Take a deep breath. I’m planning to get technical today. Google I/O is already few weeks behind us. Nevertheless, because of my working schedule, I’m just starting to scratch the surface of presentations and news that were presented there. Web development and specifically browser development is one the drives my special interest. Lately, this interest came as a result of my focus on user experience. The demands of customers these days are skyrocketing. Enterprise software developers are forced to compete with user experience created by top consumer web companies.
The following article caught my special attention – Google Believes web components are the future of web development. Take time and read the article. In a nutshell, it speaks about development based on Web Components. It is about how we will potentially develop web applications in the future. For those who is long time in the development, it is about the same fundamental idea of reusable components that moves to the browser these days.
Essentially, Web Components give developers an easier way to create web sites and recyclable widgets on these sites with the help of the HTML, CSS and JavaScript they already know. Web Components help developer encapsulate they HTML, CSS and JavaScript so it doesn’t interfere with the rest of the page and the page doesn’t interfere with it.
The best way to understand it is to see an example. The following short video will give you some ideas about web components can be used.
I found this shadow DOM visualizer very interesting, especially in context of thinking of variety of PLM applications that rely on structural representation of data with lots of additional contextual information. Product configurations, Bill of Materials, Design Assemblies… you name it.
What is my conclusion? The time enterprise vendors were able to get a discount on less modern look and feel as well as questionable user experience is gone. The demand of customers is driven by mobile apps and Chrome browser experience. PLM vendors will have to apply newest technologies to develop an appropriate browser experience sooner than later. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
