Hello all! I’m Andrew Tillman, a new addition to CRT. I’ve been here for a little over a 2 months and Keith told me that to get a Blogger ribbon here at midyear I need to write a blog post. Please bear with me, as this is my first blog post….ever.
The current topic I have on my mind is the debate over desktop applications vs. web-based applications. It seems that as the technologies that have driven the resurgence of internet companies (aka Web 2.0) improves, that web based applications are becoming more and more viable. Google is the most well known of these companies and offers a full range of web-based applications such as Gmail, GCal and many others. It seems that not a day goes by that Google doesn’t create or acquire a new way of doing online what was once done solely by desktop applications. Is the desktop going to evolve into a dumb terminal that solely provides internet access? Or is there another approach that can be taken?
The desktop application has several advantages; offline access, better user interface and integration with other desktop applications. However having all you data on one computer is asking for a hard drive failure and can be annoying when you need to get to you data/applications but don’t have access to your computer. Web applications address a lot of these short comings; they can be used anywhere, you don’t need to worry about hard drive failure etc, but you are hosed of you don’t have internet access. There is also the concern of having your data solely in the hands of another company.
I think in the end I prefer what I call a hybrid solutions. Hybrid solutions are ones that store the data on a server on the internet, but allow access to it through both desktop applications and a web interfaces. I get the advantages of a desktop applications; offline access, better interface and integration with other applications. I also get the advantages of an web application; access from anywhere computer, data sharing between multiple computers and easy recovery of data after a hard drive failure. Also, since the data is stored locally as well as remotely I still have my data available to me if my service provider experiences a catastrophic failure. The biggest drawbacks to a hybrid solution is that it is more complex and if you have privacy concerns about someone like Google having access to your data they are still not addressed by the hybrid solution.
To that end I use Fastmail for my personal email, they have IMAP access as well as a very good web mail client. I use Spanning Sync to sync my Google calendar with my Mac’s iCal. I use del.icio.us even though it doesn’t quite qualify, however if I cannot get to the internet, cannot use my bookmarks anyway. I am currently looking for a similar server for my address book as well as one for iPhoto, and iTunes (the size of the files involved make this more problematic). I have also started to look into getting the Vienna news reader integrate with Google Reader.
How do you address this issue? Are you solely desktop, all web apps or somewhere in between?
In the next generation of Firefox (or via things like the dojo API) you’ll be able to do offline-enabled webapps. I think its heading more towards your hybrid model, but it will still be in the browser.
The other thing I thought of is that I can get to my del.icio.us bookmarks offline. The newest del.icio.us Add-On for Firefox keeps a local mirror of the bookmarks for quick searching. It works really well.
I forgot about that plugin, since I don’t use Firefox. I’d love it if Camino had a way to use Firefox plugins.
… all this and not a mention of Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform? *cough*bias*cough*
-Matt
There are many advocates for Fastmail but if you need telephone support (like me) and you are not really tech savvoy, good luck. What’s your thoughts on Microsoft server exchange for e-mail to address the desktop/Web access/storage issue? Hope that makes sense.
Dave,
Just wanted to clarify. Are you saying that Fastmail has bad phone support or no phone support? I’ve never had to use their support so I wouldn’t know. There are other more professinally minded email providers out there that do what Fastmail does (and more usually).
Exchange can do the hybrid model, when it is paired with Outlook that’s pretty much how it operates. But you have to use Outlook to make that work (Evolution sometimes works) Just focusing on email, Exchange can be pair with other clients through IMAP, but it’s IMAP implementation isn’t very good. Also it’s webclient is very cluncky if you are using a browser other than IE. So, if you are an all MS shop, Exchange will server most of your needs in this area, otherwise it becomes a huge pain in the ass. In this I can speak from experience.
Matt,
I don’t think Andrew intended any bias, this is what has been on his mind.
But now that you mention silverlight, here’s a few problems with it: 1) No non-Mac/non-Windows version. (Okay, that’s a bias) 2) for now, its just a supercharged flash, and that’s somewhat outside this discussion. At least to me.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/112182/mono-shines-microsofts-silverlight-on-linux.html
Beyond that, the relevance is that Silverlight promises to deliver online/offline functionality natively (as Andrew described), with its own design for trusted non-volatile storage.
-Matt
Matt, I might need to take a deep look silverlight based on the fact that ruby was announced as a language for it. My bias is showing again.
Martin Fowler brought me that info at http://martinfowler.com/bliki/RubyMicrosoft.html