Web Application VS Windows Application
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Hi Guys
i have a question regarding Web Application VS Windows Application, i mean many people choose to make web application than making windows application because of its ease in term of central administration, as for windows application it is not that easy to update your software, you need to update the application in all workstations,
Personally I do not prefer web application because I’m not into design, and also in web application you care not only in programming but you have to care also on how to display the application to the users (javascript, JQEURY …..),
As for windows application, you can give all your time to programming and you don’t care about the design anymore because in the end of the day a windows application is a set of buttons and textbox…..nothing special,
Now let us talk about the disadvantage of the windows application, recently I developed a vb.net application and I’m updating it all the time and the workaround I found to overcome this problem of updating the version in each workstation is putting the application in the file server and create only a shortcut for all users, whenever I update my application, I put the new application folder in the exact same location as before, by doing so : when users run the shortcut they run the new version of the application,
So my question is: is this method reliable or it is limited (maybe if the number of users increase the application will stuck, I guess??) otherwise please advise me how to effectively overcome this problem of application updateThanks and best regard
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@IT-ADMIN said:
As for windows application, you can give all your time to programming and you don’t care about the design anymore because in the end of the day a windows application is a set of buttons and textbox…..nothing special,
That's not true. A web application can be nothing but buttons and textboxes, Windows applications can have loads of design. You are assuming that people take care when making web applications and that Windows applications get no love and no care. While that might be often true, those are not artefacts of the two types, they just show how much importance is seen in one and how unimportant the other is seen.
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@IT-ADMIN said:
So my question is: is this method reliable or it is limited (maybe if the number of users increase the application will stuck, I guess??) otherwise please advise me how to effectively overcome this problem of application update
I think that you know the answer here... avoid making Windows desktop applications. There are use cases for them, of course, but if you can make it a web application, you should make it a web application.
Web apps are easier to create, have more modern and advanced tooling, easier to maintain, lower cost, platform independent (no more being tied to Windows), can be easily published for more varied use cases, more easily handle centralized storage, are vastly easier to secure, etc.
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There is a reason why desktop apps of this nature have been considered a legacy design (for business applications) since the early 2000s. Of course there are special cases where they are needed but rapidly these are evaporating. There are very, very few applications that need or should be made this way and essentially none for a normal business. Even Microsoft Office is a web app since 2013!
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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'm talking about general public),
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 -
@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.
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@IT-ADMIN said:
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 meanWhile 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.
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@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 ..... -
@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.
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@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.
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@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 trickinteresting, thank you very much dear scott, you are all he time helping me and giving me brilliants ideas
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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.
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thank you for your help
but what Atom do exactly ?? is it an editor or a converter from web to desktop ??
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@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++.
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The Nylas N1 email client that I use is web based as well, but locally installed.
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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
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@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.
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you are the Boss Scott
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@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.
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@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.
