Ben Poole: Portals getting Eclipsed

EclipseCon logo (running in California from 2 - 5 February 2004) OK, so we’ve taken a look at Workplace. Next! ;-)

What about the rich client platform (RCP)? (Which personally I find far more compelling than bloody portals). An interesting snippet of information from EclipseCon posted by Ed Burnette can be found here: We’re following the leader, the leader, the leader.

… for example the Lotus Workplace Client technology merges portal technology with rich clients using “RCPML”, a rich client markup language.

As others would have it, this appears to be a variation on XUL (XML User Interface Language) as found in Mozilla and company. So whaddya reckon?

I agree. A predictable, transparent and powerful rich client that allows real control but also has gnarly tools to speed up development (swing pfff gggh) is exactly what the doctor ordered. Exposing that functionality hand-in-hand with a fairly simple but powerful language like Java almost gets me excited about Lotus' future direction. Assuming they can get their heads away from this misguided notion of chaining everyone to monster portal servers dishing out the goodies.

After feeling a bit despondent over the past few years seeing my non-web skills make me a rarer creature, I'm beginning to sense that getting cosy with Eclipse and learning what it's capable of doing might just make very good career sense over the next few years…Colin Pretorius #
Well, well, well I'm not as out-on-a-limb as I think I am …. last month this is exactly what I was hoping IBM would do :-)

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/46dom.nsf/0/9be5ba0bb989791985256e2100159fa9

I followed the links you refer to Ben, but they seem pretty scrappy on details.

Bernard Devlin#