In the recent interview with Asa from Mozilla he mentioned MAB, the amazon browser application for mozilla:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=78090

http://mab.mozdev.org/

All i'd heard about Internet based applications was Billy G saying he he was plotting to take contorlof your bank accounts everytime you use Word. Even without Bill, the idea seemed strange, but here's a real example... and it works... how about that? It's strange to think that that really isn't just a webpage at all, but a full application in a browser engine.

Anyone have any views on how the future of this might affect the open source community?

I don't know about the affect it will have but I would much rather that people used plain html or xul over horrible java applets (they have their place but I see them used far too often just for taking form input).

The XUL framework is excellent. I am still trying to get my head around it but there is a good gui/src viewer available from the Mozdev extension room:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/#xulmaker

I guess it's a basic platform independence, as with java classes running on the java vm, XUL apps run via mozilla.

I wasn't really aware of that many XUL apps running that way, obiously open office and the likes. I suppose it's about the concept of what a simple toolkit opens up to users being browser based if desired, rather than XUL itself.

It is also a bandwidth issue. One of the systems That has been introduced where I work involves a 30MB java applet to seach/modify a database. Although this only needs downloaded once it is not the best when we have some buildings on a 128 line maybe 15 users in each.

The idea in my mind of a centralised database is that it the clients need to do very little proccessing - they are in effect just thin clients. With many systems that seem to be being introduced it is forcing uneccesarry loads on the client machines.

Part of writing applications is programming them in an efficient manner. Like you I don't know of many apps that use XUL for this sort of application but as a web developer I hope to start using myself for database applications like the Amazon example.

The bandwidth doesn't seem as scary as it did previously, as long as you're a good coder. Previously with M$ i'd envisaged blindly squirting binary data back and forth till the cows come home, but this seems very different.

I'm well aware of applications screwing with bandwidth... Where I work they're developing a thinclient system for pharmacies and they actually had a party when the system *ONLY* used 20 times too much bandwidth!

It wouldn't happen to be a program called ascribe?

acid_kewpie is good for two things:

1) pointing out interesting things

2) ruining everything interesting about those things

What? Why and what does it have to do with this thread?

it's still nameless at the moment (or rather we seem to rename ever bit of software we buy to suit ourselves), and is actually being written by a software house in texas, and we are their only customer ever, and the project is 1.5 years late and costing a small fortune. ahh software development is great.

Trust me the NHS is the same. There are still people in our area who would rather spend £19k on "Novell" than use an opensource alternative (which I have already proven to work and doa everything that Novell can).