Internet Applications?
Posted by Doug Mon, 20 Jan 2003 18:00:00 GMT
Does it make sense to have a single All-In-One Internet application? Microsoft has the whole Outlook/IE thing. It has your calendar, todo list, email, web browsing, and contact list. It’s currently lacking an IM client. Apple has their iLife poised as the “digital hub” integrating all your digital accessories, your calendar, web browsing, and IM (plus Applescript to extend it as you wish). Mozilla is doing something similar. It has browsing, email, IRC chat and (it think IM), address book, and work is being done on the calendar/todo list. I guess it makes sense. I come from an Emacs background. Everything is in Xemacs. Emacs is the first and foremost all-in-one application. I do all my programming, compiling, debugging, email, address book, web browsing, calendar and todo list, Instant Messaging, IRC, and even word processing (via LaTeX?) in emacs. In fact, it’s more of an application framework that happens to come with text editing. But what about the “Unix way”, small apps doing one thing really well working together? I’m not sure I can reconcile those two: emacs and unix. I like having everything in emacs because that means I only have to learn one set of keystrokes for all my editing, navigation, and such. There is only one set of preferences to worry about. Also, when I write some handy little function that extends emacs in one area, it’s pretty much available wherever I am in emacs. I guess in an ideal world, all of the common desktop apps would be separate packages. Each one focusing on one specific task and doing it well. The problem is that desktop apps rarely live in a vacuum. There is often a desire to share data between apps (I’m not really talking about wanting to put a spread-sheet in your memo either). It makes sense to only have one address book. Your contact’s email and IM should be stored in one place (along with the on-line version of their calendar). There are other examples of data that needs to be shared (preferences are the other thing that comes to mind). Is one large monolithic application the only way to do this? If you know of a better way, email me at doug@lathi.net
