/personal

Craig Ritchie writes on how only 8% of internet users actually know what a browser is, and how Google needs to educate users about “browsers” and “applications” before — or rather than — advertising the advantages of their Chrome browser and online applications. (The actual post goes beyond that, but this is my cue.)

I don’t believe in the (current) desktop metaphor, I don’t believe in applications, I don’t believe in the need to save documents, and I think I’m losing my belief in the browser. Those are all things of the past. (I’ve written about dusty metaphors before.)

Therefore I don’t think Google should see the study result as a need to educate users about the definition of a browser or an application. Instead, Google should see this as an opportunity to create new definitions! If you’re going to teach 92% percent why something is the way it is and how it works, why not teach 100%? New definitions create new meaning, and new meanings create new thinking. Forget about the browser! Forget about applications! Find a name and an explanation for a platform of the future (like Wave?) in which there are just networked computers that are sometimes offline, in which data is accessed as needed without really “browsing” for anything, and in which there are no Save buttons, just a stream of history and an unlimited undo all the way to the first blank page of every document.

When you think of it, it’s not that far out.

Somehow I forgot to cross-post our so called company announcement here: we’ve released a tiny piece of ActionScript code for free consumption, called the Message Relay.

It’s a tool which we have used in all of our Flash programming projects (proving its reusability value!), and it lets you route data from object to object while avoiding direct references. There’s nothing wrong with direct references as is, of course, quite the contrary. But when you need to work with the DisplayObject hierarchy in Flash, it is very convenient that you don’t have to make those direct, fixed references all through the hierarchy, but you can instead pass the data with messages.

We’ve also found out that by using Message Relay our code can reflect the problem domain more closely: instead of passing data through the object hierarchies, or through the event mechanism, we can create messages with meaningful names that represent events in the project’s problem domain.

For example, instead of firing an event such as “loginDialog.CLICK”, you can send a message with the topic “user requested registration”, making it easier to understand how the code maps to the problem it is trying to solve.

Anyway, if you’re a Flash developer, or know one, please pass on the link. Thanks!