Why We Need Web Apps on the Desktop
Yesterday on this blog Sarah Perez wondered how important is offline access for web apps? Her conclusion was that offline access is important now, but not as important as it once was. And that with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access, it is growing less important every day. I won't dispute that, but there is an important distinction to be made between offline access to web apps (as Google Gears provides) and desktop access to web apps (as Mozilla's Prism and Adobe's AIR provide). The latter is a very important step in the evolution of web apps.
There are two main reasons for why desktop access for web apps is important:
- It will actually help make web apps more popular.
- Running a ton of apps in the browser at once is a pain.
The Desktop is the Key to Making Web Apps Mainstream
As I commented in Sarah's post yesterday, for those of us who read blogs like ReadWriteWeb, using web apps has become second nature. Putting data in the cloud makes sense, and the thought of being offline for more than 10 minutes per day seems ludicrous. But I suspect that's not the case for everyone.
For many mainstream users, I think the idea of storing your data in the cloud is kind of creepy (that's the word my girlfriend used the other day when I was explaining to her how things like Google Docs work). Giving those people access to the software in the traditional form of a desktop application will, in my opinion, help push them gently toward web applications. Get them hooked on Google Docs on the desktop, convince them of the convenience of having anywhere access to the app on the web, and then you might start seeing people really embrace web apps as they get more comfortable with the idea.
The conversation I had with my girlfriend went something like this (paraphrasing heavily here):
Her: "So where are my documents stored?"
Me: "On Google's servers."
Her: "And I don't actually own the software?"
Me: "No, you just sort of rent it."
Her: "So if Google goes down, or decides to stop making Docs, they take my software and documents with it?"
Me: "Theoretically that could happen, yeah."
Her: "And if there's a security breach my documents are there for the taking?"
Me: "Technically, yes."
Her: "That's kinda creepy.... I don't think I like that."
I think that's a fairly standard view among mainstream software users. So, desktop access becomes important as a means to an end. Web apps will have a much smoother road to mass mainstream adoption if offline/desktop versions are used as a bridge.
The Browser is No Place for Multitasking
Looking at my Windows taskbar right now, I have copies of Thunderbird, Trillian, Photoshop, FeedDemon, Notepad, Word, Winamp, and Twhirl running. Sure, I could run web app equivalents of each of those in the browser -- GMail, Meebo, Aviary Phoenix, Google Reader, Docs, Pandora, and a Twitter module in Netvibes might suffice. But they'd all be running in Firefox at once (oh, Firefox is also running on my system right now).
Managing those apps from the desktop is pretty simple. Managing them all at once in Firefox would be a nightmare, and would likely start to make Firefox unstable and act naughty. That's precisely the reason FreshBooks launched a desktop app today using Mozilla Prism. "One thing I hear occasionally from our users, especially Web professionals, is that running a bunch of browser-based apps at once can be a particular pain when the browser decides to misbehave," wrote Freshbooks developer Rich Lafferty.
As Mitch Grasso, founder of Sliderocket (our coverage) wrote in a comment here yesterday, "Adobe AIR isn't just about taking apps offline. Multi-window support, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, and access to the rich clipboard are all things that you take for granted in a desktop app are difficult or impossible to do in a browser. Browsers are designed for reading webpages - not hosting applications."
There might be a day when the web truly is our operating system, and when browsers really will be designed to run multiple applications. But that day hasn't arrived, and until it does, bringing web apps to the desktop is another important step in their evolution and the way forward in pushing the idea of hosting data in the cloud out to the mainstream.
Conclusion
There is a third reason desktop/offline access is important: web access isn't yet ubiquitous. There are plenty of times when connecting to the Internet just isn't happening, and having access to your data and your software on the desktop is definitely beneficial during those times. But, as Sarah wrote yesterday, no access is becoming more the exception than the rule. Every day offline access is becoming less and less important for applications, but desktop access is still necessary.
What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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I love ReadWriteWeb because you guys discuss issues instead of just posting news.
Currently, I'm running through a massive spreadsheet in Google Docs*. (*I'm on a "break" now.) As I work on this doc, in FireFox, whenever something goes wrong I lose my doc, my email, my music (muxtape), and the articles(s) I was reading.
Offline access is important for this reason, the browser can't handle and wasn't designed to do every task.
Greg
beYOU.tv
SoUrban.net
apps need to be split off from the browser in the UI sense more than in the sense of the underpinnings. Firefox is very stable for me. I find that I have to restart my computer much less when I run web apps than when I run local apps. it is in the visual makuep of apps that I think the browser struggles. they lack icons, maximized screen space, and other advantages of desktop apps.
Your imaginary girl friend is amazingly tech savvy.
Desktop runtime wrappers for web applications is probably a natural evolution of the "browser as application" to "browser as virtual OS" but the problem is that desktop application management is not universal (see Windows, OS X and Linux...). In a sense this seems like a step backwards, for it was web standards that made the healthy web application ecosystem possible. With HTML5, Gears, AIR and Prism all fighting to do the same thing (more or less) the current web-to-desktop environment doesn't sound conducive for consumer uptake IMHO. At Mesa, we're happy playing in the widget corner of the web-to-desktop sandbox. We'll let the big guys battle it out in the web application corner. Browser wars redux...who would've thunk it?
This fight hasn't been taken to the streets yet, with the real bread and butter users. You should see the facial expressions that are produced when I try and offer hosted applications as an alternative to local and server based licensed applications - some of the IT and systems bosses and proprietors seem like they are trying to bend a spoon with their mind. We live in too rarefied a place on the new web frontier.
You know, I was going to write a long, long blog post on how the mid-sized businesses that I deal with regularly are just not totally on board with Webware services. Some of these, most actually, use local and server based software to run real time, point of use software that can't tolerate an outage of minutes. In the service professions, they cant understand why, besides costs (that they get) you would ever hand off systems to an off-site host.
And, many of the small fry just dont have the redundant connectivity that would ensure uptime - which is not the only factor controlling that uptime, huh?
Off-line access to data is fine for docs, but does nada for transactions. Maybe as a temporary stopgap. maybe with local failover...maybe, maybe.
1. I think managing application on desktop or web is questionable argument.. alt + tab is the same as ctrl + tab. I don't know but thats how I manage apps in firefox.
@Greg google docs has auto-save try it. its a great feature.
2. I find I use desktop apps less and less and without a browser, theres not too much I do with my PC. Everyone is so connected , even the mobile market is becoming always connected. These offline solutions, are 5 years too late.
@Doubting Thomas: Are you saying that girls aren't tech savvy (you realize we have one writing for RWW every day, right?) or that I'm too much of a geek to have a girlfriend?
The former is silly, the latter is probably true -- but somehow inaccurate. ;)
@cease: Certainly tabs made running multiple web apps in the browser easier, but when you have 6 or 7 web apps running... there's not much room left for browsing web pages. At least in my opinion.
Hi,
Just wanted to point out that Adobe AIR allows offline "access" and synchronization, as well as accessing web services/apps from the desktop.
Also offline access will always be important, even in developed world today, there will be instances where the internet may not be accessible but you still have electricity to do what you need. So while it will become less important as the world become more connected, it will always be there.
Just my 2 cents
Cheers,
Chong
To see the future of web apps take a look at what's coming for HTML 5. Take the offline capabilities of that spec and put them into Mozilla's Prism and you have a web app that doesn't just have an icon on the desktop but stores your data on your computer (with neat integration w/ cloud storage) and lets you use it like a regular app. This is a few years down the road (although bits and pieces are being implemented now), but the conception of a web app will be shifting away from web and towards app.
The universal accessibility of web-application is just too good to give up! Instead, we should be bringing the richness of desktop apps into web apps. Single-site browsing shouldn't be a separate app, all browsers should allow trusted sites to "pop out" mimic desktop applications. We should also start bridging the desktop environment and opening up the filesystem, system tray, taskbar, etc. to a predefined list of trusted webapps. Would love to see browsers start adding custom scripting handlers to do these kinds of things..
desktop is a best place for application development
if u want some fun then u can use the web
ex:
can we RAD on the web even a 2gb RAM and Latest motherboard and processor can't handle all the processes
can we adobe photoshop cs3 on the web
can we use Visual studio 2008 on the web
no
we can use web as platform to support our desktop application we can't depend on the web
Interesting points.
Main point of web services is that they come with you wherever you go. They can be accessed from work, home and even mobile phone. Web applications are just another frontend to access the same data. I believe the change is more in today's offline applications becoming web applications than web services being accessed from desktop. In the end a web app is just service spesific browser.
Data storage is a problem, but I believe that in few years time most people will have their own secure online data storage hosted by provider they have chosen (See data portability). Storage could be home server, Google or any other web host.
Also I think it is likely that people will be carrying a "cache" with them for offline access. Meaning that they have a single file system where they can for example tag files which are stored on their mobile phone (or any other storage, like usb stick) that they always carry with them.
Webapp to desktop, yes. Through Mozilla? Very doubtful -- until it fixes its firefox problems -- which neither Mozilla officials nor developers ever wanted to address.
a good article discussing why desktop app's are important:
http://zooie.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/how-google-is-putting-us-back-into-the-stone-age/
I think web app designers don't realise how many shortcomings we accept online that become intolerable offline. Take this Comments box as a simple example. It's fixed size with an embedded scrollbar. I don't even notice that when writing a comment online to a blog. But I wouldn't accept the same limitation with an offline application. On the other hand, web apps give me continual new features, making traditional desktop apps start to look old much quicker after their initial launch...
I've recently written about this as part of an Office vs Google Docs comparison - http://www.joiningdots.net/blog/2008/04/rethinking-office.html
I'd say browser is a good platform for multitasking. The only thing I'm missing in Firefox is an Alt+Tab alternative, to quickly jump between opened tabs with my keyboard.
somehow i feel that by using web based apps i'm stepping back to the days before tab based browsing. think about it, isn't 5 web apps spread amidst 20 "regular" web pages a lot like the cluttered start bar of the internet explorer? only with less security (winamp crashes - aw, shucks, but in the case of a browser crash, strong similarity to an os-crash).
> I think that's a fairly standard view among mainstream > software users. So, desktop access becomes important as a > means to an end. Web apps will have a much smoother road > to mass mainstream adoption if offline/desktop versions > are used as a bridge.
That's cute, Josh. You're basically saying that Prism and Air would fool the user to think he is owning his stuff when he is really not.
The concern your girlfriend is having (maybe she should blog here, from a users perspective, too) is not an unimportant one and it won't go away with Prism and AIR. Indeed the problem will be even bigger, because the mainstream user won't be thinking about what he is about to do, when he or she is uploading his files to Google Docs or Windows Live.
As I see that data storage cost is reducing dramatically and know one want to store their data on the other hosted environment instead they can have their own small data center.
Second those who are using these online services only use to store that type of data that don’t have much important for them. Like video, images and sharing type of data
Even there a lot of restriction on accessing the data within the organization and with in your network
I think that day also comes when people store there data on hosted environments but we have to wait at least 2 to 3 years more.
While I'm personally fine with in the cloud storage (naturally), I do have some reserves:
1. I want to be able to make personal backups and read them offline (enter Gears, AIR, etc).
2. If want to know that no one is reading or indexing data that I don't want to share with them.
Number 2 is key. At PassPack we use Host-Proof Hosting (http://tinyurl.com/48qfxb) so we can't read anyone's data. But we're a password manager, so that's a justified measure in our case.
Google, which surely could care less about what I store *does* index my docs. Maybe I'm paranoid, but it makes me feel uncomfortable.
Zoho, which has a lot of great business apps, doesn't index, but what if someone looks? Sure, for most folks it's not an issue, but it could happen.
I don't know. It's a tough call.
I really really really agree, especially when you state "browser is not for multitask".
Posted by: funkyboy.myopenid.com
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April 9, 2008 8:11 AM
"To see the future of web apps take a look at what's coming for HTML 5."
I must make my standard complaint. How people can think that taking a step backwards in specs (From the spec : "For compatibility with existing content and prior specifications, this specification describes two authoring formats: one based on XML (referred to as XHTML5), and one using a custom format inspired by SGML (referred to as HTML5). Implementations may support only one of these two formats, although supporting both is encouraged.") is going to be 'the future' is beyond me. We have XHTML, we're making progress with XHTML, we're almost to the point where we can parse a fair number of sites with XML tools, and now people are HAPPY that we're taking that ability away on purpose again?
Posted by: singpolyma.net
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April 9, 2008 8:42 AM
I've repeatedly had similar discussions with friends, colleagues and business partners. The analogy that has best helped explain the paradigm shift from desktop apps to web apps is that of banks:
A 150 years ago the rational place to store your money was under your mattress. It took a while for banks to convince people that the money was actually more safe in their hands and that they would even pay interest.
Today the rational place to store your data is on your computer, and it will take a while for web app providers to convince people that their data is safer in their hands.
Data stored in web applications will even pay interest in the form of lower cost of ownership and the ability to connect it with other online apps and data.
You and Sarah both have valid points. The increasing ubiquity of internet access is only one factor.
The advantages of a traditional desktop app are: access to the OS and local storage, higher capability, design presumably integrates well with the standards of the OS (usability issues).
The advantages of in-browser apps and site-specific browsers are: access to cloud data, browser UI common across apps (at least outside of what's happening within the window/tab). Also, security and privacy models are well-understood and controllable by the user.
Runtimes are great for offline & desktop access to web apps, with access to cloud data when connected, but UI suffers (imagine the average user trying to run a mix of desktop apps, runtime apps, browser apps, and 3rd-party widgets/gadgets - a UI nightmare). Runtimes also do not have mature security and privacy frameworks. I suspect we will see a lot of damage before things get tightened up (think about DirectX for a moment). Twhirl (Adobe AIR app) installation, for example, asked for access to my OS, but didn't identify itself appropriately as a trusted app.
Hi all,
I got here through a "shared" link from a friend on my google reader thingy. I'm not at all a geek on web 2.0 but i'm interested in the subject.
Should the opinion of someone in the middle ground such as myself be of any interest, here it goes:
Shouldn't this be something like web apps vs. memory stick, portable apps? I mean, with a memory stick and all the portable freeware or open source apps that are available why should i depend on an online app that may (or may not) be available at any given moment? Which may be slow...? And yeah, the browser getting heavy and sluggish is a real problem.
Granted, if i get on a Mac or Linux i wont be able to use my windows apps, but then again why would i want to be working all the time? Surely if i'm out of the house and out of the office, it should be leisure time, should it not? Or are we getting too obsessed with optimizing time?
Speaking of optimizing time, and in direct contradiction with what i just said ;), i like to use keyboard shortcuts and i like fast applications - i press keys like there's no tomorrow, and web apps seem to be mainly mouse thingies and are slower than desktop apps.
On the other hand, take Picasa, for instance. I can do all the tweaking and massive name change and all of that in a breeze locally (my desktop) and then upload all the gazillion photos to picasaweb. If i had to do it all online it would take me ages! Well, i don't think i'd have the patient to actually do it.
Sorry if i rambled, but these are the main reasons why, appart from some very specific apps (issuu.com, muxtape.com, mixwit.com, and google docs to see stupid powerpoint slides people insist on sending me, blargh) i prefer to have a pen drive, several portable apps and off i go!
it's like those services that let me backup and host my music collection - why would i waste a long time uploading all those albums and then listen to them streaming when i can have them on a pen drive (or portable hdd) and listen to them anywhere i want, with or without web access?
Maybe i'm old, i dunno.
Pedro
I think your Girlfriend is perfectly right, you should listen to her.
imho "webapps on desktop" is just another web3.0 marketing feature. with lots of security problems.
As the Scott McNealy of Sun once said.
If people don't trust companies to hold their documents what are they going do with really important things - like money.
Maybe online storage just needs the same controls and reputation as banks
Folks living in rural cities like Washington, NC don't have 24/7 access to the Internet. Google Gears for Google Docs or Prism makes perfect sense to me. By the way, Prism installs just fine under Ubuntu Linux with Firefox 3 Beta 4. Adobe has released Air for Linux. This also installs without problem on Ubuntu.
Thanks for this posting. Our company also provides an online collaboration solution called Joint Contact that manages not only documents, but other items such as images, contacts, tasks, discussions and email.
People that view this as "creepy" only need to look at the progress the industry has made in the past 20 years. The first PC evangelists worked hard to convince business owners to move their data from handwritten spreadsheets and internal office memo's to the personal computer. Something that sounded "creepy" during that time has now become accepted as the mainstream.
Moving data to an online service is not required for everyone, but it does provide enormous value under certain circumstances. It provides a way to share important information across long distances, is a lifesaver for mobile workers and instantly empowers people with tools and processes they would not be able to afford or acquire for themselves. This provides great value to the SMB market, as well as students, freelancers, non-profits etc..
There's on aspect of this browser-based vs. desktop-based web app discussion that no one has mentioned. By using shared development technology in both cases, you can have the best of both worlds, for minimal extra development cost.
You'll often want to maintain a browser-based interface, relying on net access and data in the cloud. It has great advantages: no install, can access from anywhere, etc.
You'll also want to maintain a desktop-based interface, for the advantages it offers: richer desktop integration like multi-window, drag'n'drop, file type association, as well as local storage.
In the past, having both of those interfaces meant LOTS of duplicate work. HTML/Ajax generated on the server for the browser; C++ (or Python, Ruby, etc) using services for the desktop.
Now, with advances like Prism and Adobe AIR (disclosure: I work on it), combined with client development practices like Ajax and Flex, developers can build multiple client interfaces that share the majority of their code and effort. Extend that model to all devices, and the vision is compelling: easily-developed application clients *everywhere*, each with the ability to take advantage of its environment (profile, desktop, phone, set-top, etc).
Excellent post. Very thought provoking, as now I am torn between the 'every where' access of my data like a Web App provides and a comfortable, less buggy, secure access that my desktop applications provides without access to the internet. Will the two worlds ever collide?