Rich Internet Application

I attended the BayCHI's RIA presentation at Yahoo yesterday. There is no very new information. However, one interesting things is the speaker from JWAY comparing the Desktop Application with the Web Application. And JWAY's XUI Framework can help you develop a web application which is very likable to a desktop application.

Some highlights from the talk:

• Desktop Application: Task-oriented. About what do I do? Slower rate in "Design Decay".
  
• Web Application (1.0): Destination-Oriented. About where do I go? Higher rate in "Design Decay"

However, I somehow hesitate on the JWAY or XUI's approach on providing a desktop like UI to the web application. What I believe is that the coming WEB (somebody calls it WEB 2.0) will move closer to the desktop application in the function wise, that is, it will solve what do I do. The examples are the numerous enterprise web applications and the consumer websites like Flickr, eBay or Yahoo Trip Planner, etc. On the UI side, the desktop application will move closer to the vivid and rich web application. While JWAY try to provide a common UI for all the web applications, I want to question why I want all Web UI to be the same? One thing important about the Web is that everybody can personalize their own look and feel! Look at Flickr's look and feel, it is so great and it will be awkward to have the desktop menu items look and feel on the page.

Image, what if the OS comes with the native function of rendering the web pages? Whenever I click an icon on my desktop, it will bring up a web page instead of the microsoft window? Futhermore, this web page doesn't need the browser! Then why people need the microsoft windows? Windows are dead. What people need is the DOS or Linux kernel + HTML rendering engine (Gecko). Let's embrace the day without microsoft! (Maybe I am crazy :)!!!