Adobe claims that it will provide more relevant search results and rankings for RIA content. In a separate blog post, Google announced that it has launched a "Flash indexing algorithm", which will result in better search results.

Adobe admitted in its statement that up till now RIAs have been "generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states". In other words, up till now Flash has been mostly invisible to search engines. So this news today will truly be welcomed by web developers and designers. It may even get the approval of ornery old anti-web 2.0 guru Jakob Nielsen!

There's much to admire about Adobe's web technology initiatives over the past year or so. Recent highlights include Adobe AIR (allowing developers to take web applications to the desktop and store data offline), a host of excellent third party AIR apps, an online Office Suite and new Flash-enabled Acrobat 9, a Flash API for Google Maps, publishing the Flash File Format Specs, releasing Flash 10 Beta. And now making Flash searchable.

A little while ago I would've said that browser-based web apps had a big user experience advantage over Rich Internet Apps. But now that they've achieved an (almost) holy grail in searchable Flash, that gap has lessened some more.

Where the Curl platform itself competes with Flex and Silverlight, Curl Nitro competes more directly with Adobe AIR, Mozilla Prism, Google Gears, and other applications that allow content from the web to run on the desktop while also providing asynchronous communication with various back-end services.

This recently released Nitro demo app called CurlGraph was designed by Manuel Lima, the founder of VisualComplexity.com (our coverage) and it allows you to visualize a circle of up to 128 friends from your Facebook account. By examining the ring of friends and the arcs that indicate the relationships between them, you can visualize what your personal social graph looks like.

Of course, in order to run the app, you'll need to have Curl Nitrol Beta RTE already installed. You can then download the app, CurlGraph, from here and the code from here (note: zip file).

When installing the app, the dialog box looks very familiar - much like Adobe AIR - and the process was just as easy. You login to Facebook via the app and then it will graph out all of your Facebook friend connections.

Fighting For the Desktop

While the app itself is an impressive way to showcase Curl's ability to support a visually engaging desktop application, the company itself is going to be up against some tough competition to gain a foothold on the desktop.

At the moment there's the popularity of Adobe AIR's desktop widgets to deal with, especially among early adopters and other enthusiasts, not to mention Silverlight and other players in the RIA game, including OpenLaszlo, NexaWeb Enterprise 2.0, Dojo, Altio Live, UltraLightClient and JavaFX.

Curl's best bet may be with their enterprise efforts or with their open source web services development kit (WSDK), shipped earlier this year as a part of the Curl Rich Internet Application Platform 6.0. But even then, they're up against Microsoft's Silverlight offering which was ported to Linux by some Novell developers as Moonlight.

Fighting big companies like Microsoft and Adobe isn't easy for a smaller shop, nor is competing against JavaFX and others in the enterprise. Yet that doesn't mean that Curl isn't trying. Curl's VP of Developer Relations, Richard Monson-Haefel, left a comment here on RWW not long ago which was very critical of Adobe AIR's security model, a subject recently noted by Adobe platform evangelist Ryan Stewart on his blog.

Stewart references a recent presentation by Ethan Malasky called Developing Secure AIR Applications, and then says that "security is one of the things that gets talked a lot about with regards to AIR and the team spent a huge, huge amount of time thinking about the security mode."   (Slides from the presentation are below).

If the Curl platform is truly more secure, then they may be able to find success in the enterprise space, an area which AIR and Silverlight are both trying to reach now. However, Curl will have to be up for the battle because those two companies have a lot more resources to fight aggressively for RIA marketshare.

Oliver Goldman recently posted an entry on his Adobe company blog, declaring:

"Adobe AIR supports enterprise deployment. There; I've said it. We've had a bit of trouble getting this message out, so I wanted to be clear about this right up front."

Curious about what kind of apps were really being used in the enterprise, we contacted Adobe to get some details. What we found out was that several big name companies have already starting using AIR on the corporate desktop, using apps to provide everything from real-time informational updates to employee directories. Below is a look at some of the apps in use today.

Enterprise AIR Apps

Employee Directory

Of course, one of the first deployments of AIR is going to be at Adobe, where they've been dog-fooding their own platform for a while now. At Adobe, one of the apps that they use is an employee directory which shows employee names, titles, details, photos, presence, and where that person is in the company hierarchy. Companies wishing to build their own employee directory app can use the sample app available here to do so.

Employee Directory Sample

Sales Team Apps

Another application used by Adobe and others is an app built for the sales team which allows them to enter customer issues, prioritize them, escalate them, and track them. The beauty of this app is its capability for offline mode - something which would benefit any sales team. When offline, sales professionals can enter in issues, and when they're back online those issues get synced back to the company's servers. To get started building an application for a sales team at their own company, a developer can access the Salesbuilder app available here.

Salesbuilder Sample App

Executive Dashboard

At Sharp in Japan, company employees use an executive dashboard built on AIR that shows things like incoming orders, inventory levels in different warehouses and factories, and the throughput of that inventory through every stage of the production process. (No screenshot available)

Customer Account Updates

In the finance industry, the international corporation that is Deutsche Bank has deployed Adobe AIR to their desktops which lets employees actively monitor activity on their customers' accounts. The AIR solution provided a better alternative to what they had used prior - a browser-based application that required hitting the "refresh" button to see updates. Said Mike LaCava, Director and Global Head of Internet Channels in Global Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, AIR let them "leverage the power of the desktop and the Web to immediately deliver customized desktop notifications that will keep our clients well-informed and empowered while they carry out their daily activities."

NASDAQ Market Replay

Another real-time use of AIR in the finance industry comes from NASDAQ, where an AIR app called NASDAQ Market Replay lets financial professionals replay market activity in detail at any point in time - even drilling down into an individual stock to view its historical performance. Here, AIR shows its ability to work with an extremely large data set, which is something that wouldn't be quite as instantaneous in a browser.

NASDAQ Market Replay

Apps for Salesforce

SaaS technology and services company, Model Metrics, has released an on-demand AIR application that leverages salesforce.com's new PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) Force.com to build an app called Accelerate4Pharma. This app is designed for the pharmaceutical marketing, sales, and customer service processes. Again, it was the online/offline switching capabilities that prompted the company to choose Adobe AIR and Flex.

Model Metrics Accelerate4Pharma

While those are just a sampling of apps, there are still other companies using Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR, including: Atlantic Records; BBC; Business Objects; FedEx Corp.; Loyalty Management Group (Nectar); Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group's Neopets; and Wilson Sporting Goods.

Sample & Featured Apps

For any company wanting to deploy AIR apps internally, the Adobe Developer Center features code and sample apps for numerous applications like Lineup, an app that lets you browse your Exchange calendar; S3E, an app that provides a simple user interface for reading, writing, and deleting files stored on Amazon's S3 data storage services; Timeslide, an app that delivers notifications to the desktop; and more.

You can also get access to completed, business-ready AIR apps like Agile Agenda, a project manager application; SearchCoders, a forum reader, blog reader, chat client, notepad, and bookmark manager designed specifically for developers looking for Flex-related information; among others.

Deploying AIR

For I.T. admins, getting the Adobe AIR apps to the desktop is as easy to do as using whatever deployment tools are already in place, like IBM Tivoli or Microsoft SMS. The redistribution site has more details on this.

These installations can even be customized in three different ways: 1) Enable/disable automatic AIR updates (good for locked-down environments), 2) Enable/disable the installation of AIR applications (to limit users to the apps already on their machines), and 3) Enable/disable the installation of AIR applications with unknown publishers (to limit users to only installing apps from known publishers.) More information is available in this whitepaper. (P.S. On the last page is an email address where you can bug Adobe for GPOs, which aren't available yet).

As far as making any pre-built apps for SMBs available, Adobe isn't there yet, and they may never be - they typically just provide technologies for others to build upon. However, there is a chance for seeing more productivity apps in the future in the same vein as the current acrobat.com AIR app (which, by the way, is really worth the download).

Acrobat.com AIR App

UPDATE: Adobe AIR for I.T. Administrators just launched today.

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Offline Syncing

Web connectivity is approaching ubiquity for urban web users in the developed world, but there are a number of reasons that off-line access to web content is gaining momentum. Wireless coverage is often spotty, EVDO is expensive and often under-performs, air travel requires working offline for now and it's just nice to have a local copy of content that you can use without going online.

Google Gears is the best known way that apps are going offline and it's not just Google apps that use the platform to download content and sync back up when connectivity returns. Web office Zoho offers Gears support for offline use of its tools, for example, as does the handsome mind mapping tool MindMeister. Google Gears also has a mobile component. Some apps at least have had initial problems with the fidelity of the syncs back online - syncing anything is hard.

Here's an hour-long nerd-a-thon from last month, titled "What's New in Google Gears." If you're interested in a detailed status check on Gears, this is a fun little video to watch.

It's not just Google doing offline synching. Application development framework Etelos recently rolled out the capability to take any app offline, including enterprise installs of Google Apps, MediaWiki and WordPress.

The new Firefox 3 is also offering offline support for web apps in general, though the apps will need to be re-engineered in order for this to be truly viable. Firefox 3 is still in beta, but I use the current version exclusively and it's great on a Mac. Zimbra is available using Firefox's early offline support, you can read about the newest developments here.

Sometimes, though, it's good when you're offline to just be alone with your thoughts for awhile, or pay attention to your non-electronic surroundings.

Rich Internet Apps - RIAs

Rich Internet Apps are applications that run on the desktop, outside of the browser, but utilize web connectivity for sending and recieving information. They've got the speed and responsiveness of a desktop app, combined with the read/write capabilities of a web app.

Adobe's AIR platform is the most popular system for building consumer level RIAs so far and there are some really beautiful ones available allready. In addition to the best Twitter clients (AIR apps like Twhirl, Snitter and Spaz there are also many other applications being developed as RIAs. Check out the very cool directory site FreshAIR Apps for a taste of what else is being done in this space.

If you're interested in a deep dive into the world of RIAs, check out Redmonk's podcast series RIA Weekly.

Single App Browsers

Site specific browsers are a new direction being explored by a company called Fluid. Why would you want a single app browser? It's nice to be able to work with a particular application outside of your primary browser, just for ease of use, but there are even more reasons than that. Fluid allows a high degree of customization, including easy implementation of Greasemonkey user scripts. Check out the screencast video below.

I use a Fluid version of social music site Muxtape daily and just now began fantazising about putting Google Reader in its own Single App Browser.

Screencasting/sharing

Few things combine "wow" factor with utility as much as a good screensharing app. While there are a number of good paid options (Webex and Adobe Breeze) there are also a growing number of free ways to show someone else your desktop or look at theirs. While most screensharing apps require both parties to download a desktop client, one popular alternative is Yuuguu. This app lets the viewing party use a tab in their browser to watch the presenting party's desktop. It's really easy to use and is great for providing tech support or tutorials.

Presenter downloads are available for Windows and for Mac. I've had one problem broadcasting to a viewer using Windows, but generally speaking it's worked great.

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is an easy way to add all kinds of functionality to existing web pages by adding simple javascript plug-ins to your Firefox browser. It takes five minutes and zero technical skills to use. First install Greasemonkey, then peruse a world of plug-in options. There are hundreds of scripts to chose from at Userscripts.org but our own Sarah Perez highlighted a list of some of the best for heavy social media users earlier this month. Unfortunately some of those scripts don't seem to work with the new Firefox 3 yet. See also the fabulous Gina Trapani's collection of Gmail scripts called Better Gmail. I just used it to add a number of new features to Gmail and am quite happy about it. See also GMail Redesigned, which isn't Greasemonkey - it's just using the browser's own CSS options to redesign GMail. That looks even better.

Check out this very, very charming video about "fixing the web with Greasemonkey." It's pretty cool.

Total Browser Pwnage

Firefly

The above apps are cool, but there's a whole other level of control that some new apps give you over the browser. We eagerly anticipate seeing more apps like the following.

What is this strange orange haze that many of you have been reading this post through? If you hadn't above you can open fireflywith this link. (RSS readers can click through to check this out) It's a simple little app called Firefly. First demonstrated by on Dave Winer's Scripting.com, it's a handy little bit of javascript that creates an interesting social browsing and chat experience.

Iterasi

Iterasi (disclosure: consulting client) is a plug-in that captures the exact content of a browser at a given moment in time, including AJAX states and forms. The saved content is then stashed in a personal online archive that can be searched inside of, shared with other people by email or embedded in a blog post.

While it's Windows only right now, as soon as there's a Mac version I look forward to using it to save legal forms online, company Terms of Service and many other kinds of web content. Give this embed below a click and see how it works.

Since I'm closer to this one than to many of the other apps here I can tell you it doesn't work as well yet as I wish it did, but it's coming along and has great potential. I regularly find myself wishing the Mac version was done so I could capture a page on a site with a click.

Dapper

Dapper is another web app that pushes the limits of the browser. It allows you to click to select any field on a web page and monitor that particular field for changes. Changes are delivered by RSS. The possibilities are endless.

The company has a number of other data outputs available, but almost all of them are broken and not worth trying to use. The company has recently struggled with some uptime issues as well. When it works and your needs are technically simple, Dapper can make web pages do back flips for you.

Conclusion

All of the above have their shortcomings but they all also offer a new world of functionality, they open a new horizon beyond the limitations of loading and reading and writing single web pages at a time.

These are some of our favorite post-browser apps, what are some of yours? We'd love to learn more about the bleeding edge of this kind of strategy. These are really fun and useful ways to use our computers.

Rainbow image by Cessna 206

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/post_browser_apps.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/post_browser_apps.php Analysis Tue, 20 May 2008 14:46:48 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick