A: Browser plugins did this 15 years ago on computers that were orders of magnitude slower. Doing this all in the DOM with CSS has a redonkulous overhead.
Whats even worse is that browsers have become these monolithic silo projects that only three or four companies on the planet can develop. They have become much more complex than the actual operating system. I still remember the days when a browser was mainly a layout engine, and all fancy stuff was deferred to plugins. If only we had safe sandboxing technology back then...
B: The benefit of web apps are that you just go to an URL, no installation required. And you get "sync" for free. That's about it.
The downsides are:
- They are slower (or require faster computers) because of added overhead.
- They run in the browser window (although that can actually be nice! I'd like to have native apps in tabs like in my browser sometimes)
- Making them work offline is hard. You have to put all the business logic in JS, and can't rely on the server.
- Accessing local files is hard
- Communication between apps is hard, to impossible. *
In the end you are back to mainframe computing like in the 70s, but with 3D effects.
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*) One of the biggest reasons why Windows was so successful in the enterprise? COM and Automation. You could just slap an Excel spreadsheet onto your VB application, manipulate a Corel draw file from your MFC application, create database applications basically via drag and drop, and so on. There were (are) hundreds of shops selling custom components from shiny buttons to complete business report generators. And of course you could control almost every enterprise app with a little .js or .vbs script. Sure, all that stuff was ugly, unglamourous, and buggy, but it got the work done.
Comments
A: Browser plugins did this 15 years ago on computers that were orders of magnitude slower. Doing this all in the DOM with CSS has a redonkulous overhead.
Whats even worse is that browsers have become these monolithic silo projects that only three or four companies on the planet can develop. They have become much more complex than the actual operating system. I still remember the days when a browser was mainly a layout engine, and all fancy stuff was deferred to plugins. If only we had safe sandboxing technology back then...
B: The benefit of web apps are that you just go to an URL, no installation required. And you get "sync" for free. That's about it.
The downsides are:
- They are slower (or require faster computers) because of added overhead.
- They run in the browser window (although that can actually be nice! I'd like to have native apps in tabs like in my browser sometimes)
- Making them work offline is hard. You have to put all the business logic in JS, and can't rely on the server.
- Accessing local files is hard
- Communication between apps is hard, to impossible. *
In the end you are back to mainframe computing like in the 70s, but with 3D effects.
-----
*) One of the biggest reasons why Windows was so successful in the enterprise? COM and Automation. You could just slap an Excel spreadsheet onto your VB application, manipulate a Corel draw file from your MFC application, create database applications basically via drag and drop, and so on. There were (are) hundreds of shops selling custom components from shiny buttons to complete business report generators. And of course you could control almost every enterprise app with a little .js or .vbs script. Sure, all that stuff was ugly, unglamourous, and buggy, but it got the work done.