Developing web 2.0, specifically rich internet applications (RIAs), has become the latest craze on the internet. eBuddy is one of the many examples that bring complete applications to the users’ webbrowser. But is it easy to develop such applications?

For years we have developed software, however the biggest change with web 2.0 is the tooling. Software used to be made by writing code, compiling it, running unit tests and debugging it when necessary. Javascript, the language that makes the web applications dynamic, does not have all the normal tooling for development.

Only recently have some projects come into existance to fill that gap, most notable firebug and venkman and only on the Mozilla (and derivatives) browsers. Internet Explorer, which has the largest user population, actually has close to no such tools. So the only way to make your applications work properly (from Javascript point of view) is experimentation.

The oddest possible thing about this situation is that Microsoft has the reputation for building some of the most innovative development environments as well as providing extensive development references for their developer base. So why is it their own browser lacks the most basic tools to do software development?

So, is developing for web 2.0 easy? If you are building RIAs I would, sadly, have to say no. The use of the technology has greatly outpaced the creation of a good development environment and who will rise to fill this gap? The open source community is trying to provide the proper tooling, however on the Internet Explorer platform the creation of such tools is greatly limited by the closed nature of the platform, so how will we, as a developer community, fill this gap?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Development, Web2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.