Topic awaiting preservation: DENG - Modular XBrowser

By Mozquito
http://mozquito.markuplanguage.net/

Versions 1 and evidently used JavaScript, but version 3 uses Flash for the shell. Doesn't resemble anything you've ever seen done with Flash, and the point isn't Flash anyway - it's pushing into new territories for front end presentation of tomorrow's technologies - XForms, SVG, xml ....

Remarkable concept. Remarkable execution.

now that looks interesting indeed. what a pity that you have to pay for it. but well, a flash browser, that's something that the world hasn't seen yet, has it? you can even set skins on this piece.
the only bad thing about it is that it renders quite slow.

thx for this VERY interesting link, steve

yeah - see I don't think it should be considered a "Flash Browser". That's what I thought first too, but Flash is really only being used as a front end. There is some really very intriguing, heavy duty W3C-standards stuff happening underneath the surface. I'm not even sure it's ActionScript that's driving the engine - there was a lot to absorb at the mozquito site and I don't understand it all. But this could be a remarkable departure from the conventional understanding of a browser and a web services consumer.



[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 10-18-2003).]

"MUCH higher calibre of reader.."

Shame on you... <lol>

Well I have no shame when it comes to this sort of thing. Just what the hell should I be seeing there?? I used the provided url... some 'content' appeared in the window... (the GN url btw... craps out on line 69 I think it said) but I just don't get it. Too old maybe?.... ya... that's it... I'm just tooo old. =)

Tried looking at the page twice in Firebird, locked my system up both times saw something saying loading engine or something like that, which froze both times at 87%. The text I was able to read, sounded cool though.

Theres another "Flash Browser" or "applications plaform", and its free and made by Macromedia. Macromedia Central takes advantage of the latest web technologies including xml and soap.

The beta has been out for a couple of weeks and the SDK was released yesterday. I'm actually working on an NFL scoreboard app for it now.

Mozquito has a good idea but the cost is as prohibative as it is ridiculous.

--tiki

NoJive - hope that calibre crack was taken for how it was meant - humor. Poor choice of words in hindsight.

Thanks for the reactions. I really didn't know what to make of this thing. Tiki - when do we get to look at your Central app? I haven't figured out Central yet either - it mystifies me. Looking forward to seeing what someone has done with it.

I guess what I felt the difference between this DENG thing and anything else was it's backbone in the W3C standards. I doubt Macromedia is as fundamentally committed to supporting XForms, or CSS to much extent (though 2004 is supposed to a little?) or other emerging standards as a group who helped develop those standards would be, but still - I don't quite get what this thing is. Is it the future? Or just a German software engineering firm's concoction. And what's the money thing anyway? Is the standalone version free and the development version costly?

Anyway ... I just thought it was interesting. More than just an incremental upgrade in a browser, this seemed sort of like a deep departure conceptially. We'll see I guess.



[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 10-18-2003).]

Hi - this is Sebastian from Mozquito - been watching this thread - thanks for both the praise and criticism!

I'd seriously just like to ask Tiki about his preferred licensing model - no bitterness / frustration on my side at all - just trying understand his statements...

So any statement why exactly the licensing is ridiculous would be great - just to clarify: it's currently 399 EUR per developer - you can do as many projects as you like and even get the source code.

Thanks,

- Sebastian

Wow!

Welcome Sebastian! Kinda spooky when someone you've been talking about shows up at your door!


I got the link to Mozquito from Grant Skinner's blog. Was bowled over by what I saw, but didn't really know WHAT I was seeing. There are a lot of folk here more technical that I, so thought I'd toss it out and see what I could learn from them.

What does the developer code consist of? Is it classes for Flash? Or does development take place outside of the Macromedia authoring environment? I confess I didn't pour over the material on your site, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me how much this was Flash and how much was yours. Do you need both Flash AND the Mozquito product to develop? And then what does the viewer need? Just a browser and the Flash plugin?

Anyway, welcome to the Asylum, and good luck with your product.

(BTW, I didn't experience any crash/feeze with Mac OS X, Safari or IE5.5 It did seem slow, but the Flash player for Macintosh never was as fast as the one for PCs, so thought that was why.)

--
Okay, I did go back and read some more and it seems a little bt more clear - a component to MX, so you need to pay for both Flash MX AND Mozquito. I'm largely unsophisticated about the advantages here. I understand the light wright client bit, and the widespread penetration of the Flash 6 plug in. What's the zero deploymet advantage? Do you need plugins to use XForms and other technologies DENG renders?


[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 10-18-2003).]

hi steve,
i'm the lead developer of the deng engine.
let me try to answer some of your questions.

> What does the developer code consist of?
> Is it classes for Flash?

yes. deng is a class api, wrapped into a flash (6) component. if you buy deng, you'll get the flash component including full source code. this will enable you to integrate xhtml/xforms/svg/etc into your flash projects. the license allows you to use deng for an unlimited number of projects/clients (the only restriction is that you can't redistribute deng with your products).

> Or does development take place outside of the
> Macromedia authoring environment?

yes. you don't need the flash ide. you can use a "precompiled" flash swf to deploy deng together with your xhtml/xforms/svg/etc documents. it's great that you come up with that question because we didn't offer such a precompiled swf yet. now we do. thanks! we are also going to ship a tool soon, automating the integration of the precompiled swf.

did this answer your questions?
cheers,
claus.

Sebastion: Sorry, to not reply quickly but this a busy time of year for me. I didn't question the licensing model, I said I have a problem with the cost. Deng is possibly the most expensive flash component I've seen.

It provides some good functionality but at high cost and a lot of this functionality I can either go without or I can accomplish using the built in features of flash. I mean Flash 7 pro + DENG is twice the cost of my Flash Pro upgrade, which is taking a lot of developers by suprise right now($400 upgrade, sheesh!).

The Deng price is also steep if you consider that I would basically be an early-adopter, not many people are using Xforms etc. Why is this important? Because at this current juncture, if I use XML it's to interface with some elses data not my own. And if the browser manufacturers adopt Xforms as a standard I might not need DENG anymore.

In addition, as a flash developer, DENG's 60kb footprint is pretty high. I can do alot in 60kb, and I'm trying to keep the flash apps under 50KB, in spite of my bosses attempts to boost their size. Is there some way to split parts of DENG's functionality in to smaller components?

Of course, I am saying all of this without really testing your product so I could be wrong. I only know what I could glean from your site, oreilly's Xforms and Macromedia. Both of which said that DENG was the best current implementation of Xforms, but Macromedia also questioned the actual need currently for the standard...without buy-in from Microsoft. This is a ongoing problem with the Web standards movement. The W3C says "here's the standard" and Microsoft sticks out it's tongue and says "whatever."

Steve: I'm doing the Central scoreboard as a personal project, so it could be two weeks or 2 months...just depends on how much time have. Flash MX 2004 has CSS support but its limited to a few attributes...but really once your in flash how much CSS support do you need? I usually need enough to keep the test consistant with the rest of the site.

When I've finished both the scoreboard and Power Meter (a stats comparison app) I'll drop you a link. They're both in beta right now. I still have a couple of bugs to fix.

--tiki, sorry it's long but dems my 2cents.


-tiki, cell 478

[This message has been edited by tikigod (edited 10-20-2003).]

Tiki & Steve - thanks so much for your time and comments - I think there is some really good discussion here.

Starting by answering Steve about 'zero-install': Yes, indeed, XForms and SVG for example only run thru yet another plug-in. In case of SVG thats the Adobe SVG Viewer and with XForms - which has quite a lot of implementations, including server-side transcoders - the currently best IE plug-in is FormsPlayer (http://www.formsplayer.com). DENG just leverages the already deployed Flash 6 plug-in for those two technologies, making it 'zero-install' from that perspective.

Now to Tiki...

Starting with: > Is there some way to split parts of DENG's functionality in to smaller components?

Yes. That's the reason we currently give you the AS sourcecode, that is well documented - you could e.g. throw out the SVG engine if you're only using XForms - or both XForms and SVG if you just want to use Basic XML+CSS - which then comes to around 30K minimum footprint.
Such a basic XML+CSS DENG engine already can be useful for simply styling an XML grammar via CSS - which can be significantly faster in development for creating a UI ontop of an XML structure instead of custom ActionScript - as e.g. LordAlex, another Flash developer, found out on his blog: http://www.lordalex.org/2003_10_12_lordalex_archived.php#106616118244701955

With regards to XForms:
> And if the browser manufacturers adopt Xforms as a standard I might not need DENG anymore.

Yes - that will take some time however, e.g. the Mozilla community is still debating it: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97806#c76

> I can either go without or I can accomplish using the built in features of flash

True - however similar with the CSS example above, you will be significantly faster in providing an XML editing GUI with XForms - just as you're extremely fast at styling markup with CSS - as compared to doing it "by foot" in Flash. The maintainance benefits (e.g. a central stylesheet, not just for HTML, but also for all XML data) not to mention. A third aspect is noteworthy too, since these are standard, some projects do require that, especially if you have a project for a large organization, e.g. a financial services provider or government. For example, here is a UK-wide Life Insurance vertical: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-forms/2003Oct/0029.html

Tiki: > I mean Flash 7 pro + DENG is twice the cost of my Flash Pro upgrade, which is taking a lot of developers by suprise right now($400 upgrade, sheesh!)

Now to the price - perhaps the most important concern I gather from your comments. Well, in this case I think the fairest thing to say would be: what are you willing to pay? Is it the magic 200 border? Note that we currently offer DENG for 199 EUR to "non-profit, educational & DENG Beta participants license" - a price e.g. DENG Beta participants did find attractive.

Another possibility would be to bundle a printed copy of O'Reilly's XForms book (A $29.95 US value): http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/xforms/

- Sebastian