Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World

Today I was reading an article about JyRCP/RAP. In that article, there was one paragraph in particular that caught my attention: Although I’m convinced of the future of rich web apps, there is always this little voice inside my head that says that web technology is meant for document presentation and rich user interfaces are better off with client side GUI technology. You can abuse document presentation elements to fake a rich user interface and you can combine a large set of GUI widgets to look like a document, but you’ll always keep running into practical issues because the technology wasn’t meant for that purpose. Even the best solution is basically no more than a very clever workaround.

I think that “little voice” is saying some very important and relevant things! Web browser-based application development is a poor idea. As that voice correctly states, it’s a cruel twisting of how Web browsers should be used. Often times, such Web development it is nothing but trouble, difficulty, and hassle. Those are bad traits to have when trying to develop reliable, high-quality software systems, especially those involving a fairly high degree of complexity and scale.

That “little voice” is further correct when it suggests that client-side GUI technology is often a better idea. As problematic as Swing can be, it tends to allow for far better client interfaces to be developed. This is true in terms of responsiveness, quality, flexibility and usability.

I’ve been involved with the roll-out of a number of in-house AJAX-based systems used in various business settings, and the results often aren’t very good. For several of those roll-outs, the users never managed to adjust to the new systems, even after several months. They stated that the Web-based apps where nowhere near as intuitive as the existing Swing, or even console, applications they replaced. Another major complaint was the bugginess of many of the AJAX-based applications. In short, the users were not pleased.

So perhaps more and more developers will realize that the Web application tangent we’ve been on for a few years is in vain. The promises are nice, but the reality is awkward, messy, and difficult for both users and developers.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 2:55 am and is filed under Development, Java, Software, Web Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.