231–240 of 1001 posts
Xhtml. I bought into it completely but hmtl5 is a better system.
XHTML5 works today, and my site is live proof. It helps catch dumb typos when typing HTML code by hand. It also means the CSS is more likely to be applied to the correct DOM tree.
Yahoo pipes. I am still holding out hope for this, especially AI pipelines.
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This would be my #1, as it would have drastically changed (for better or worse) the internet. Although, it's a psycological problem instead of a technical one. You can put a PayPal button or Stripe popup on your page using technology today , which will usually take 10 seconds (given that the user is logged into those services, since we're assuming that this micro-payments practice is common), but it's a wild expectat…
This is because VISA/AMEX have an oligarchy, and VISA is backed by the banks, i.e. the entities that issue credit. So, the financial system is 'behind' the crapy payment scheme. Something would have to come along to basically offer credit without all that. I'm mostly surprised that Amazon and/or Wallmart have not simply done that. I'll bet Bezos does some day: a low-interest rate 'Amazon Card' that other merchants ca…
A credit card alternative from Amazon would be fantastic competitor to VISA / MasterCard to break the lack of innovation in the personal finance industry.
Memristor. I thought that will reshape the entire industry.
why didn't they? (at a high level... im not too smart about these EE topics)
As a programmer it was a revelatory thing of beauty. When we tried to spread it within our org we found that the 'typical' (even relatively strong) programmer resisted its concepts and found it hard to learn.
Therefore it didn't scale for us.
There was a lot of excitement, once blue color longevity issues were solved, how it is easier and thus cheaper to manufacture, how soon it'll outcompete LCD. 20 years later still waiting.
The converse is possibly even more interesting: what tech were you convinced would fail but took the world by storm?
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Uh oh, I think I'm about to rant. Scuse me. Given how cheap even powerful general purpose computers are I don't think they ever will be prized beyond availability. Aficionados, internet stores, arm, Linux, market forces, etc. To some part, good riddance. Software engineers and product designers are the reason the PC is effectively broken by design in UX. Because they are inexcusably slow. There is 0 reason anything I…
> The decade when Moores law gave freebies to software is probably one of the reasons for this astronomical sluggishness. Application feels slow? Well, just wait a year and get a new faster CPU. No need to spend resources on optimization. I'd like to see a word 1.0 coded with current tech stacks. Same functionalities. And see how fast it feels. I think this feeling is a combination of a lot of things taken for grante…
Computers will behave sluggishly, unless care and dedication is paid they don't.
I'd start from a 3D engine, a font layout system, and the huge chunk of simple and efficient open source utility libraries that have sprung up. Or slap it on top of QT if that system can be made to behave non-sluggisly.
One point is, that you need to be able to access the low levels of the system. To understand it's limitations on your higher level architecture, and on the other hand, figure out what can be made blazing fast under which circumstances and use those as your bearings as you are developing the system. With usability, and understanding of end user being on the front seat. The whole time.
The point is, although the system does a great many things, there is no reason from the usability point of view those things are done in serial except legacy and poor design. A system can be made to feel immediate despite what it's doing under the skin. Delay those action, design the system with the user and her time as the first class citizen, rather than some other constraint.
Take a modern complex 3D AAA game. One of the root constraints is that it should never lag. Well, they do, obviously, but that is considered a defect more often than not.
And... Word... would need some deeper fixing on it's basic premises. As I recall I was pretty easy to break the Word 1.0 layout system in any number of ways.
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This really destroyed my day. I really have a big problem staying positive for at least a day now that you've eloquently expressed what I've had a creeping feeling of but just quite couldn't word in any discussion. As computers become "locked app collections" they become appliances, appliances business and government institutions can control and regulate. "Can you make the iPad just not do that thing?"
ok honestly i dont understand this fear. isn't the open web the antithesis of the locked appstore?
1) Some would say that the open web isn't so open anymore, and is under constant assault. One example might be the recent W3C adoption and endorsement of EME.
2) The fact that the open web "lost" in the battle for mobile dominance is a thing. Most "serious" apps have a native version on at least iOS and Android, and the webapp version (if there even is one) is usually a worse experience.
I was sure the Facebook Platform would take over the world. I thought the fast success of Zynga would create a blueprint for all web apps would be built in the future