>This will change. Things are moving towards a standard web interface, away from standard forms.

This statement I really have to disagree with. The Internet will always be too unpredicatble for commercial applications to be based on it. Until MS installs the Internet2 ;) true commercial apps will not exist. Only INTRANET applications can use xHTML for serious database applications.

DHTML and XML are great improvements over HTML, no argument there. HTML was designed over 20 years ago for text/graphics without data entry. As long as it is HTML based it will be difficult to create WIN32 equivalent applications in native HTML/DHTML/XML.

And forcing users to use IE5 for all those great new HTML extensions nullifies the reasons we wanted to make internet aware apps in the first place!


1) I design a new internet application in DHTML and put it on my Microsoft IIS web server.
2) Users hit my site, I detect if they are running IE5, if not, I throw them to the Microsoft Web Site so they can get. Explain to them that they need to install it to use this application, why would they not want to upgrade?
3) If they are using netscape, I give them my HTML version of the application that I also have to code or tell them that they can't run it until they get IE5.
4) If they are using a Mac, Unix, or Linux system, Forward them to MS so they too can get IE5 for their system.

And all of this is better than native applications because? This REALLY benefits the users how? And this is any different from downloading a runtime and installing it?!

Please don't get me wrong, I love MS (there I said it). Most of use would be using PC-DOS version 11 or OS/2 (god forbid!) without them. I also love MS products, except of coursr for Access ;)

Doing something just because we can is not always in the best interest of the users.