On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Karsten Hilbert wrote: > > > > In the meantime, I wonder what are the critical differences that > > > > impede your efficiency? > > > A browser cannot access card readers unless quite > > > sophisticated add-on code is installed locally. > > > > What about USB-accessible cards? Most operating systems have built-in > > support to read from these. > And the browser accesses these, uhm, like, how ?
Karsten, File upload dialog? ... > > > Then, why not install a "conventional" application if one has > > > to install code locally anyways ? > > 1) It remains easier to install/upgrade a few new web-browsers than all > > the desktop (conventional) applications. > > > 2) It becomes increasingly unnecessary to install additional code locally > > as web-browsers incorporate additional functionalities. > > Which is, what, Good(tm) ? I see your point. Actually, I do think it is good to have increasingly capable (and complex) web-browsers. This is the same as having increasingly complex operating systems. The reason why this trend is Good(tm) is that the applications can become increasingly simple by capitalizing on increasingly complex infrastructure underneath. ... > > Desktop applications can just as easily (if not even more easily) > > compromise system security. > > Sure, but the user is expected to know that. Contrary to that > the user expects "browsing a site" to be safe (contrary, > again, to what it sometime is). On the other hand, it is easier to build generic tools that put web-browsers inside a secure sandbox than to do the same for diverse varieties of desktop applications. It boils down to web-browsers being a common "application OS" that in turn runs KDE on Linux OS vs. desktop application that run natively on KDE on Linux OS, for example. One could argue the pros and cons of having this extra layer between the user and the hardware for each specific application. At the same time, more capable hardware and web-browsers will continue to shift the balance towards favoring the use of web-browsers for more and more applications. > > Browser-based applications are no panacea. However, it is possible for > > them to approach the behavior of current desktop applications. Note that > > there is a time-lag between having capable browsers and having > > web-applications make use of the features. > > Why would they be called "browser" then ? I suppose it'd be > fair to rename them to "Mozilla-OS" or, perhaps more > appropriate "MozillaDesk". I agree. Hence Microsoft was quite serious about winning the "browser war" a few years ago. > I would then want to install a simple "browser" for browsing. Which begs > the question why there should be two "browsers" on my system. Just as there are reasons why people run both Windows and Linux, I am sure some will find it useful to run multiple web-browsers :-). ... Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
