I am a web applications purist. My ultimate goal is that no software is installed on my scattered computers apart from a web browser. We are getting there, slowly but surely. This post is about what biggest problems someone faces when moving from desktop apps to web apps working style.
Security. It is mostly a psychological problem then real one. Your data is probably safer on other people servers then on your laptop you’ll leave in the airport or taxi. But the psychological problem is a problem none the less. And I have no clue how to help you fight it, other then saying : I keep my data online and I am not afraid.
Usability of web apps – speed. Most web apps are slow. The problem is a compound one. Browsers are slow to interpret Javascript. Javascript, if you don’t know, is the probramming language your browser must process for that feel of resonsiveness that makes best web apps feel like desktop. Network is slow. Some things can not be done inside your browser, so a web app talks to its server over the internet. This conversation is relatively slow. Older web apps used a page model, where every new thing required you moving from one web page to another. Those web apps feel slower.
Solution to the above is likewize compound. Browsers are getting better. Google Chrome 2.0 and FireFox 3.5 are speed demons when Javascript processing is concerned. More and more people get broadband access. Newer apps are written using a trick called AJAX, and you stay on the same page while Javascript brings new stuff from the server. It is not faster necessarily but it makes you feel it is faster. And because of this constant communication, your web app brings things you don’t need this instant but might need after a minute, and by then they will be ready for you. That what makes Google maps feel so fast. New Javascript libraries appear that make web app programming so much easier. Then we got Silverlight 2.0. Silverlight 2.0 is Microsoft technology to allow in-browser applications to be written in C# using .NET framework. It is revolutionary because Silverlight runs code that is compiled and therefore it is faster then Javascript. Silverlight is not available for Linux and it requires installing a browser plugin. I have high hopes for Silverlight to enable new responsive applications. However I don’t see it happening yet.
Usability – need to log in. Your desktop does not require you to log into every application. Web apps do. It can’t be avoided, your information out there is not secure without it. But without some help, the necessity to log in every time, to remember all those passwords because a huge obstacle. I privatly think it is the main obstacle, though most commenters place security first. Anyway there are tools to help you. First that comes to mind is password managers built into most browsers. Besides many web apps allow you remember the session (not log out). That is good if you use your personal computer most of the time and nobody else uses it. Which is not the case for most potential web apps users. It if were, why would we want use web apps in the first place? Solution I like it password filling plugins, of which Roboform is my personal favorite. It is not free, and there is no, to the best of my knowledge, a free alternative. But I find having it important enough to pay for one copy per every computer I actively use. You can find my post about Roboform elsewhere in the blog.
Data portability. It is very hard to copy data from one applciation to another. If I want to attach my Google Spreadsheet to a project on Basecamp, I have to go to Spreadsheets, save as xls file, then go to Basecamp, then upload. It is incovenient for one file, it is madness for 10, it is impossibility for 40. And I have no good news for you in this department. I don’t know of a good solution. There are some standardisation efforts for inter-application exchange, like OpenSAM, but I am yet to see two good application I am ready to use that can exchange data using that standadard.
There are other, smaller problems, but those, in my humble opinion top the list.
