May 28th, 2007
To browser or not? It doesn't really matter
Rich Internet Applications have gotten a lot of great attention recently. The technologies and acronyms are blending together in a seemingly endless soup of technobabble. Part of that comes with any new technology and in the hyper-attentive world of the web people are quick to make judgments and even quicker to prognosticate the end of the world as we know it. Most recently I saw this in a post by Allison Randal over on O’Reilly Radar (although she isn’t exactly tearing down the walls, her post got me thinking).
The post is actually about LINA, an interesting technology that seems to mirror Apollo a bit in the ability to write one application that can be deployed across multiple platforms. But in the post, Allison speaks heavily about the death of web browser applications:
The wave of the future is not web browser applications. Instead we’re coming full circle back to desktop applications, but this time we’ve broken the old idea of single user silo applications with no connection to the outside world. The wave of the future is lightweight desktop applications with the same massively networked, Web 2.0 behavior we’ve come to expect from browser applications. iTunes is a classic example of this, with both an offline component available all the time, and a seamlessly integrated online component available when connected.
I agree with a good chunk of what she’s saying. I think I’ve been very clear about how important I think desktop development is. I think deploying applications in the browser tends to be inefficient and poorly implemented. The kinds of software applications that people are putting into the browser would be much better on the desktop.
But all that said, I think it’s important to realize that the browser still has a lot of life in it. Technologies like Flash/Flex and Silverlight are only going to become more important as the browser evolves. The browser is a lowest common denominator that has helped create a great deal of innovation and excitement about technology. Forgetting that is both shortsighted and generally a bad idea.
In the end what we should strive for are richer applications across the board. In some cases, the browser will be a great delivery mechanism and for richer experiences Flash and Silverlight will fit the bill perfectly. Other times, your application will require an experience that takes it outside the browser. When that happens, I think it will be very important to blend the good parts of the web into that desktop experience. Things like a quick install, familiar technologies, and a cross platform experience are all things we’ve come to love and expect from the web but that can be translated to the desktop as well. Ultimately it is that blend that will be invaluable to both desktop developers and web developers. The browser won’t ever go away, but if by making it easy to use the best experience for your need, we’ll maximize the utility for everyone; users and developers alike.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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