Simon’s Blog

Tim Bray poses a great question: what kind of desktop apps are here for the long haul, and which will be assimilated into the web browser? I’ve seen CIOs struggle with this question for the last eight years or so. It’s a difficult issue.

Of course, everyone uses browsers now. At one extreme, some CIOs have embraced the browser with a dogmatic “everything in a browser” mentality. At the other, they have been forced to make “web-enabled” versions of all their corporate apps by their users, sometimes against their better judgement.

The truth is, it has always been difficult to create compelling, rich user interfaces by using JavaScript and X/D/HTML. In the 1990s, it used to be almost impossible. As of 2005, it’s just expensive and - to use a technical term - a pain in the butt for serious developers. So, that the browser has succeeded at all as an application platform is a testament to the instrinsic value of the web app: the apps succeed despite the fact that the user interfaces are often poor.

So, what’s my answer to Tim’s question? Well, I don’t think there are any rules. It will depend on the future capabilities of the desktop, and the future capabilities of the web browser. And I wouldn’t bet against the lines between these two categories blurring.

That means, there’s no cateogry of app that couldn’t work well in a future browser, and no category of app that couldn’t work well in a future desktop enivironment.