Moreover, the Flash plugin has historically been a resource hog. When I was doing more Flash development a few years ago, some fellow developers and I figured out that we could actually get the fan in a Pentium machine to turn on by running certain Flash scripts. What that means is Flash is eating up resources on the CPU at a ridiculous rate and heating up the chip. For Apple’s iPhone that would translate into both heat and lowered battery life. My bet, is that they want people to get used to the idea that the iPhone has great battery life and doesn’t heat up in your pocket. Then, when they do introduce Flash, consumers will more likely be aware of who is the correct party to blame when playing Desktop Tower Defense kills their iPhone.

Links are thought of as objects in the sentence. I guess that’s due to their unusual grammatical uniqueness in that they are intereactive. But really, the link (indicated by an underline on the majority of sites) is not an object of the sentence — it’s puctuation. For that reason, the puctuation should be applied to the object of the sentence and not treated as an object itself. I can probably better explain by example. (The folowing links won’t work, BTW)

You can download the plug-in here.

This sentence really indicates the location of the plug-in without giving any additional information about where “here” is. Generally, when linking, it’s bad form (bad UI design) to not give some indication of what clicking on the link will result in for the user. So, a better way to write that sentence without untying the link information from the user goal is this:

You can download the plug-in from the Adobe site.

The link is going to get you to the plug-in. That seems better. There’s also just more information available for the user.

I haven’t completely thought this out — just afternoon rambling for the moment — but there is definitely some relationship between the link as a user goal and the direct objects of sentences. Right off the bat I can think of one regular example that defies this: “Read more about this article.” That also doesn’t seem to be as explicative as a sentence like that could potentially be. It’s also an imperative, which, generally speaking, is rude. So maybe there are instances when linking a verb is better than linking a direct object. I feel intuitively sure that’s not the case.

One thing is for sure. The web has not developed (evolved?) a good set of grammar rules for the link just yet. The first step is realizing that it’s puctuation. What’s next I’m not sure. Given that the web becomes better as a whole when its semantic nature can be analyzed, developing a good grammar for link usage is a good idea.

All you have to do is look at Microsoft’s track record. Netscape introduces javascript. People start using it. Microsoft “sort of” implements it and introduces ActiveX. The same thing happened with the DOM and CSS originally. Microsoft implemented it differently than other browsers and brought most DHTML developement to a stop. To me, the only clear-cut difference between DHTML and AJAX is the XML element, allowing pages to be updated dynamically without a refresh. Are we all so sure that Microsoft won’t try to break this?

Most developers will answer that, “If they do that, there will be an uproar among developers.” Yeah, so? That’s exactly what developers originally did in regard to web standards. It didn’t (IMHO) change a thing really. Developers have to recognize that Microsoft’s IE is the undisputed browser king. No ajax application seems to be changing that fact and increasing some other browser’s market share. And if someone like Google becomes enough of a threat (perhaps by introducing a Google-flavored version of Firefox) it is not beyond Microsoft to change some aspect of the DOM (embrace and extend anyone?) that allows their Ajax apps to work fine but breaks everyone else’s.

I think Microsoft would have to do something far more drastic to break Flash. And as many people have begun to recognize, Flash is really just a different implementation of the same principles that Ajax is trying to establish. No, it’s not open source, but Macromedia has done nothing to create any paranoia about that. (Of course, Adobe is another story.)

Furthermore, as Alexander Kirk points out on his blog, all of this talk about development within the browser ignores what can be done out of the browser. Consider iTunes or Apple’s Widgets. Sure we can build applications within the browser but we can also development applications that are just as readily plugged into the web and provide more robust, faster interfaces. You COULD do the iTunes music store as an AJAX application, but given how it’s built-in to the jukebox portion of iTunes, why would you?

All in all I wish Ajax the best. I will certainly endeavor to use the simpler aspects of it to create more responsive forms and the like, but for the heavy lifting I’ll stick with Flash. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade here, I just feel that history has taught that a healthy dose of skepticism towards Microsoft’s actions in the community has never hurt.

Update [8:45pm Eastern]: William Blaze has an even lower opinion of the Web 2.0/Ajax crowd than I do.

Technorati Tags: ajax, usability, dhtml, microsoft, web 2.0