Symphonious

A new release of Java, a new wave of people saying they won't buy Macs unless Apple get their Java update now, dammit now! John O'Conner joins the chorus. Of course, there's no mention of why he needs Java 6 instead of Java 5, just that he has to be up to date with the very latest. Last time round at least people were eager to use generics and other new language features, but there's really not that much that changed in Java 6 outside of a few specific cases.

Seriously folks, the vast, vast majority of Java developers aren't using Java 6 and won't be for quite some time. I know it's fun to play around on the bleeding edge but can we just stop and look at what's actually best for our projects?

On the plus side, by the time we do this with Java 7 the answer will be simple - it's opensource, port it yourself. Then maybe people will appreciate how difficult porting a JVM to a new processor architecture and OS and understand how long it takes.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the best syntax you can use for your wiki is HTML, or probably better XHTML. It's a defined standard with a wide range of excellent WYSIWYG editors, it's well known, very portable and saves you from having to write a converter to display your wiki pages.

David Van Couvering is the latest to complain about incompatible wiki syntax and he's certainly not alone in his frustrations. People don't want to have to learn yet another crazy wiki syntax, they want an intuitive interface that just lets them write their content. HTML provides far more flexibility than any wiki syntax, particularly around tables, which makes presenting data a lot easier.

The only real drawback of HTML I've seen is if someone needs to go outside of what the WYSIWYG editor can do, or if they're using an exceptionally unusual browser that the editor doesn't support, they are confronted by all those angle brackets. Of course, if people need to go beyond wiki syntax they just plain can't and wiki syntax isn't really that much better.

The best answer I can provide to that is to pick an editor that supports as many browsers as possible and with a good source view. Most editors have a fair bit of work to do on their source view because most users don't use it. Despite that, I'm beginning to think it may be an advantage to have a top notch source view just to counter the argument that HTML source looks ugly compared to wiki syntax. If we can improve the source editor to the point where it's a joy to use, we might get more wikis to start using HTML instead of inventing another non-standard syntax that locks it's users in.

See also: Wiki Syntax Considered Harmful

From the Creating Passionate Users blog:

Do you know what the "comma-stupid" phrase is for your product or service? In other words, do you know what is most meaningful for your users? Because whatever that word or phrase is (i.e. the part that comes before the ", stupid!"), it should be driving everything from product development to documentation to support and marketing.

More and more I'm seeing people value the editor in a system over anything else. When Rob joined Ephox he switched to WordPress because among other things:

Given that AJ has done the work of making Edit Live with WordPress, I can use a real editor.

At Lotusphere, Ephox's IWWCM integration took out the Best in Lotusphere Showcase award which is exciting in itself, but as Damien comments:

To me it signals realization of the importance of rich word processing applications for the web and how these applications can make the task of getting content online so much easier.

 Remember too, that IWWCM comes with a WYSIWYG editor, so the users weren't getting excited about not having to learn crufty formatting syntax - they were getting excited because their editing experience was improving so much that suddenly instead of fighting the program they were in flow. Instead of spending their days trying to work out how to make the editor behave, they were kicking ass.

So with all this user generated content flowing around Web 2.0 and all of us being Time people of the year, when are the vast majority of tools going to actually provide a kick-ass editing experience for their users?

I was quite interested in a few of the new features listed for WordPress 2.1, since they look like they could be quite useful to build into the plugin I have to use EditLive! as the editor for posts. In particular

• Image and thumbnail API allows for richer media plugins

sounds very interesting, since I've not gotten around to doing anything much with images and EditLive! has a lot of support for media that is currently going to waste. Sadly, browsing through the WordPress documentation lists nothing about how to actually go about using these wonderful new APIs. In fact, it doesn't mention them at all - it seems the documentation is still for the 2.0 release.

I'm sure there's someone out there that knows where to start looking for these things, and I'm sure I could work it out if I invested enough time, but why should I? Why should I waste my time helping to build plugins for WordPress if the developers, who are running a business based on the product, can't be bothered even writing down some brief details about what the new APIs allow, let alone how to use them.

I hate writing documentation as much as the next developer, but we need to start thinking about our users a little instead of just expecting them to waste their time working it out. In the end it means more users and happier users of our products and thus more money for the developers, whether it be directly via sales or indirectly via advertising, partnerships or whatever way the business' bills are paid.

In What does No Java on the iPhone Mean? (and the follow up More on Java and the Mac) James Duncan Davidson looks at why Apple haven't added Java support to the iPhone. In particular he claims there's no killer application made with Java. In the strictest sense, that's probably true, but there is a killer category of applications which are almost exclusively made with Java - games for mobile phones.

It's this popularity of Java in the mobile phone world that makes the lack of Java on the iPhone seem so odd to me. I can understand Apple wanting to have complete control over the iPhone interface, and I'll concede that most of the existing games for mobile phones probably wouldn't translate very well to the keypadless iPhone, but it will be interesting to see if Apple can satisfy the great desire for cool little mobile games that today's teenagers, a key market segment for the iPhone, without leveraging the existing knowledge mobile games developers have in Java. If the iPhone takes off it won't be a problem, similar to how there are a huge range of iPod specific accessories, there will be - if and when Apple make it possible - a huge range of iPhone specific games and add-ons.

I'll be watching with a fair bit of interest to see how much this lack of games impacts the iPhone's adoption rate. Certainly the people who are looking at it now won't care too much - they're all Apple fans and miscellaneous geeks. When it goes to market and we start hearing the reviews from teenagers who care about such things.

The other part that may be interesting is what happens to the ring tone market as more and more phones use standard MP3s for the ring tone and make it easy to load them onto the phone. The iPhone should nail this and Nokia and Sony-Ericsson are pushing their MP3 player capabilities. Nokia's even going so far as to note how easy it is to get music onto the phone in their Australian marketing.

Interesting times ahead…