There I said it… I mean lets face it, building apps in HTML+CSS is pretty much like doing word processing in LaTeX.  What ever happened to decent visual tools? And I’m tired of dealing with weird quirky layout issues.

Don’t get me wrong HTML for building apps is definitely (eh) OK and it’s been proven that you can create applications at scale with it.  But I think you end up working around quirks in layout behavior way too much.  HTML was originally designed for making non-wysiwyg “rich” text documents. The ability to build apps is bolted on and feels like it.

Also I can’t help but wonder will the pinnacle of visual application design tools be Interface Builder or Delphi.  I don’t think we’ve really moved forward in terms of the visual tools used to build apps since the advent of these tools.  Rich Internet Application frameworks and plugins like Flash and Silverlight (along with FlexBuilder and Blend) tried to solve this within the browser.  But it’s looking more and more like these are going to fizzle out of existence.

So What to Do?

I think the core issue is that there is too much layout policy baked into the browser.  The included layout primitives (and their paradigms) don’t really do enough and in a lot of ways just get in the way.  And its not like workable application layout isn’t a solved problem.  There are no signs of layout primitives like springs and struts, dock-based layout or flex box layout.  Don’t get me wrong these things should not be baked into the HTML rendering of the browser.  Browsers should work more towards baking in less policy and favor more composible and programmable lower layers.  It turns out that HTML5 already has the right pieces.  Basically we just need a way to express visually what we need to express with minimal policy.  These are in the form of Canvas2d and WebGL.  Why not develop UI frameworks completely on these programmable foundations.  Just some examples of some interesting work that’s been done here and here.

The W3C should really focus on the edge.  HTML apps continue to inch closer and closer to being able to offer the richness of experience that a native app can.  The gaps really come down to insufficient edge interfaces and insufficient integration with the platform that the browser is running on.  Instead of focusing on enhancing HTML’s layout capabilities the W3C should focus on innovations at the edge (some illustrative examples) such as defining a decent programmable audio pipeline for input and output or a programmable pipeline for video decode.

Here are a few more edge problems that i’d like to see solved that currently limit how well applications completely built on top of Canvas2d and WebGL would fare compared to apps being built using HTML.

• Virtual Keyboard management – The ability to programmatically detect and invoke virtual keyboards and events related to screen geometry changes when these have been invoked.
• Accessibility/Screen Readers – The ability to expose accessible virtual objects and their metadata (eg. alternate text) to screen readers.
• Input Method Editors – for inputting international text
• Better clipboard and drag and drop support
• Better geometry and orientation change events
• Debugging - Exposing virtual DOM objects built as Javascript objects to visual debugging tools (in Chrome for example)

But after playing around with it for a bit longer. I have to admit I was absolutely delighted with it. “Wake me up at 6:45″ was one such example. Executed perfectly and so much nicer than setting the alarm with the clunky alarm interface. The same with “Remind me to check on blah blah blah on Monday”… It was absolutely liberating to not to have to navigate around the UI and use the virtual keyboard to communicate with my favorite device. The other killer thing is the geo-fence feature… “Remind me to grab the bottle of wine when I get home”… So all-in-all Siri has a earned a permanent place for me for some tasks… I’ll just have to learn the ones that work well. Perfectly reasonable for a feature tagged as “beta”… I think a FIRST for Apple.

I mean there are SO many things to love from Google… Chrome, Picasa, Maps, Search… But the problem is that we’re again seeing fragmentation limiting what the Web could become and perhaps even threatening its long term survival.

Google seems to be shifting it’s mission away from let’s “organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful” to one of let’s make “high impact products—the ones that improve the lives of billions of people“.  Maybe Larry fancies himself being the second coming of Jobs… and I’ll be the first to say…

NOT A BAD GOAL TO HAVE!!

The EVIL IS that they don’t seem to mind subverting the web to make it all happen.  Google’s apparent “we’ll go it alone” mindset pushing initiatives like DART and SPDY… and their continued product positioning of Chrome As The Platform (chrome as opposed to the web)… are threatening the very fabric of the Web.

And I think folks might be underestimating the threat… Whilst Chrome doesn’t have the monopoly browser position that IE once had to drive this fragmentation… To paraphrase what a friend of mine recently blogged about… people won’t “buy” browsers but they will “buy” browsers+services…

Trust us you’ll work better with Chrome… GWEB anybody?

Joe just might get his wish.

Give it a try.

I think the biggest news from this whole event and what the market seems to be totally missing is that Apple is giving away (with contract) the iPhone 3GS for FREE.  Tim Cook pointed out that the true opportunity for Apple is that they only make up 5% of the total mobile phone market.  The HUGE opportunity really lies at the low end.  I mean compare the iPhone to any other free (with contract) phone on the market.  The opportunity for app and music sales to this market segment is GINORMOUS.

Driving this low end side of the price curve may be the most impactful thing that Apple has done to the mobile phone market since the unveiling of the original iPhone.

I like Tim Cook.  But I have to admit I really did miss Steve Jobs this go around.