What Is
Future Friendly?
whoami
Past 13 Years of Websites...
Client Sends Request →
Full Response Comes Back ←
AJAX
MVC Frameworks à la Ruby on Rails
Realtime Frameworks via WebSockets
Where Are We Today?
The Desktop Web is Thriving
Google Docs/Drive
Angry Birds
Ok Go Music Video
Awesome
What About Mobile?
Mobile Web is not nearly as robust as the desktop
However...
Soon it will be...
However...
Mobile is not just
the web.
Let me say that again.
Mobile is not just
the web.
Flurry
Nielsen
Keynote Competitive Research
Mobile is bringing about new types of computing
Action Driven Computing
Casual Computing
Tablets
85% of US tablet owners use their tablets while watching TV
Forrester Research
Nielsen
Undeniable Trend
Tablet Shipments now 52.5% of PC Shipments
IDC
Smart TVs
Digital Signage
IHS iSuppli Market Research
Digital signs + smartphones = two-way communication for marketers, merchants and brands to consumers.
In-Store Kiosks
Deloitte
Smart Appliances
Wearables
The new wrist devices won't replace smartphones. Instead they will extend smartphones' functionality and utility by connecting to them.
Accessories that provide additional value to devices and a better user experience can help to improve levels of satisfaction and brand loyalty, as well as provide additional revenue sources.
Strategy Analytics
If you add up all the smartphones and the tablets and the digital televisions and the PCs... and cast your eye forward a few years we see a large opportunity of perhaps 3 billion to 4 billion units per annum, but we see an embedded market that's maybe 30 billion to 40 billion units per annum, and so that's where we get the factor ten.
TL;DR
ARM CEO:
Embedded has 10x
market potential of mobile
Mobile World Live
Devices Not Invented Yet!
Your software should not be bound solely to the browser.
It should favor the browser, but be flexible for any type of client.
It should be...
Client-Agnostic
But How?
Service Oriented Architecture
(SOA)
SOA Recipe
- Loosely Coupled Software Components (Services)
Services are autonomous, stateless, with fully documented interfaces, and separate from the cross-cutting concerns of the implementation.
This makes testing much easier.
SOA Recipe
- Loosely Coupled Software Components (Services)
- RESTful (or REST-like)
- API for Every Feature
- Use JSON, not XML
It should be noted that a client may not always have a UI. It may be another process or another service requesting information.
The onus is on the requesting client
to consume and display (or use) that
response data in a meaningful fashion.
Exposing Services
- Choose a platform that is conducive to
simple, RESTful APIs - node.js (my preference)
- Make sure your interfaces do not change.
Easier said than done. - Send JSON
Consuming Services
- Will Be Client-specific
(Native Android app vs Mobile Web Site) - Expect and Consume JSON
- Cache data locally
DON'T SHIP THE UI
IN YOUR RESPONSE
If you do, you will fail going forward.
Decouple content layer
from presentation layer
Assuming that a browser is on the other end is a losing proposition.
A browser is a single endpoint, not every endpoint.
The desktop web environment
assumes a fixed, static context.
At a desk, QWERTY keyboard.
In reality, this is a shrinking market.
Asymco
Final Thought
You, your code and your business need to support an ever-changing landscape of internet-capable devices.