Paisley, a Curl customer, presented at the Burton Group's annual Catalyst conference yesterday to a large audience.
Prior to that presentation, Burton Group analyst Kirk Knoernschild had a session on the new concept of a "Fit Client" - a combination of the qualities of the thick client (Client-Server)) and the thin client (HTML/HTTP). He enumerated the advantages of both - thick clients brought rich user interface, heavy processing, and stateful applications; and thin clients brought broad reach, high adoption, wide distribution, interoperability, and good management. The "Fit client" encompasses all these characteristics, may not be to the fullest extent to start with. But characteristics like rich UXP (user experience), stateful applications, online/offline, OS integration, central management, and ubiquity will be the hallmark for fit clients.
Kirk further showed a comparison of available platforms under the title "Next Generation UXP - The Enterprise". He compared seven platforms under five categories (offline, browser-free, cross-platform, desktop interface, and mobility). The seven platforms were - Adobe AIR, Silverlight, Java FX, Google Gears, Curl, Slingshot, and Mozilla Prism. Curl got the best score of all with "Yes" in four out of five categories except in mobility. For example, Silverlight scored poorly. Adobe AIR came next to Curl with Linux support in alpha level. Java FX from Sun had "promised" under each category which brought a lot of laughter from the audience. Google Gears, for example, can not run outside the browser, nor does it have many desktop properties.
His example was a good follow-up to the thesis of the "Fit Client" for enterprise RIA.
