Just Because the Browser Is Easy Doesn’t Make it Better

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There’s a great post by Ed Burnette over on ZDNet about how the desktop is dead. And he makes a compelling point:

Installing and uninstalling and maintaining anything on the desktop (be it Windows or Mac or Linux) is hard, and more and more people won’t bother. Why? Because there’s a better alternative. Another way of saying this is, the browser is the new desktop.

Ed is exactly right, the desktop is hard. It’s hard to maintain, it’s hard to install, and it’s harder to develop for. The browser is easy. But the path of least resistance is usually not the best path to follow as Robert Frost so eloquently reminds us. I think Ed’s article is a great post to promote Adobe AIR, one reason why this rebuttal isn’t going on ZDNet. The trend across the industry has been to make the desktop easier. The desktop is more powerful, there are more options, so how can we make the desktop experience better for end users and developers.

Adobe AIR LogoThat’s something I think AIR solves very well. You’re building RIAs, the same kinds you build in the browser, but you can easily add desktop functionality like offline access, a hook to the file system, notifications, native windows, etc. But we also tried to make the end user experience better. These are small applications so the install experience is much better. Every app also has the same install experience so you don’t have to deal with a lot of different custom windows or extra hoops. A couple clicks and you’re done. We also understand the appeal of being able to provide and use the most up-to-date version of an application. On the web there are no updates – just page refreshes. With AIR we have APIs that make it easy to provide updates to users and the install experience is very lightweight so the bad updating experiences will be few and far between.

But ultimately I think everyone is moving to make desktop development fun and easy. Prism makes it REALLY easy, just click a button in Firefox and you’ve got some desktop access. Even Microsoft has tried to make desktop development easier (and also look better). So I think everyone has a different approach. I like Adobe’s, but in the end it’s working with the flaws of the desktop and trying to hide those from end users and developers alike. That’s going to help reinvigorate the desktop and hopefully we’ll see a great blend of web and desktop together where we use the best stage for the job.

[tags]AIR, Adobe[/tags]

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  • http://www.belowthewind.com Nigel

    Hey there Ryan, been reading your writings for some time now and dropping a comment to show my appreciation.

    I think one of the advantages web apps have over desktop applications is the standard ‘feeling’ it brings to the applications. I do agree that desktop apps are somewhat a burden to users because it resides on the user machine. There might be differences in performance on different machines, not to mention, the apps’s maintainability is the users’ responsibility (not everyone thinks installing and configuring an application is easy, right?). Where as with web apps, they can run in a standard form that everyone is comfortable with (via http) and is easily compatible, accessable and hardly needs any effort in installation and maintainence on the users’ side.

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog Scott Barnes

    Adobe AIR and WPF have similiar install concepts. You install the runtime, you take an application via URL and run it. The difference is WPF has a much more robust and secure install sequence, not to mention it has the power to leverage more of the operating system’s potential. The only disadvantage is that it’s not x-platform.

    Point I’m making is, once the runtime is installed, the “install and maintaing” problem is shared exactly the same way as Adobe AIR would have. Keep in mind WPF applications are more than capable of doing self-update aswell.

    -
    Scott Barnes
    Microsoft.

  • http://www.brandonellis.org/ Brandon Ellis

    Hey Ryan,
    I think a point that gets missed too often is this: the key to retaining users is through content delivery. Why did Netflix kick Blockbuster’s ass? Content delivery. ;)

    Yes the browser is nice for applications but it also requires the user to take the action to go get what they want instead of handing it to them on their desktop. In the browser, users may return for a while but eventually folks get distracted. If your app is online, how do you get them back? If the user is running the app locally, the content comes to them. That is the key to retaining users.

    As someone who takes full advantage of this, I’ve become spoiled in my app usage. Does it have a desktop piece? No? Oh well I’ll find something that does. :)

  • http://www.ibank.com Tom Barr

    I have been using a number of desktop tools to research, sort, filter, and track a number of web resources. It’s nice due to some speed advantages and having a local database to store history. The app does at least update some libraries of resources easily, granted it’s data lists not application upgrades but maintenance is relatively painless. Now I am a bit of a geek but there are plenty of people that can install and update applications.