Central Thoughts…Cool
“After we completed the MX products last spring, it was time to begin what I believe is the next logical step–creating a better environment for Internet applications that bridges the gap between the desktop and the web, emerging out of the constraints of the browser. This is the mission for Macromedia Central.
We began by brainstorming about how basic infrastructure has been evolving over the past few years with mobile computing, wireless connectivity, web services and an increasing variety of applications on the Internet. We formed a small team around this and developed a vision of what we believe will make for a great experience over the next few years, combined with what we hope will be an interesting economic ecosystem supporting it.
These are some of the concepts we’re working towards:
Instant Delivery. It should be possible to easily find great Internet applications and install them with a single click, while keeping these safely contained so they cannot wreak havok with your computer. Getting applications should be as safe and easy as browsing web pages is today.
Occasionally Connected. People are increasingly mobile and are occasionally connected to the network, occasionally not. Applications should continue working even when offline, and seamlessly take advantage of the network when online. You should be able to be productive regardless of whether you currently have a network connection.
Cooperative Applications. Web applications today are not able to work together as you move from one to another in a browser, and even desktop applications are generally limited to just copy and paste when using them together. It should be possible to unite applications in more useful ways, such as choosing to send a selection in one Internet application as live XML content to another. Users should be able to combine applications in useful ways, building their own connections between them.
Open Data. Information continues to be trapped in ‘black boxes’ in many applications today, such as spreadsheets. XML is becoming a great way to represent data openly and is becoming widely adopted for this, though we still lack agreement on the format for common information such as contacts, locations, and events. Data should be open enough that many applications can manipulate it, and users can then have their choice of applications which they find most effective in working with information.
Context. Internet applications have little knowledge of the context they’re operating within, such as what your current location is, whether you’re currently in a meeting, or what other data you’re interacting with. Given more knowledge of this context, applications can save users steps and be more relevant. Of course this needs to be balanced with privacy, and users should retain control over where their information is used.
Collaboration. Applications are increasingly a multi-user experience. They are beginning to represent the presence of other people on the Internet, just starting to support collaborative work. Applications should have a common way of integrating communication with others in the context of the application, and be able to share application functionality to enable live collaboration in their use. The Internet is not only about connected web pages, it’s about connected people.
There’s a white paper (pdf, 300K) that describes these topics further as well as our early steps towards enabling them with Central.
Underlying this is what I believe is a great opportunity for Flash developers to produce many small Internet applications that can be quickly distributed to and possibly bought by users. It contains a transaction infrastructure that enables any developer to easily post an application they’ve developed on their web site and enable users to discover, install, and if they like, purchase simply in Central.
We’re on a mission to enable this new frontier in Internet applications, and we’re still in the development stage here. We look forward to thoughts you have on this, and I hope you’ll start thinking about what kinds of applications you might make!
[Kevin Lynch]”
I’m really looking forward to these types of applications being developed for those of us who build web based data collection and management systems. Several of my meetings this week involved general consensus that the browser as the internet interface is not ideal, but it’s a great foundation to build on. More on all this later, I have a list of real world business applications and customers for you Kevin, good luck!