Question

I’ve been researching on building web applications in a true client-server fashion.

This type of architecture basically consists of :

• A thin server, merely a headless api that :

  • handles security concerns

  • processes core business logic

  • provides data persistence

• A fat client, with a desktop-like design that :

  • caches data, and makes offline use possible

  • has gui-templating and rendering capabilities

  • holds and processes non-critical business logic

However, at first sight such an architecture wouldn’t play nice with how the web works today :

1. poor or no possible fallback when javascript isn’t available (2% of user-agents nowadays, am I right ?)

   • accessibility concerns (I’m kinda clueless here)

   • SEO concerns, cloacking is an option but that means one should provide some server-side html rendering, and making that content relevent could be tricky

Anything else I’m missing ?
Which approach would you take to work around those issues ?

Answer 1

• It’s either JavaScript or Flex (with JS being preferable). And those 2% can safely be ignored in my opinion
• Accessibility – Check this, it is still in progress, but worth taking a look.
• Search engines index content. You are going to write an application, which focuses on functionality, not content. You can have an opening plain-html screen, which to be indexed.