Monday, October 22, 2007

GData JavaScript Client Library for Blogger

The GData JavaScript Client Library family is expanding. In addition to support for Google Calendar, we now support Blogger. Here is the official announcement. It has the same cross-domain capabilities and support for authenticated read and write operations. Now you can create your mashups between your data, Google Calendar and Blogger without any server-side component (you can host your pages at Google Code).

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Adobe AIR: Interesting!

Just viewed a screencast of Aptana's support for Adobe AIR. Although I had heard of Adobe AIR before, I didn't pay too much attention. Now I get it and think it's a significant piece of technology.

I compare it with Mac OS/X Dashboard Widgets (widgets). Widgets are a great way of building small applications using standard web technologies such HTML, CSS and JavaScript on Mac OS/X (will this change when Safari for Windows ships?). When I learned what widgets really are, I applauded Apple for doing a great job of keeping it simple and the same as the rest of the web: a widget is just a standard HTML file that has more privileges when run as a widget. Now comes Adobe AIR. It uses the same approach but goes farther and is a cross-platform way of building sophisticated desktop applications using standard web technologies. Wonderful!

A few years ago when people were talking about RIAs (rich Internet applications), I was concerned that when people rushed to building RIAs using Flash, they would build a second web, because Flash components are not accessible using standard DOM. I haven't revisited this point in AIR to see whether they have improved or not. But I'd like to see they make a Flash/Flex/AIR application's components accessible through standard DOM APIs so that these components are part of the web as we know. One example to illustrate what I am talking about is, if you see a link in a Flash/Flex/AIR application running inside a browser, you should be able to right-click it and see the menu with choices such as "Open in a new window", "Open in a new tab", "Copy link location", etc. This should come automatically by integration with the DOM in the browser. This is what I mean by not building a second web that is walled off from the first.

In any case, Adobe AIR is worth keeping an eye on at least.