I love rich web applications. I love creating them with frameworks like GWT. Once loaded in the browser they are usually very responsive, reduce load times between server requests, can be loaded from any location using a web browser, and generally reduce the time the user needs to complete a task. There are still serious short falls to this model. Thank goodness for web API's. I have been using Tweetie for the last month and have to admit there is still a place in my heart for desktop applications. Why?
Tweetie really got me thinking why I still like using desktop applications in preference to web applications. From a usability standpoint Tweetie is better than the browser because of it's simple design, quick start up, background updating, auto-login (cookies suck), and presentation of data. This allows me, the user, to get at the data I want more efficiently. I spend less than 20 seconds in Tweetie, which is absolutely brilliant. This involves starting Tweetie and then skimming tweets. Alternatively I can start a browser, hit my bookmark or enter my URL, wait for the login page to load, login, wait for my page to load, skim, close. See the shortfalls of the web model?
Time, time, time. Computers should be moving the human race forward, even when it comes to procrastination with something like Twitter. I don't want to log into a site every time I lose my cookies. I don't even want to type in a URL, which means opening a web browser. I don't want to wait for page refreshes. I don't want 1 MB of javascript or flash to slow down my user experience.
Chrome OS or Gazelle might be the future, but I want to see how it handles the above issues first. I have a lot of data in the cloud, but getting to it shouldn't be so painful. The web is still a primitive place, but it's evolving rather quickly.
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