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What graphical elements do we need?

Posted by mufasa Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:41:00 GMT

A new thin client is defined by the GUI widgets that it implements, such as image widgets and text input boxes. I’ve come up with a list of widgets, or elements, that a new thin client should have, starting with those that most are aware of. Obviously, much of this can also be implemented in the current web stack by employing javascript, but that creates new security and performance problems since adding a language runtime like javascript, java, or silverlight makes the web stack a rich client, not a thin client, with the attendant responsiveness, security, and performance problems. I reference the relevant HTML tags where possible.

The old widget standards, you can skim these quickly if you’re at all familiar with software:
  1. Text – In HTML, you can place text almost anywhere, as long as it’s not obscured by other widgets. However, it’s probably best to have an explicit text widget for layout reasons, plus for the various fonts and styles.
  2. Panel/Frame – <div> <span> <frame> Layout widgets are needed to properly organize other widgets.
  3. Grid – <table> A crucial element for any thin client, as data is often best organized in a grid.
  4. File chooser – <input type="file"> A widget for choosing locations on the local file system when uploading and downloading files.
  5. Image – <img> The widget that really made HTML, all the standard image formats can be supported by each thin client implementation, with plugins to add support for new image formats. If images are often being updated very rapidly, it might make sense to add a quick-update or vector differences capability to allow for some sort of quasi-animation capability, but this may need frame-rate limits for performance reasons.
  6. Input elements – <form> I lay out the various input elements below, however there’s no need for a form element as in HTML, because every input element should be able to update to the server independently, as AJAX tries to allow today. There’s also no need for a radio button as in HTML, because it’s almost never used, plus it can probably be implemented by a general button widget if necessary. The only place one sees radio buttons nowadays is in a few webpages, because the option is so readily available in HTML.
    1. Button – <input type="button"> <button> The old workhorse button widget that is crucial to all software.
    2. Checkbox – <input type="checkbox"> Another workhorse that can probably be subsumed into a general button widget.
    3. Text input – <input type="text"> <textarea> A text input widget, with the option to obfuscate input characters for password entry.
    4. Dropdown menu – <select> The way this element is often implemented by browsers doesn’t allow for real nestable, stackable menus, which are widespread in native computer GUIs but often have to be hacked into HTML using CSS or javascript or other means. I would like to see a menu widget that is implemented more like the familiar dropdown menus in native GUIs, rather than the often strange way that browsers implement this widget.
Now we get to the new elements:
  1. Audio and video – HTML doesn’t have explicit multimedia tags, but audio and video formats can be included using more general-purpose tags and all the browsers support some grab bag of multimedia, with HTML 5 bringing explicit <audio> and <video> tags. These widgets should have built in player controls that can be overridden by custom player controls if wanted. They should also support different download options, such as buffered streaming and full downloads. The different multimedia formats can be handled the same way as mentioned for image formats, a handful of built-in multimedia formats with plugins for new formats.
  2. Links – <a href=> The most basic element and killer app of HTML and really what made it different. There is a clear need for linking text and other widgets, but you probably can’t keep URLs when you don’t have discrete pages like HTML. AJAX has run into this problem already. An app can easily implement local links and generate URLs for outside links, at least until there’s another option, but I don’t believe the existing URL scheme is the best way to do global linking. I’d rather get rid of text URLs and the address bar and replace them with a hyperlink data format, that has a handful of variables to specify links to outside content. I’ll write a post on reworking URLs later, certainly URLs can be reused for now.
And finally a new feature that isn’t really a GUI element:

That is all the required GUI widgets and associated features that I could think of, I hope commenters can fill in any that I’ve missed. All of these widgets would be implemented in a binary format that optimized network traffic further. There’s no need for HTML’s list <li> element, as the grid element can handle that, and no need for object, script, or applet tags, as such general-purpose tags present security and performance problems. However, various implementations might implement additional specific widgets. A z-index property for all widgets can be used to determine stacking order. Also, I think it’s best to focus on set pixel resolutions to begin with, such as a few common mobile display resolutions along with the standard desktop screen resolutions, to avoid layout problems that come with arbitrary window sizes. Eventually one can work in functionality to interpolate layouts between these standard resolutions.

Future features that are worth considering:

Clearly, the devil is in the details of how all this is implemented, but listing what is necessary to implement is the first step. There is nothing revolutionary here, but thin clients have been around for awhile. HTML probably provides 70% of what’s necessary from a thin client; it’s just that the current web stack, with further additions like javascript and flash, is badly engineered. However, a well-engineered thin client can make the user experience much more responsive, capable, and secure with these straightforward technology choices.

Questions:

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Building responsive sessions

Posted by mufasa Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:03:00 GMT

First, what do I mean by sessions? The HTTP request/response model is supposed to be stateless but the vast majority of page requests employ some form of state, whether it’s for advertising or saving application state, implemented by using cookies or javascript. I take it as a given that this type of session state is necessary and would like to make these sessions as responsive as possible. Either because of network or rendering delay caused by the bloat of the current web stack, most sessions on the web are not very responsive. Developers today work around this using various hacks like AJAX or COMET but these often involve bringing in additional problematic technologies like flash or silverlight. A new thin client would take this into account from the beginning by being designed for responsive sessions from the get-go.

First, we have to let go of the page model. Every object on the screen should be able to be updated independently, just as AJAX tries to let the browser do now. This may cause some problems for the URL concept but URLs can be reworked to be used in different ways (I’ll write more about reworking URLs later). Second, we have to allow the connection to be stateful, as that describes most usage of thin clients. Remember, TCP is stateful and most network traffic runs over TCP, so it can be done efficiently. Third, we have to focus on rendering speed on the client and ditch all VM-based languages like javascript, silverlight, and java. Those languages have no place in a thin client anyway, as a true thin client only deploys graphical/view data. Finally, someday this may necessitate deploying new network protocols but for now I’m sure current protocols like TCP, SCTP, and IP should do the job.

We can do so much better at creating a usable thin client experience than we are doing now. Only apathy and ignorance cause people to continue using the outdated tools of the past rather than trying to build better tools and platforms. A new thin client could do this.

Questions:

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Keeping the platform open

Posted by mufasa Mon, 26 May 2008 06:55:00 GMT

In the past, software platforms have often been used to lock developers in. This led to a drive for open standards so that no one company could control the platform and to give all the implementers input into the standard. However, the standards process is largely a relic of hardware standards and doesn’t really work for application software. Standards are best suited to network protocols that are programmed into routers, routers for which the software then stays the same without being updated for years. The modern PC is updated very often, at least 2-3 times a year, so the standards process is a straight-jacket on desktop software. It takes years for the standards bodies to reach consensus on a standard, which once ratified shows the dents of design by committee and then cannot be modified easily. The inadequacy of HTML/HTTP shows the results of this process. I will now suggest a way to keep platforms open, open to developers and competition, without the standardization that chokes off innovation. I believe these concepts should be used for a new thin client but they can be applied to almost any new software platform, such as rich clients, widget toolkits, or other software libraries.

First, let’s look at each of the ways that companies can potentially lock up a thin client platform: APIs, copyright, and patents.

Taken together, these restrictions can make up an Open Platform Promise, or OPP, consisting of the following:

  1. No intellectual property rights will be asserted on any publicly disclosed APIs.
  2. Any APIs that are disclosed to one developer will be disclosed to all developers.
  3. No restrictions will be made on usage of the software to help reimplementation.
  4. All patents will be disclosed.
  5. No patent can preclude reimplementation of a feature of the platform.

Some may wonder why all this discussion of intellectual property is even necessary. My argument is that software platforms can be extremely widely deployed- a thin client platform in particular- so it is important to consider issues of lock-in and monopoly. Most current software platforms are either at one extreme of closed-source, patented software, exemplified by Microsoft and their win32 APIs, or the other extreme of open standards often implemented by open-source toolkits, exemplified by HTTP/HTML. The goal of the preceding is to fashion a melding of the two extremes that works better than either one does individually. I do not address the issue of open- or closed-source as I believe that most software will end up being a mix of the two. Instead, I address the other API and IP issues that go with keeping a platform open. The goal of the OPP is to allow developers of a platform to create something they can own and improve upon while allowing third-party developers the freedom to choose their platform and its implementation.

Questions:

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We need a new thin client

Posted by mufasa Thu, 15 May 2008 02:32:00 GMT

We need to replace HTML. HTTP/HTML is an almost two decade-old prototype that has kept its basic form while many buggy and slow extensions have been mashed on top of it. It is now a hopelessly inefficient, quasi-rich client that does almost nothing well while maintaining a legacy language, HTML, that doesn’t do much and that nobody cares for. Worse, as an “open standard,” there are multiple incompatible implementations, either because the spec is vague or the implementers want to differentiate themselves. I would like to throw all this garbage out and start afresh with a new thin client. If we can get this right, maybe then we can start thinking about a rich client. Here is what I would like to see:

The essence of a thin client is to implement the most common GUI elements across multiple hardware and OS platforms while maintaining security. A thin client can be thought of as a first stab at ubiquitous network computing, where the security hassles of having the information superhighway coming into your PC- and the internet bandits and thieves who can now drive right up to your computer door- are handled by the thin client platform so that developers don’t have to. We can do much better at this than we are doing now. And finally, think of the children. If we don’t come up with a new thin client, what will we leave them?

I would like to hear more ideas on this subject from others and I will expand on each of the topics above in more detail. This blog is a place for discussion and sharing ideas, I would love to hear what others who also hold their nose at the current HTML/AJAX mess think.

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