The web browser and the technologies that live inside it (primarily HTML/CSS but also JavaScript and the server side scripts that power web applications) have many limitations when compared to “real” applications. When I say “real applications”, I mean an application that runs outside of a web browser on your own computer (a Win32 app, OS X app, Java app, etc.).
These “real” applications can take advantage of the power of your local computer to provide better user interface toolkits and interactivity. They can also store data locally. This makes great sense for applications like email, newsgroups, mailing lists, RSS reading, or media distribution, like Apple’s iTunes Store (which is more like a hybrid web/real app, to be fair). These applications don’t have to have clunky user interfaces built in the limited world of HTML.
Why, then, do we use the web for so many of these activities rather than these custom applications. Web-based email is becoming as popular as traditional email clients. Many people still browse web news and weblogs rather than use RSS readers, Google Groups has taken newsgroups onto the web, and most mailing lists now have web-based archives.
Why? The simple power of the hyperlink. You can’t link to a newsgroup posting in a newsgroup application. You can’t link to an item in an RSS feed. You can’t link to an email on a mailing list.
This key feature is so important that it is often worth living in the limited world of the web-based interface just to keep the ability to link to the things we create.
You can, though, have the best of both worlds. RSS is the prime example of this. RSS readers give you all the benefits of being real native/local application, but the content they serve is all available through a normal web-browser — where it can be linked to. This is why, even if everyone one eventually reads our weblogs via RSS, we still need the HTML-based version.
Most mailing lists also do this well. Most interaction (reading and posting) is done through a traditional email client). However, a web archive gives you a place to link to when discussion older posts.
We need the web. Other applications are complimentary — not replacements.
Living on the web is also platform independent. If all I need is a browser to access my email etc. I don’t care what operating system I’m using and don’t need to worry about installing or upgrading software.
I agree that both the web and non-web platforms are useful and not mutually exclusive. There is a place for both. During the dot com boom there was too much emphasis on making every app under the sun web-based with very little reguard for the trade-offs. Things seem to be swinging back to a more sensible middle ground now.
Yeah… apps on the web are so popular because you can pretty much access them the same way from any computer on any operating system.
I think being able to check your mail from anywhere (school, home, work, jamaica…) and from just about any internet enabled pc is what makes webmail so popular.
this why i don’t like mailing lists; they are not natively on the web; all mailing lists these days have web archives but the URL is never mentioned in the email posts you get (you have to go to the web archive to get the link) which makes linking to mail list discussions un-necessarily difficult
Good point Roland. It would be interesting to see the mailing list software tag all messages with the web-archive permalink so they could be easily referenced and links straight from the email client.