Thoughts on the future of the Net

Up until a few weeks ago, I thought of Silverlight (and other RIA-techs) as a great technology, which could easily keep on existing next to the HTML-pages we’re used to.  Newssites like CNN, blogs like WordPress or Blogger, …  I didn’t think these would be replaced by RIA’s anytime soon. 

At this moment, I think I might have been wrong.  I’ve seen a blog-system, completely developed in Silverlight.  I’ve been using Mesh a lot, which is actually already bridging the gap between online & offline apps.  When you look at the feature which lets you drag ‘n drop between your desktop and the browser window, it’s like looking into the future… bounderies really are starting to fade.

And most of all: I’m finding less and less reasons why I would advise companies to start a new HTML-based site instead of a RIA-tech site – the advantages RIA-tech offers are tremendous.

Internet applications are becoming more and more interactive, more functional, more like regular applications – the fact that we’ve seen a steady rise of AJAX Frameworks, applications like Facebook, Netlog, … can be seen as proof of that.

However: AJAX just doesn’t cut it anymore.  It’s a great technology, and it’s pushed websites and the way we surf the web forward by a few big steps, but in the end it’s just a workaround for the problems HTML-pages pose: a stateless model, which looks and feels different on the various kinds of browsers.

The gap between online and offline applications is starting to fade, and as far as I’m concerned, HTML (with or without AJAX, in all flavours – regular (D)HTML, ASPX, PHP, JPS, …)  is on the way out.  It’s been a nice ride, but the internet is evolving into something new – a richer internet, an internet which doesn’t even feel like the internet anymore.  It won’t die out in a few months or a few years, but it will. 

And it will be replaced by techs like Flex, Java FX and Silverlight.