280 Atlas – The future

2009/10/08
457 words
by Fredrik Olsen

For the non-technically inclined people reading this you could read it just to gauge my emotions and get a glimpse of the future, but this post will probably not mean much.

Watch this first and read later, you can skip a bit of the start since he really doesn’t demo the new tech until after about half the video. The first half is an explanation of why the tech is needed.

For the first time in a long time I am really excited. I am giddy with expectation and I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to switch over to coding Cappuccino for all front-end purposes.

I don’t like coding HTML, CSS and Javascript. I don’t think a lot of people actually do like it, it’s just something we do because we love the web and that’s the only way to do stuff on the web (give or take).

Now I now what he talks about in the video has been done before, Google don’t spend ages coding HTML, CSS and JS, they use Google Web Toolkit. But I’ve attempted to try GWT but just can’t get it to work. It’s very un-mac like and I frankly can’t even be bothered to get into it.

These guys in the video on the other hand. This shit will rock. Not only does it provide a nice way to interface your app, it provides you with built-in code modularity. I can break up my different front-end functions into modules and have the UI builder automatically interact with the application code.

I have a lot of ideas. Most of them I don’t have time or knowledge to follow through on, but recently I’ve gotten two ideas I do really want to follow through on! I really think they could be good things and I really want to see if they will hold up to scrutiny.

280 Atlas makes me want to follow through on my ideas. I’m not a great front-end developer and not graphically inclined, but Atlas gives me a decent UI to work with from scratch and if the idea holds water I can hire a graphics guy to make it great.

Most my ideas are applications and I’ve always been fascinated by desktop application development, I’ve always thought of it as a much more scientific and “structurally sound” (if that makes sense to anyone else?) process than web development. The problem is you can’t get it out there. You need some sort of vendor to deliver the app through and all my ideas involves being completely computer and OS agnostic, I.E. you should be able to use the app from any computer with any operating system anywhere in the world – that’s how everything should work.

With Cappuccino and Atlas, it could work!

View Comments

Greg H.

Very Interesting. I'm mainly a developer and am -- at best -- very inefficient at creating interfaces :). I can do CSS and am handy with prototype/scriptaculous/mootools, but it is definitely the largest bottleneck in my repetoire.

In an perfect world, I'd love to connect a 280 Atlas frontend with a symfony/php backend. Can't wait till the Nov. 15 beta release to see if I can play this scenario out :) !

I would definitely pay $20 for beta access.
Fredrik Olsen

Yes!

I don't think the desktop-app thingie delayed the release actually. Even though they demoed pretty much the same thing months ago as you said, back then - that was probably all there was. Fixing bugs and adding "side-features" to an application like that takes a hell of a lot of time and the desktop thingie is pretty much just building a quicke single site browser that runs on most platforms.
Emanuel

Mhm, missed that! But still, it could've been here today :)

...also, in a way, through 280 Atlas, desktop apps could be built as web apps. As Francisc said, "this is probably the first W3 compliant desktop app you've seen".

Will you pay $20 for beta?
Fredrik Olsen

I think you misunderstood, it still is a web-app. It's just that they made the desktop app of it for those who want their code on their own server.

But the method of delivery of Atlas itself is somewhat trivial, it is the thought that the web should be coded as the desktop that is the future.
Emanuel

Seems like 280 Atlas would have been "The present" if they wouldn't have shifted focus on making it a desktop app. They demo'd the RSS-app 7 months ago, I was a little bit surprised by this.

Anyway, it's absolutely fantastic and I'm already trying to figure out what I could do with it...