World: r3wp

carl does rebol more for fun than for profits and since he gets fun 
and new ideas he want to build in rebol  there is no way rebol dies 
...

do amiga PCs stopped interresting people the day the company closed 
?

not at all you still now in day have fan of it that tweak it for 
educational purpose or research

and rebol is intemporal like all languages. But yes we can say it's 
unknown and that's in my opinion a pitty.

What solutions we have to make rebol better known ? hum .... vast 
question and many ways to answer it

better known means more visibility more people claiming they use 
rebol because it's the best and nothing else ...

but quite franckly for the end user what ever the language is until 
the software he use feets his needs ...

now you have several scripting languages and most of them are a "success" 
 because of their easy interoperability like lau or VB script...

or python

and some other are succes because of their specialisation like PHP 
 wich outside a web server can't exist

and some other because simply you don't have accès to the source 
code like java (yes I know ....)

but the least we can say it that Carl is not so wrong in his vision 
because the need to extrapolate the hardware and the software is 
a more and more a need in software making industry those20 past years 
you get a lot of  scripting languages created

With out the community we have here I would not get too far with 
REBOL. Most of the apps I try to make can not be done out of the 
box without a lot of expertise and code add-ons that I get from you 
guys. For a novice reboler the community is essential...there really 
is no other source.

REBOL won't die. Consider that a statement.

Hear hear!   hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and 
eloquent speaker has to say!

Carl is making very good progress on the new VID system .. expect 
a new blog very soon.

It's going to be a much more scaleable vector driven system

There was a large amount of work spent on simplification. More than 
originally anticipated.

I'm all for simplification as it increases the number of potential 
users

The world has moved on. The browser is THE client, everything is 
moving into the cloud, and will continue to do so, and apps need 
to be mobile (read work on iPhone).

Terry, I'm still convinced that the whole "the browser is the client" 
thing will implode. It's just the wrong concept. You just have to 
many parts, protocols, plug-ins, versions, etc. involved to get it 
ever secure and reliable.

I think the only reason it won't implode is the size of the user 
base.. millions, if not billions, are spent working around any issues. 
It will evolve.

I picked up a 3G to replace my 1st gen iphone today..  screw Rebol.. 
give me Cocoa.

And I don't even own a Mac.

Terry - then explain me, why everybody tries to move away from browser 
with their RIA? Flash/Flex, Silverlight, etc.?

Screw REBOL, give me Cocoa ... nice ... so where is my Cocoa for 
Windows? :-)

The mobile market is even more crowded. WinMobile 6.1, Symbian, iPhone 
(OS-X ?), Android, OpenMoko (various linux mini OS variants)

I don't think they're tyring to move away from the browser so much 
as trying to bring the desktop towards the browser... probably just 
because they can.. and I don't believe those technologies will get 
much traction.. especially compared to the browser.

You are the second one who said "because they can" ... interesting 
:-)

My question is this.. "What is the end game?" Is everything going 
to be a little RIA? I doubt it. A clunky browser? Probably not.

Where wil it be in 10, 25, 100 years?

Do you know the answer?

I said it xy years ago, that it will happen. Nowadays browser is 
considered being "universal app container" ... the strange thing 
is, that while it provides crap speed (even with AJAX) compared to 
native apps, ppl are forgivable here. But - in order for browser 
to keep its chances, we need to keep the standards. Looking at W3C 
and all its MLs, I wonder how cross platform, cross browser support 
goes. There are technologies for multimedia like SMIL, etc., SVG 
- crappy supported.

Some things are timeless.  
- Everything is data. 

- Software is a solution to a problem, or some form of entertainment.

And now we can see Google trying to keep their own agenda - moving 
ppl to Gears ... which has nothing in common with standards - it 
is linking ppl to use their services .... and off-line app support? 
There are some first tries, but that is it - just only tries - no 
standard for off-line apps. We recently collapsed our CRM system, 
because thinking that today's world is fully on-line, is wishfull 
thinking. So we are developing off-line plus sync ...

Storage was once an huge issue.. not anymore. 
internet transfer rate was once a huge issue.. not anymore.
Always on connectivity will fall as well.

Personally, I think it boils down to 'solutions' rather than technologies. 
My wife couldn't care less how the photos get from here to Australia.

To much emphasis here is spent of technology .. and very little on 
solutions... like S3 support, API mashups blah blah blah.

The greatest killer app the world has ever seen could very well be 
built using Rebol, which would generate a massive following overnight. 
However, the killer app itself will be about an idea.. not something 
special Rebol offers, or any other language for that matter. When 
it boils down, all languages are pretty much the same. It becomes 
a religious thing and a preference.  There's a strong tendency in 
this biz for developers to stick with what they know, even if the 
alternative is 'better' (whatever that means)

We should probably move to advocacy group ....

As for REBOL3, I can't see bigger impact than some custom app development, 
or even some killer app.

browser plug-in could get us some interest, if ppl are willing to 
press one button to install it ....

maybe JR (REBOL for JavaScript) could help a bit ... it would be 
kind of your next javascript library .... no installation .... VID 
way of defining gui, translated to JS ...

Terry: browser... iPhone.... Safari. iPhone apps are a lucrative 
niche or a nice add-on (I have an iPod Touch so I know what I'm talking 
about..., and am in the process of getting an extra Mac for -among 
others- writing IPhone apps for fun).

You'll see that apps work on Safari as well.

Apple's App Store is doing for software what eBay did for auctions 
... it's a brave new world when I can buy an 'app' for $1.99 and 
2 mouse clicks. Cell phones and the software that runs on them is 
where the growth (and future) is.

The browser as the launch platform for applications has always been 
an interesting idea. The fundamental problem of the sheer complexity 
of it can be solved with R3. If done right, it can completely wipe 
the floor with browsers and AJAX. I think the problem is that we 
haven't been speaking in a language that people can understand, such 
as "browser", "web2.0" and "webserver", but instead "dialects", "VID", 
"Viewtop" and "X Internet" and people go "huh?".

Some things I believe are needed to do this right:


- Browser form factor. People are used to browsers, not Viewtops. 
What's always the first thing a complete newbie computer user uses, 
when wanting to do anything on the internet? A webbrowser. I don't 
want a desktop inside my desktop. There are tens of solutions for 
such things and they are almost all forgotten. Carl is doing the 
REBOL browser. When you fire up R3, you will get what looks like 
a webbrowser and acts like one. The concept has to work equally well 
for people like us, as well as 5-year-olds and 95-year-olds.


- Do apps that are similar to webapps, like GMail. That's a quick 
way to compare. Don't you think a 50k GMail look-a-like inside a 
REBOL browser running at native speeds would be _slightly_ impressive? 
Remember to say that you can serve 5 times more users with the same 
bandwidth. REBOL can help make raw numbers look better without much 
effort. Google would have to use it as a content platform. They have 
no other choice. :-) Chrome? What's that?


- Plugins suddenly are very flexible. You don't have plugins as in 
Firefox, but helper scripts that can enhance/change your browsing 
experience. 15k full screen document reader that prettifies plain 
text files? Sure thing. Blog posts presented in that would be much 
nicer to read. Out goes the PDF reader.


- Do apps that are completely out of the league of AJAX, such as 
multithreaded P2P systems. In fact, why not build P2P capabilities 
right in? Have different instances of the browser allow users to 
connect and chat, when they are visiting the same "Rebsite". It's 
sort of like going into a physical store and chatting with the other 
customers and you decide to exchange business cards. Initial contact 
without needing email. Do the same thing with chat support for an 
article that you bought at that  "rebsite". Current websites are 
almost completely anonymous. You don't feel you are entering a live 
community. Coded in REBOL/Services.


- Webpages are now REBOL scripts. In R3, scripts can be closed and 
encrypted, so you can't read the source and you can sell scripts 
and have them signed. The best you can do right now is some kind 
of code obfuscation.

- Windows, MacOSX and Linux version.


- "A webbrowser that directly supports OpenGL without obscure/limited 
3rd party plugins." Say that again in your head.


- It's very important that the public get to see that creating REBOL 
scripts for the browser is very similar to creating plain HTML pages. 
REBOL scripts can be served off a plain webserver. All the infrastructure 
is already there. Or how about serving scripts from the browser itself? 
AltME can both be a client and a server. It's that P2P thing again.

- Browser would run wherever R3 runs.


- Market it as Web 4.0. Market it as a direct competition to current 
webbrowsing.


- Browser would be a 500-600 kb downloadable exe that starts immediately 
without installation. From deciding to get it, to be using it to 
browse "Rebpages", it should not take more than 30-45 seconds.

- We need AltME in that browser (Altissimo?) as well as QTask.

For developers:


- It's easy to create an HTML file in notepad and display it in your 
favourite browser. It's going to be equally easy to create a REBOL 
script in notepad and see it running in your REBOL browser. A 5-year-old 
who has just learned to type, should be able to create a script and 
display it.

- One language for everything.


- Everything is free. You can start out with notepad. The barrier 
for creating content is about as low as it can get.


- You wanna code slow web 2.0 apps or fast web 4.0 apps? Hard choice, 
I know.

That's a great vision Henrik.

Henrik that is very interesting.  Is that your idea or what we should 
be seeing when R3 is released?

A REBOL browser is a great way to really get REBOL out there and 
might be used by non-developers just as their browsing tool instead 
of current browsers.