Sproutcore is Cocoa for the web, Apple’s Flash killer from WWDC
Flash pages have been the bane of many a web surfer’s existence for ages. Apple may have finally found a way to toss Flash into the rubbish bin of web history with the new project Sproutcore framework, bringing Cocoa to the web.
Tucked away in a boring sounding WWDC session called “Building Native Look-and-Feel Web Applications Using SproutCore”, Apple quietly revealed one of the biggest announcements to come out of WWDC this year, a possible revolution against the much despised Flash.
It’s a shame Apple didn’t put this in the keynote. Far more interesting than half the applications “revealed” during the keynote and much more innovative than the iPhone, Sproutcore has my full attention.
In a case of a marketing department not taking full advantage of the uniqueness of a product (or more likely not understanding the implications of a product), the copy used to tout the session came off as dry:
“SproutCore is an open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications. Learn how to combine SproutCore with HTML5’s standard offline data storage technologies to deliver a first-class user experience and exceptional performance in your web application.”
Had I been fortunate enough to attend WWDC, I would have possibly skipped that session, and that would have been my loss. I’m wondering how many others made the same decision because the product was made to sound so run of the mill?
What can Sproutcore do? Chances are, if you use .Mac’s Web Gallery you have already seen it in limited action. Web Gallery was made using the Sproutcore framework. The main benefit to Sproutcore implementation lies in its scale, however.
Javascript is a highly under utilized programming language that is already widely available across multiple browser and mobile browser platforms. Currently Javascript is used for making animations, games and other minimal nuggets online.
Sproutcore is a framework that makes it possible to deploy actual, usuable, fully functional applications over the web. This means that applications developed using Sproutcore automatically have the Javascript audience to launch to, which brings huge opportunities to the average application launch.
This development of Sproutcore as a viable alternative to Flash goes hand in hand with Jobs disdain for Flash in general. It also meshes with comments he has made in the past regarding the use of Flash on mobile devices like the iPhone. Sproutcore offers a near-instant deployment option for browsers on desktops and laptops, but also for mobile browsers.
The appealing thing about applications built using Sproutcore are how similar in function and use they are to Cocoa desktop applications. If you have used a Mac in recent years, you will immediately know what I’m talking about – sleek, simple, reliable applications.
I’m excited about this new Sproutcore framework. If you are a developer for the Mac or iPhone you should be excited also, as it expands your programming and deployment horizons exponentially. For more details on the development aspect of Sproutcore, visit this link for an excellent write up of its functionality.
(Images courtesy of Sproutcore.com)
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June 18th, 2008
Flash has it’s drawbacks, but trading one proprietary interface with another doesn’t excite me. Look at the excellence of Quicktime (rolls eyes).
June 26th, 2008
Ken, sproutcore is an open-source abstraction of a standardized programming language (javascript). There is nothing proprietary here, and its not even something Apple came up with.
June 26th, 2008
Another thing – the awesome thing about the iPhone is that almost all the technologies it supports out-of-the-box – H.264/MPEG-4 video, JavaScript, CSS, all of these are non-proprietary. In fact, I’d have to say that almost all of Apple’s moves in the last 5 years have been AWAY from anything proprietary.
July 24th, 2009
Sproutcore sounds great for web applications but there is one industry that seems to be getting ignored by all but the Flash community and that is the 360 Virtual Tour industry.
Apple ignited the Virtual Tour industry with Quicktime VR technology then eventually all but abandoned us by halting development of QTVR features. Yes QTVR works as a simple VR viewer but all you can do functionality wise is create hotspots to other VRs. Where are the smooth transitions between VRs? how about animated hotspots? what about features like auto pan, tilt and zoom via XML configuration? Where are the onClick, onLoad events etc. Why doesn’t it have it’s own XML parameter language?
Java filled a hole for a while and worked well initially but occasionally crashed IE6.
However now the VR world has been taken in hand by cottage industries and the open source community who are developing incredible flash swf based VR technology and I seriously think Sproutcore would struggle using it’s JavaScript frameworks to render full screen VR based animation smoothly like Flash does.
If it can be developed to the same level as the Flash based code and be cross platform independant like Flash is to the extent that it works the same on all browsers then that’s fine, but in my opinion a prolific, compiled plug-in controlled by XML files that loads either images or QTVRs is the best way to go for this type of specialist multimedia and so far the Flash based offerings have proven to be the most impressive way of doing this.
So saying bye bye to Flash totally is a terrible idea for many and will knock the VR industry back years.
Think about this before proclaiming that Sproutcore will do away with the need for Flash please.