap frog each other, bringing incremental change rather than huge, sweeping changes. Tech that leapfrogs tends to be adopted more rapidly. It also has to be super easy. Look at the iPhone. The device itself is not revolutionary. For years there have been multifunction phones. However their UI, compared to the iPhone, sucked. There is also talk of an Apple Tablet. I’ll stand in line for one of those, no doubt. If an Apple Tablet works like an iPhone so I can drag things around with my fingers, and it’s got a fast CPU and a bunch of RAM, count me in. So how does this translate to web applications?
User interfaces are improving from a design standpoint (simplicity) and the user experience standpoint (usability). Modern browsers and the Canvas element and HTML 5 are taking us there. Combine that with hands-free computing ala voice recognition software and I’d be a happy man. While we can’t get rid of forms just yet, ultimately we’ll be able to. I believe that ultimately we’ll be interacting with information in a much more 3-dimensional way. Browsers and hardware will support this, and data entry will become a thing of the past. Minority Report anyone?
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