First announced last year at the runrevlive'08 conference in Las Vegas, the RunRev team has unveiled the first public alpha of their revWeb browser plug-in - the easiest way to create RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) for use on Mac, Windows and Linux. [click here to read the press release]
And to top it off, the revMedia toolkit will be absolutely free. No longer do you have to cobble together an AJAX-based RIA using JavaScript in the browser and PHP or something else on the back-end; you can stop wondering why the Flash designer tool just doesn't think like you and me; gone are the days of pondering if Microsoft is going to cripple Silverlight on other platforms; and you don't even have to place bets on whether or not JavaFX is really such a splendid idea from server-focused Sun (the beleaguered company that is soon-to-be-gobbled-up-by-Oracle, if you're not keeping tabs on that platform).
This is it: start of with revMedia, and deploy to the web; move up to revStudio when you need to build desktop applications that are native for each platform and don't require a 50 MB runtime download; and move up again to revEnterprise when you need Oracle or SSL; and when you need easy hosting that uses the exact same language to create dynamic websites, On-Rev is your platform of choice.
To be frank, I've always expressed my dismay regarding browsers as a deployment platform for 'real' business applications. Maybe if XUL had taken off, building a feature-rich application running inside a browser would have made more sense. But including miles and miles of JavaScript to try and mimick a desktop app, that was clearly an impressive workaround, but still a hobbled experience.
So I'm glad to see that the Revolution has hit the web, and we'll see a renaissance of good ol' HyperCard: easy to program and easy to run. Keep up the good work, RunRev team!
