Are we moving back to client server architecture for web applications?
The web started as a medium for sharing and linking content, with very limited interactivity. In time, ubiquity, elimination of software deployment to and maintenance on the clients, ability to update software on the server side transparently, SaaS and other factors made the web an application delivery channel as much as a content medium.
The biggest limitation that soon emerged is the quality of experience when using server-side UI state management - due to communication latency, responsiveness of UI leaves much to be desired, even as we moved from full page refreshes to partial updates, AJAX, parallelization of requests, etc.
Now that JavaScript has become a powerful, fully featured language, are we effectively moving back to client server model, in with rich JavaScript clients are running in browser containers and maintaining UI state on the client, with server side basically providing data and business logic processing?
The answer could well be yes, but to really match native apps in terms of quality of UI/experience, we need better resource management and control of the 'active' vs 'inactive' apps in the browser, when there are many windows & tabs open, refreshing, etc.
I think web as the medium for application delivery and browser as container is a trend that will continue and in time will force improvements in browsers, comm protocols and markup to enable better UI/experience.
The web started as a medium for sharing and linking content, with very limited interactivity. In time, ubiquity, elimination of software deployment to and maintenance on the clients, ability to update software on the server side transparently, SaaS and other factors made the web an application delivery channel as much as a content medium.
The biggest limitation that soon emerged is the quality of experience when using server-side UI state management - due to communication latency, responsiveness of UI leaves much to be desired, even as we moved from full page refreshes to partial updates, AJAX, parallelization of requests, etc.
Now that JavaScript has become a powerful, fully featured language, are we effectively moving back to client server model, in with rich JavaScript clients are running in browser containers and maintaining UI state on the client, with server side basically providing data and business logic processing?
The answer could well be yes, but to really match native apps in terms of quality of UI/experience, we need better resource management and control of the 'active' vs 'inactive' apps in the browser, when there are many windows & tabs open, refreshing, etc.
I think web as the medium for application delivery and browser as container is a trend that will continue and in time will force improvements in browsers, comm protocols and markup to enable better UI/experience.
