Web Development Live

The survey, conducted by US market research firm Evans Data Corp, ranked Microsoft’s MSN/Live developer package above other offerings from Google, Yahoo, Facebook and eBay according to user satisfaction.

However, Australian web developer and co-founder of the Web Directions conference John Allsopp told ZDNet.com.au on Wednesday that the survey “doesn’t say anything meaningful at all”.

Allsopp added that the nature of Web 2.0 development and its accompanying technologies isn’t suited to this type of assessment, as developers don’t tend to compartmentalise which programs they use to Web Development build applications.

“It’s a misleading thing,” he said. “Web 2.0 is all about mashing and mixing things up to create something new, and using a whole lot of different programs to do it.”

“One of the criticisms of a lot of these technologies is that they’re tied to a certain property, such as Facebook, meaning you have to use their platform to build applications for their site,” he said.

Stewart Smith, president of the Australian Linux Foundation, echoed Allsopp’s sentiments, saying many of the Web Development programs “really aren’t as open as they’d have you believe”.

“People who really care about writing their own applications won’t be doing it for someone else’s platform, they’ll be writing them for their own sites, using a variety of things,” he said.

Allsopp said technologies are “still in their infancy”, and for many large companies, such as Google and Microsoft, “it’s still a pretty novel way of doing things… to open up and let other people start building things for you”.

“A lot of companies are still coming to grips with that, but I think that, over the next year or two, all of these programs are going to Web Development become more sophisticated and usable,” he said.

Apple doesn’t get a whole lot wrong does it? (Although I drafted this blog before seeing the lead story “Firefox chief fumes over Apple Safari update” on ZDNET this morning.) So it’s sometimes tough to have a decent grumble. Speaking as an owner of a pair of Mac laptops and a nice shiny iPod I’m hardly best placed to start venting my spleen, but I think I have grounds here…

First, there was the incident of my browser imploding on my old PowerBook G4. OK, so I’m only running Panther and the new Safari upgrade is for Tiger upwards. So why did the software updater let me install and then decide to send all copies of Safari down a spiralling staircase of thermonuclear destruction?

Software updates come at you so often with Apple that sometimes it becomes a case of ‘click to update’ without giving it too much thought. Thinking about it more closely, it’s usually just an upgrade to iTunes so they can sell me more “stuff” to download. Note to self for more caution in future - Firefox it is from now on then.

Then, after doing some digging around in the FAQ department of the online Safari support pages I noticed that there was a glaring lack of ‘mobile development’ info to be had. As I rifled through the reams of pages on best practices for development I thought, hang on – they have to be kidding, no web for mobile?

This was because I was already too far in – Apple appears to keep its ‘development for iPhone‘ section separate to its web development section. I think this is a strange move from a strategic point of view based on the consensus from the rest of the industry. Mobile device access is a natural extension of all development, web or otherwise – isn’t it?

Thinking about this little rant, I did speak to Apple’s VP of developer relations Ron Okamoto a couple of years back. He’s a lovely chap for sure, but our chat was all ‘big picture’ stuff and I wasn’t able to write up a Q&A from it. Does Apple invite us developer-focused journalists to the Apple Developer Connection? They do not.