Sprout Core - Objective J - 280 slides
Sorry to bore the ones not so into Web/OSX technologies but the news trickling in after the WWDC this year are FAR more revolutionary then any iPhone tech ever was (in my not so humble opinion that is of course). Today I learned about sprout core - an Objective C framework for webapplications. Well I am coding a webapplication since roughly six month now and I am quite deep into the matter. For a webdeveloper you have the following options:
Go the PHP/Perl Javascript route - the most open most supported most ugly most cumbersome most diy route there is.
Go the $insertLanguageofChoice on Rails or on other drugs with a 10MB Javascript framework that works 10% of the time route you do it once and in 4 years the on rails hype has ceeded and your $insertLanguageOfChoice is not supported in a webserver anymore and your javscript framework has so many bugs incompatibilities with the code you have written 4 years ago and you are forced to upgrade because the version you where using has about 1000000000 security holes.
Go the Silverlight/AIR/Flash route - very good controlling how your output looks like in the end - quite easy to learn and follow through - total lockin with one or two companies that could get no worse already (you would think)
Apparently there is soon another route.
SproutCore is an Javascript framework developed by Charles Jolley. Mr. Jolley enjoys a position at Apple working for the .Mac team nowadays. Sprout Core has native drag and drop and a full Model View Controller like Rails. The development on SproutCore is very much like Cocoa development on the mac. You can build complex applications without doing much. Now tie this together with some other developments at Apple like the gene engineered SquirrelFish Javscript engine that by my own account is about 3000% faster then anything out there (purely subjective me running my own stuff on Safari4 without NDA) + add a bit of WebObjects love - the backend webtech that is actually reallyreally awesome just was never usable due to interface problems and years of neglect (they did pick up development a couple of years ago, made it free and I even think partially open source and included - wait for it - javascript support) you are getting somewhere where you might have the best of all worlds - lets hope if it works out like this it is open as hell.
Now this is not just a rumor or some rambling - no I have some real juice to proove how awesome something like this could be.
I stumbled accidently over the site 280slides.com. And instantely thought "wow here something else is going on". What the site is or does is basically the Apple Keynote application on the web. I see you all shudder in despair "WEBAPP"?!?!. Yes Webapp - but at least in Safari 4 I can see no speed difference with this "webapp" and keynote on the same computer - I would even venture to say it feels almost snappier. And the interface is as close as you can get without floating palletes and the stuff. Yes you can change fonts on the fly type stuff inside the slides and present it share it on the web. When I originally stumbled upon it I thought "Flash - this must be done in flash". I looked at the source code which is an astounishing 50 lines long and does not have any flash files in it - the most important line was the following:
script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="Frameworks/Objective-J/Objective-J.js"
oha. Wow. Now go try the webapp - use the webkit nightly build to get the squirellfish javascript engine. Its a revelation - its a bend in the space time continuum - you will witness computer history - and I am not exaggerating.
Roughly drafted Daniel Eran Dilger has more indepth information on the whole matter and he comes from more of a programmer site so he has the real juice if you like more...
Little Update: I should do more research before I post - so apparently the 280slides is not based on sprout core but on Objective-J a framework by 280North - three guys - two of them former apple employees. I still think that this might just be another name for the same thing. For the real sproutcore framework presentation visit a .mac picture gallery (soon mobileMe gallery) - like this one (no that not mine - I never put any pics on the web)... So call it what you want Objective-J SproutCore or a mix of it - it surely seems powerfull as hell and the apps its churning out are fast, pretty and beautiful.