Dare Obasanjo wrote:
> A browser-platform that understands [X]HTML/XForms/SVG/etc is not
> exactly what I'd call a thin client. ;)
I know you are joking but, I strongly agree! The terms thin/thick are
not helpful anymore. There are a variety of orthogonal issues in
client-deployment:
1. Is the client "rich" or not, where rich means multimedia, vector
graphics, client-side logic and GUI widgets.
2. Is the client "standards-based" or not?
3. Is the client URI-addressable or not?
4. Is the client mostly declarative or mostly code? Declarative
clients tend to be XML-based with script for glue instead of
code-centric (as in downloaded Java or .NET applets) with data fetched
by the code on demand.
The existence of tools like Google and Yahoo depend upon
standards-based, URI-addressable, declarative information publishing
applications. The challenge is to create rich clients that preserve
these virtues. Security is also a huge issue.
Paul Prescod
