> Fabrizio, in theory you are right. > > Practically speaking, webapps beat desktop apps almost all > the time in usability. > > They are far easier to install and keep up to date, they > get the internet-enabled thing right whereas most desktop > based apps don't (I'm talking about applications that > integrate networking features such as connecting to > friends, not that something 'runs on teh interwebs', > that's kind of a given for webapps, and either irrelevant > or a bad thing, as it means you're dependent on a > connection!), they tend to be far more usable by people > with accessibility issues than desktop apps. They tend to > crash less. They tend to look better. They tend to be > easier to write.
This largely depends on other factors. For instance, let me enumerate a few desktop applications I'm using: Keynote, iMovie, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop. They are excellent applications, look very elegant, are perfectly usable, I can hardly recall a crash. None is web based: but their makers, Adobe and Apple, have got a lot of commitment and experience on usability, elegance and robustness. It's mostly a thing of culture: for instance, Apple has been able to build a culture-compatible ecosystem with other small corporates able to do the same (e.g, back to the app I routinely use, Omnigraffle is a fantastic little piece of graphic designer, made by a small company). You're right for the installation thing - that's clearly a plus on the usability side, even though you install once and run many times, so I find a bit less relevant (unless is a showstopper). Yet, it's not a perfect thing since it's still easy to find stuff that doesn't work with Firefox or Safari. For the connectivity with friends class of applications, I can't speak - I don't use any technology for that, since I connect to friends personally and consider FaceBook and co. totally useless, so I don't know what advanced stuff you can do with them. In my limited knowledge, I consider them more dynamic web sites than web applications, and I don't have any objection in using HTTP / HTML / etc with web sites. If somebody is interested in how I differentiate between web site and application, it would be an interesting topic. A few months ago there has been an interesting discussion in a mailing list grouping together people interested in RIAs with multiple technologies (all the most important) and while most of people agreed about such a differentiation, it has been impossible do define it formally. My take is that the difference is in purpose: precisely whether the thing has been primarily meant as a communication channel among people or not. But it's not exhaustive as I can think of exceptions. -- f.g. -- Fabrizio Giudici, Ph.D. - Java Architect, Project Manager Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/blog [email protected] - mobile: +39 348.150.6941 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
