Web Application VS Windows Application

scottalanmiller

in our days website get more and more attractive in term of effects and flash .... so these modern website has created a culture which is : a website must have at least an acceptable level of design, otherwise they will consider it a piece of scrap even if it is running a strong coding and data management system,
this is what I mean

While web apps have raised the bar, I can assure you that this affects all applications and if people see a Windows desktop all not up to par with good web apps, they will think the same thing. All of your concern around the web app applies to your desktop app too.

IT-ADMIN

@scottalanmiller said:

@IT-ADMIN said:

i understand what you mean Dear Scott, but a website whether it be an application or just blog or whatever... people still consider it a website and still expect to see effect and nice design on it

I don't believe that that is true. You can present a web application just like a desktop one and the end users need not even know. So they can't have that perception because they cannot determine which it is.

how i can do that ?? a web application is different than windows application, they are totally 2 different things, the web application need a web browser to run while the windows application do not,
even the way of programming is different : web application require additional work in order to manage cookies, session .....

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

how i can do that ?? a web application is different than windows application, they are totally 2 different things, the web application need a web browser to run while the windows application do not,

Yes and no. Do you need a web browser for MS Office? Yet it is a web app. You can make a web app look, feel and behave just like a desktop app. You can even install it locally.

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

even the way of programming is different : web application require additional work in order to manage cookies, session .....

So does a desktop app. It does not call it sessions and cookies, but all of the same data has to be handled and with fewer options.

If your desktop app does not need those things, neither does your web app.

IT-ADMIN

@scottalanmiller said:

@IT-ADMIN said:

how i can do that ?? a web application is different than windows application, they are totally 2 different things, the web application need a web browser to run while the windows application do not,

Yes and no. Do you need a web browser for MS Office? Yet it is a web app. You can make a web app look, feel and behave just like a desktop app. You can even install it locally.

Woow, i'm impressed, it is the first time i know that i can convert my web application to looks like a desktop application, this is great
i just found mozile labs Prism do the trick

interesting, thank you very much dear scott, you are all he time helping me and giving me brilliants ideas

scottalanmiller

Glad to help

This is a case where it is handy to assume that modern processes and design are the standard for a reason and assume that if they feel limiting that probably something is being missed. Web apps started replacing desktop apps for business applications (the kinds of things that companies write as opposed to games, desktop utilities and the like) around 1998 and have only gained steam since then. Today any enterprise application development that is not web based has to be stated as such or else people get confused. Of course there are and will long be exceptions, but they are becoming very niche at this point.

And Mozilla Prism is just one of many approaches. Another is how applications like Atom work. I recommend downloading Atom (from GitHub) to see what it looks like. This is a fully locally installed web app built from the same library as this website (MangoLassi.) Both are build on Node.js, one installed on a remote server and the other installs to your desktop. But both are web apps.

I also recommend using Atom, just because it is very nice.

IT-ADMIN

thank you for your help

but what Atom do exactly ?? is it an editor or a converter from web to desktop ??

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

thank you for your help

but what Atom do exactly ?? is it an editor or a converter from web to desktop ??

It is an advanced text editor, similar to Sublime or Notepad++.

scottalanmiller

The Nylas N1 email client that I use is web based as well, but locally installed.

IT-ADMIN

wow, it is very important what are saying now, this mean i can put some design on my web application and after converting it to be like a desktop app, it will looks woow even with fewer design because it will looks better than a normal desktop application

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

wow, it is very important what are saying now, this mean i can put some design on my web application and after converting it to be like a desktop app, it will looks woow even with fewer design because it will looks better than a normal desktop application

Well these are especially good examples. You can make very, very ugly web applications as well However, it can be pretty easy to make web applications look nice, too.

If you read the most popular Ruby on Rails development tutorial, for example, they show how to use Twitter Bootstrap with just a single line of code to apply a very attractive template to your work so you need to do no design at all (other than that one line.) It will not look as nice as Atom, but you can get very nice, very easily, too.

IT-ADMIN

you are the Boss Scott

Carnival Boy

@scottalanmiller said:

You can make a web app look, feel and behave just like a desktop app.

Maybe so, but for the two main applications that I use most of the time - Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics - the desktop app is superior to the web app, to the extent that I rarely use the web app at all.

Maybe it is possible to create web apps that are the equal of their desktop equivalents, but I've yet to see it.

@scottalanmiller said:

There is a reason why desktop apps of this nature have been considered a legacy design (for business applications) since the early 2000s.

What nature? Desktop apps still rule as far as I can tell. I rarely use web apps apart from for very simple applications.

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

you are the Boss Scott

Thanks

Do you know what web application frameworks you are likely to use? Microsoft has some nice ones, but well worth considering are Node.js and Ruby on Rails as languages.

For Node.js, check out the Meteor framework.