I started using online applications like Gmail, Flickr and Bloglines when they were published in early 2004. Around that time I started to look into web programming and what could be done with CGI scripts or PHP & MYSQL, and it’s also when Ruby on Rails was first released. Today I’m living in google mail, reader and docs, watch closely the market of webapps, and develop some at work and in my leisure time. In the recent years I learned quite a lot about the techniques that these apps are built on, on the interface side: patterns for Javascript, the DOM and XML, as well as on the backend side: db models, caching etc…
Yet more and more I’m finding myself pushing for simple declarative text files and bare html solutions: I’m dreaming of static webpages or jpg directly displayed in the web browser window… I’m not saying that we should build webpages and stop building webapps, but I think webapps have been doing such an impression on me that I started seeing every sites projects as a a webapp. Like if suddenly ink on paper was printed books all around and no manuscripts anymore, no scribbled napkins notes, etc…
All this to say that these days I enjoy a lot re-discovering all that can be done just by pushing a few html element and some content in a plain text file.
Inspiring sites:
http://okmij.org/ftp/
http://www.ftarri.com/index.html
Examples of webpages we did with Jérôme recently: