Dev::Blog

It looks like mobile data is officially dead in Canada, at least if a recent survey of pricing plans are any indication.  A while back, you could get an unlimited data plan for $100/month, which was a lot, but at least it was an option.  Now, however, all three carriers have added a cap on data transfers of 250 megs a month.  Rogers’ is 200 megs.  That might be more than enough for a BlackBerry, but come on, don’t insult your customers by calling it a PC Card plan…

In other news, Toronto Hydro says they’ll have their downtown wifi network rolling out on September 7th, so figure roaming connectivity in the core by Hallowe’en.  As other companies follow suit, hopefully this will do something to disrupt the carriers.

I keep meaning to get more into AJAX, but then I figure I’ve got to go and get me some cool “transaction in progress” graphics that all seem to look like stuff from the Apple desktop.  Well now I’m out of excuses, thanks to Ajaxload.  The service lets you pick a few options and generates an animated graphic for you on the spot.  Now I’ll just have to admit I’m too busy watching Fraggle Rock to get on with coding…  (via The Farm)

Brent wrote about his upcoming changes to NetNewsWire’s Combined View, which apparently uses Javascript to communicate between the application and the web view.  I know next to nothing about Cocoa, but at my old job I used to rely heavily on so-called hybrid applications that embedded web functionality in a desktop client, and his post stirred up a lot of old memories.

I’m really suprised that we aren’t seeing more hybrd applications out there.  Sure, there are  some notable ones (I use the Yahoo Music Engine every day, for example), but in the age of “Web 2.0″ the focus seems to be on pure web plays.  They’re making great strides, and there are obvious advantages to being able to work on any modern browser, but how many times is the average person at a computer that’s not their own?  I’d submit that hybrid apps are easier to create, maintain, and version.

Again, I know nothing about Cocoa, but if you’re curious, the in the Windows/IE world you’d use Javascript’s window.external combined with IDocHostUIHandler and GetExternal to talk to the application (details here).  It’s a handy trick for “I can’t do that in a browser” kind of stuff.  We used to use it a lot for inter-app communication and linking with legacy data access modules.
Now, going back to something like an RSS reader, which can’t exist without the internet at come point to get feeds, that’s a kind of hybrid app already, but with awesome caching skills.  Kudos to Brent for picking up the other side of the puzzle.