Mickaël’s Weblog

I’m currently reviving a mobile application that I started a long time a go.

Since that time, I downloaded lots of useless software on my mobile phone…no more space to deploy my application. I tried to deploy directly on the storage card but the way to do so did not pop immediately. I googlized around this topic to get the tip and did not find anything. 

The tip is simple: go in the properties of your .Net mobile project, in the “Device” tab, you click on the button on the right of “Output file folder” and select “Root folder”, then enter the full path “\Storage Card\Program Files\MyApp”.

Following spirit of Jeff Artwood’s post on development fallacies, here are some fallacies around RIA.

Responsiveness
Even if I agree on the fact that one of the main goal for RIA is to provide more responsiveness, this not always the unique path to achieve it. Ajax is the best example to demonstrate that: asynchronous requests provide a lot in the user experience perception for responsiveness.

MDI like support
MDI has been invented (I may be wrong) by Microsoft with its SDI vs. MDI environments. This is basically single vs. multiple document edition. In fact, IMHO, this concept is simply obsolete. First, in general, applications are not more only data access, but also include some processes. Process are even more common than data access, at least through navigation (yes, you could argue that navigation is not really a process). As a very large number of the applications are now available through a web interface, the hyperlinks just made the SDI vs MDI paradigm obsolete. The web app software developers knows about the hell of the back button and “open in new window”. RIA is not the right answer to this…or at least using RIA to solve these problems and implement an MDI interface is simply a mistake. Now, most of the web framework provides solution to these 2 problems (like jBoss seam, and other ajax frameworks).

Sexy interface
Yes, Silver Light or Flew provide support to write sexy interfaces. BTW, I think that a dev team with a talent Web Designer could do better job than some other teams using Flex or Silver Light. this is just a question of tools and requirement. Depending on your requirements, the application may not need the very advanced features of Flex (I will not repeat Silver Light all the time ).

I’m not against at all RIA frameworks, just use them appropriately and be aware of your choice.
The main concern I have is on the language behind frameworks. I remember VP R&D saying (5 years ago) “language does not matter”. If they mean that a good developer should be good at any language…I agree. But if this is in the perspective of building software…I disagree. Your building software for years, you will have to support what you write and make the code evolve. The technologies are evolving a lot, the framework too…what’s remain is the language. Building your entire application in ActionScript is a choice that will prevent you moving to another framework. I prefer build the application on top of Java of C#, and build the presentation layer on top of Flex …but only the presentation layer.

RIA is definitely required and a strong suupport for lot of applications, but if applciations that already have a web interface…be aware of your choices.