We’ve been talking about the advantages of Curl for 18 months now. We (the folks at Curl, Inc.) believe its faster, easier to learn, provides more breadth of functionality, has better security, and so on. We talked about Curl in the Enterprise knowing that without a ubiquitous plug-in it would be a hard sell for mass-consumer applications.
Although our message and demos have been convincing and we are growing, I’m not entirely satisfied. Obviously we want everyone using Curl. The question I have is this: Why didn’t you choose Curl?
This is a question for designers, developers, architects and anyone else that considered learning about Curl or developing applications in Curl but then chose a different RIA solution (i.e. Flex, Silverlight, Ajax, Java, etc.)
I want our product to meet the needs of this audience and to do that I’m asking you to tell us what we (Curl, Inc.) need to do to convince you to choose Curl instead of one of the other RIA options.
Don’t be afraid to voice your opinion. Tell it like it is and help us understand what you want out of a RIA platform. While this is not exactly a scientific study, I’m guessing this will be beneficial not just to Curl but the entire community.
I think that actually, not so many things have been told about Curl...By reading your blog, sure I'm going to give it a try...But again, more advertisement and more innovative demos should convince more people to use it...
Just my thoughts...
Blag.
Senior ABAP Consultant - SAP Mentor.
As someone who is new to Curl, I look at the examples, and there isn't anything there that WOW!s me, and I guess I figure if those are the best you have to show, then my time and efforts are better spent with other, more obviously rich technologies.
]]>But apart from that, I looked at some of the demos and frankly they didn't look very slick... especially compared to something like Flex.
]]>1) Player distribution (biggest hurdle and the most obvious)
2) Toolset: Developers want a good drag and drop UI tool combined with a solid code editor (Flex Builder is a great tool... weak compared to Intellij's IDEA product, but still very solid overall; Silverlight is still weak here as it requires TWO tools to use effectively)
3) Component set (Flex is strong here, Silverlight will catch up, but is still weak here... the CURL components on the BI demo are ugly) Aesthetics count in RIAs.
Note that I'm a long time Flex developer so I am biased toward that technology, but I periodically revisit other options to see how far they've come. I tried out the "Free" way to build Silverlight apps today with the Web Express IDE and didn't see a drag and drop UI tool... this made it feel like a 1980's technology
]]>1) People and enterprises prefer to avoid any king of plug-in requierement when posible. Actually and with the new Javascript engines (e.g. Mozilla - Tamarin, Chrome -V8) AJAX applications, the only RIA tecnology that do not requiere plug-ins, are incrising their performace.
2) If enterprises have to include a plug-in in their development they prefer already wide installed ones
3) If the tecnology is open source that is sometimes a key point for enterprises
4) Of course, an IDE is important but the number of components not too much. Unless your components are really very "skinnables", developers usually include their own fancy components into ther Webapps.
In this sense and for big projects, e.g. some Flex/Flash-based components (including the native ones) are avoided because the loose a lot of memory.
Maybe Richard you know better than me what are you covering now.
From my point of view one of the thing that you should express better from Curl to the world (with WOW examples) is that you can include third-party components (HTML, flash, quicktime, java).
In flash-player you can not render HTML (while in AIR is possible with the webkit engine included). That is today a key and a differenciation.
Of course, a graphic designer is neccesary to improve the look-and-feel of the examples ;-)
I dont want new language I have Java Java is GREAT somethink more I dont like JavaFX mutch because its another language instead of this i preffer somethink like XAML/WPF/MXML .
So why I dont use curl - it is not Java or C# or JavaScript.
1. I've never heard of it before.
2. My users have never heard of it.
3. My users definitely don't have it installed.
4. My users (and more importantly, their IT departments) won't want to install yet another runtime. Getting them to upgrade Flash Player is hard enough.
5. It's yet another language and platform for my developers to learn.
6. It's yet another platform for my testers to have to figure out how to do automated tests in.
7. Mobile device support?
Now, Flex/Flash suffer from some of those (especially having to pick up ActionScript which isn't Java or C#, but it is very similar) but there's mitigation there in that there's good server-side support and that everybody and his dog has Flash Player installed.
Curl would have to have *enormous* advantages over Silverlight/Flash/Flex to make me even consider it. As is, I'm not even giving JavaFX a second glance, despite that being allegedly 'familiar'.
Sorry I can't be more positive, but it looks like too little too late. If you can get something *massively* compelling to developers, end users and IT staff in there, you might get some penetration.
I don't use Curl because I don't need to use Curl. The technologies I already use are more than sufficient and there has already been an investment of time and resources spent on learning them. Those technologies are also progressing at a steady rate.
]]>There is just no reason - especially for the enterprise that seems to be your target audience - to even consider Curl. Enterprises are usually "risk averse" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion).
Even if Curl would be a "Flash/Silverlight/Java/AJAX" killing application, people what have to place a huge and risky bet on you. And that is just not what corporations do - even if it would be better for them. Companies sometimes do the wrong thing, just to play it save.
Honest opinion? It is not about the quality of the product. It never really is (think Windows, VHS, McDonalds, american cars, etc). You simply have a wrong business model. Likely too many technology people in your management structure.
]]>I'm sure if I already knew CURL it would have been fine. The price of entry is not cheap. Non trivial working examples for more varied situations would make some of the non-intuitive parts of CURL easier to grasp and thus easier to pick up and use.
]]>I think you may be referring the the cURL Unix open source utility not the Curl RIA platform. I'm basing that assumption on the type of application you wanted to write and the fact that you mentioned "switches and parameters" which is more in keeping with the command line cURL Unix utility than the Curl RIA platform. They are totally different "products". Curl the RIA platform came first. We were not aware of the cURL Unix utility until well after it was established - this causes confusion.
]]>Make a great IDE and top customs possibility and I may use Curl
Be sure I'll follow the project in the future
Sorry for my low english level
1. As few already have pointed, Curl apps looks like 1980s old apps with lacking smooth graphics, transition effects, fading, animations, anti-alishing, etc ...
2. Installation of another RTE with admin previlege, Curl will ve a tough competition against Flex as Flex apps can run with a flash player whcih is present in 99.9 PCs world wide
3. New decision maker will look for WOW kind apps and there is nothing like at www.curl.com
4. Another new language ??? Ohh no
5. Lack of help from web as it has not widely accepted and if you google curl you will be landed at cURL (linux console tool) !
At last can you tell us WHY we will use Curl as a RICH IA language against Flex: A TRUE RICH IA framework.
Thank you
For instance, PureMVC is a relatively popular framework in the AS3 community that works with Flex, Flash and AIR. It is mature, well-documented, extensible and helps developers write loosely-coupled, maintainable code. It's design pattern based, and abstract enough that it's been implemented in 11 languages so far.
There is a PureMVC demo called Employee Admin that has also been ported to many of the supported languages. This helps developers familiar with one of the framework ports become acquainted with another. I didn't know Ruby, but working with the Employee Admin demo for the the Ruby port I was able to get up to speed much easier because the actors' roles, responsibilities and collaborations are the same as they are in the AS3 version.
You can provide developers on other platforms an easier path to to exploration of Curl if they can bring along the familiarity of a framework and methodology that they recognize from their current technology environment.
Also, development houses are regularly being forced to support multiple technologies to survive in today's environment. Many wind up with a Silverlight team doing things one way, a Flex team doing things another way, and a Curl team doing things a third way. PureMVC allows them to service all those platforms and architect things the same way by standardizing on one framework and methodology for client-side, server-side, mobile, desktop and web.
Porting PureMVC has traditionally taken about a weekend, tops. It's just a few classes, really. The availability of a PureMVC Curl port would be one more avenue for people to find out what Curl has to offer.
If someone familiar with Curl would like to help by building such a bridge, have a look at http://PureMVC.org, or contact me directly.
Cheers,
-=Cliff>