Disclaimer: this piece (as well as this blog in general) is personal opinion and not endorsed by or representative of my employer.
I just came back from a conference where I was presenting on Web 2.0. A related discussion around Microsoft’s foray into the Rich Internet Application space ensued, and as part of that discussion, I was sent a link to an interesting Information Week article that talks directly to our discussion. The article talks about MS and Eclipse-based development environments for web applications, and one quote in the article demonstrated one of my major concerns perfectly:
Microsoft also has written server-side extensions to JavaScript to improve the way Ajax apps work on Windows computers, so software written in Atlas can interact with elements of Windows Vista. Specifically, Web apps built with Atlas will be able to interact with Vista’s “gadgets,” miniprograms such as calendars, instant messaging contacts, photo albums, and media-playing software. “We’re looking at other enrichment scenarios where things can pop with Internet Explorer and Windows,” says Brian Goldfarb, a Microsoft product manager for Web tools.
These are exactly the kind of interactions which make the web an environment which is not cross browser or cross platform. What happens if you aren’t running Windows? MS would like it to say “this site requires IE on Windows”, but I don’t believe that is acceptable.
To complicate matters, we are to some degree moving away from the web browser as a container for online applications, and moving towards more desktop-centric applications that are built on web technologies, are updated more like a web application, but have access to local computer resources.
A number of significant questions come to mind:
- What is the best way of creating the desktop-based web app? Is Adobe’s cross browser, cross platform Apollo project the way to go?
- How do we best keep the web as an environment where diversity in platforms can flourish, rather than be locked to a single platform?
- We’ve seen that the web browser is not a good medium for web applications: Forms technology is still antiquated and will take some time before new forms technologies are widely adopted; DHTML controls have to be programmed to accommodate the different run-time environments of each browser; Ajax is really a work-around for functionality which the web was never initially intended for. Is it a good idea to bring web applications out of the browser into an environment to which they are better suited, and leave the web for what it was originally made for: disseminating information?
I wrote on this subject a while back. I believe that the ideal situation will be a new type of browser designed specifically for web applications. The current web browser is designed around the concept of pages, but web applications are moving outside that realm and it’s causing usability difficulties.
http://lab.zeusdesign.net/index.php/archives/34
Good posting, thanks! That mirrors my sentiments exactly. I am really curious to see what comes out of Adobe’s Apollo project. My sense is that it will be like what you describe, although the browser might be the desktop itself.