Saturday, November 08, 2008
Server and client. And client. And client. And client. And client.
...hopefully, you're getting the picture. One of the things that makes web development (a relative term in today's lexicon, to be sure) so demanding is the sheer number of platforms that we've got to at least consider, if not fully dive into when developing online services.
In the past it the major questions used to be format-based: text or multimedia? QuickTime, WMV or Flash Video? Then our collective intelligence became access-driven, wanting to timeshift and placeshift just about everything, really leaning hard on on-demand content. Now, it's all about spanning open data across as many calling clients as possible.
Engineers like the challenge of making information relavant to yet another type of device. Marketers see the benefit in having multiple stages to monetize. Developers like the competitiveness or total exposure.
For example, I'm sketching out the distribution scheme for a new automated social networking event reminder system that's primarily web-based, but accessible from a great variety of other devices and platforms. Here's the platforms I'm now looking at building out and supporting:
- World Wide Web
- RSS
- Mobile
- Texting
- RIA
- Instant messaging
- API
- Widgets (JavaScript and/or Flash)
- Firefox extensions
Pretty daunting, huh? And although the majority of the platforms are derived from the HTML/CSS/JavaScript "stack" (with the exception of IM and possibly widgets), this is the world in which we web developers live. That's why it's so challenging to set up a site these days. Anything less than the above and you're toast. Just imagine a user getting onto your service and thinking how cool it is, and then cursing your name when he can't get to it from her iPhone. Or she can't integrate it with her Facebook account. Or it won't load properly on her PSP. Get it?
Web 2.0 jockeys are quick take the "that's why releasing a solid API is so important" defense. And to some degree, this has a lot of merit. Let people out there extend your core service by building an infinite number of utilities around your core product. It worked nicely for del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr and YouTube.
But I'm of the mindset that also building a suite of cross-platform, multimedia, multidevice services is critical, regardless if you're talking about a gig out of someone garage or across the enterprise.
Give it some thought.
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