AJAX
Ok, but ARGON's not going to be implemented for years, and the user interface stuff is right at the back of the priority list, since I think it'll take off as a backend server development platform like Java much more easily than as a GUI system. So what good is all that?
Well, I reckon the same idea can be applied to the normal Web. My idea is thus:
- An HTML web page with an embedded AJAX, Flash, or whatnot application should have a <link rel="backend" href="..."> element.
- This should point to a file describing the backend server and what services it provides.
- This would contain of a list of GET URLs, each specifying the parameter names, their types, and a human-readable description of what each is all about.
- It would also contain a list of POST URLs, each again specifying all the relevant information.
- Finally, and optionally, it could contain the name of a "session ID" parameter to be transparently passed in with all requests to this backend, and a URL we can GET to obtain a fresh session ID, and optionally a pointer to the POST URL that handles logins
That way, user's browsers could provide a minimal automatic interface to an application.
