>>Well I could say the same for all those that think that desktop or native mobile is the way to go :-)
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>Maybe so.
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>>I used to actually be a big proponent of building desktop apps that use services from the Web to pull their data, rather than local data. However, recently with the advent of decent >frameworks in JavaScript that allow you build abstractions and use proper code separation more easily, I think we can build effective front ends in the Web that are just as nice as >native UI. In fact in a lot of ways I think it's much easier to build nice looking UIs using HTML/CSS. Heck there are now many desktop frameworks that use browser containers to >essentially let you wrap a Web UI into desktop apps using the PhoneGap/Cordova model. (Atom UI, Chrome Apps are a couple of examples).
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>I agree you can build attractive UI's with the web stack. That said, I still see many of the limitations that have come up during my experiences building website. I do hold hope the ploymer and webcomponents will be the trick.
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>>I would love to see something new come along that replaces at least the nasty JavaScript stack. I guess for now we need to settle with the welcome improvements in ES 6 and 7 >which are a big step in the right direction. As I said at the start of this discussion I think we are in the midst of a huge changeover in client side technologies and I think in a year >from now we're going to be looking at a very different landscape of frameworks and tools that take advantage of all of this new stuff in a much more streamlined development >environment scenario.
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>yes improving the language will help a lot. And I also think the shadow DOM will help too. Forgot - websockets will also be a big help. Still I continue to say that if you don't have a paying customer - that you should not invest in converting anything to the web - it's like building on quick sand. Whatever tech you decided on it will be gone by tomorrow!
Well, the nice thing on the Web is if you're building a service based application nobody has to know or care what you're using as long as the app works, is stable and can scale. With Desktop that is a big issue (well for VFP it is - people eventually figure out what it is and the the senseless arguing often begins).
Web Components and Polymer look promising but I still see that a ways off. Polymer looks nice but the in box support of features is too small to make it really go and adoption rate is way too low. That can change, but it seems to me that Web Components is still far off the radar for most Web developers. I think we'll get there by a more roundabout way of big frameworks like Angular, Ember etc. that are going to embrace the Web Component model and familiarize people will building applications out of smaller components. It's a big conceptual change (which you can see when you look at React forums and the mistakes new people make).
Anyway - there are a lot of things that just work a lot better on the Web than people think. And yes Web Sockets are a big part of that actually. Web Sockets have made it possible for use to build real time integrations (like the printer monitoring I mentioned in a previous message). It's pretty awesome for the right use cases but it can also introduce scalability issues very quickly for high load applications.
Lots of change is coming - my recommendation to customers who don't have to start building Web apps right away and can wait for maybe 6 months to a year, it's a good idea to hold off and see where the water settles... I think we're in for a lot of change and most of it will make developing Web applications much easier.
+++ Rick ---
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>Johnf
