Atlas
My favorite things about web development and technology in general are how fast it progresses and all the interesting ideas and views that ultimately direct where we’re going in the future.
The guys at 280 North, whom have made some of the best web based software, announced Atlas at last year’s FOWA. I was off the wall excited then to be seeing how far they’re taking what you can do in the browser. Building a web application in the cloud with a gorgeous drag and drop interface very much inspired by Apple’s Interface Builder (which is no surprise as their projects are powered by Cappuccino, a port of the Cocoa framework to Javascript). It was brilliant!
A year went by and I hadn’t heard much buzz about Atlas. I signed up for the email list, never received any news. I was a little disappointed to find that the technology wasn’t blowing up as I had imagined it would. Eventually I gave it up for dead and figured it was vaporware or at least progressing very slowly. I was very excited to find this morning that they posted the 280 North presentation from this year’s FOWA, yet again focusing on Atlas! It isn’t dead after all! While developing Atlas they found that users weren’t too keen on going all in with web based applications. In the presentation, Francisco likens it to people who use the DVD+VHS combo players. So they did what any good development team/company does in this field and quickly adapted to what their users were really asking for. Their focus now is building applications that run on both the web and desktop while using the same code base. From what I saw in the video it works very well!
This time around they’ve announced that a public beta will be available in November, and when released, Atlas will only cost 20 bucks!
While this isn’t for everyone, and is very much a down-the-road piece of technology, it is a great example of bridging the gap between desktop software and the cloud.
