Why Rich Internet Applications on the Desktop?

March 18th, 2008 by Ryan Stewart

Because desktop development is hard. In order to build desktop applications you have to be a pretty good programmer because there is so much other stuff to worry about. Obviously being a good programmer is never a bad thing but it does raise the barrier to entry. And it’s a lot of work to create desktop applications. You’ve got to work with potentially hundreds of native operating system APIs and when you’re done, your application runs only on the operating system you coded it for.

Contrast that with web development. Web development is easy. You can throw some HMTL/JavaScript on a page and *BAM* instant gratification. And usually it just works. You can use any browser anywhere to see your creation. That ease of use and quick results makes web development a lot more fun. That’s been a huge driver in the popularity of web applications. In some ways web development is development for the every-person. And people have absolutely flocked to develop for the web. It’s cross-platform, it’s fun, and its easy. So that’s where all the innovation has gone: straight into the web browser. And if you look at the past 5 years it’s hard to argue that letting more people develop has been bad. We’ve got some really fantastic web applications out there and we’ve changed the economy and the world in the process. That’s pretty powerful stuff.

So was the desktop medium the problem? Nope, it was just the development model. What if we could take the ease/cross-platform/fun development model of the web and provide desktop functionality? That’s exactly what rich Internet applications on the desktop are trying to do and that’s Adobe AIR’s goal. There are a lot of different approaches to the “new desktop” development model and they’re all good. But desktop development isn’t just about offline access or having a desktop shortcut. It’s about capturing the full experience of web development and providing the ability to create powerful, persistent, usable desktop applications. I want to see the same level of innovation that we saw in the browser now happen on the desktop because in the end, there is no arguing that the desktop is a more powerful platform than the web browser. It has more functionality and you can still take advantage of what makes the web so great. RIAs on the desktop just get rid of some of the problems with developing for the desktop. Go give it a shot. The desktop can be fun again.

http://onair.adobe.com/blogs/onair/2008/03/18/why-rich-internet-applications-on-the-desktop/