Desktop Applications: Headed For The Recycle Bin

After spending about 10 months writing a VB application for internal use at my current job, the bosses tell me: would it be hard to make it web-based? They haven't even used the VB version. What is this?

Last summer I interviewed with three separate companies that had evolved their desktop applications to web-interface applications. Their next project was to evolve a half step backwards. They planned to tweak their applications from a complete web-based architecture  (extremely thin client) to client-server style (relatively thin client). Customers had complained about the slowness of the web-based version.

I am ready to cave. After attempting to install my VB app on a coworker's pc, then getting interrupted with "You must have Administrative Rights to proceed with the install" makes me think that I should stop any and all work on the VB version and immediately shift to the web version.

Paul Prescod lists the four defining characteristics of a browser-based application as:

• Standards-based user interface portable to all GUI operating system desktops. Originally it was static HTML, then DHTML and in the future it will include XML, SVG and XForms.
• URL-addressable. Any Web application can launch any other Web application on the user's desktop, merely by presenting a link. The corporate portal can launch Google. Google can launch Slashdot. Slashdot can launch EBay. EBay can launch PayPal.
• Zero-install: Web applications do not have to have an explicit client-side installation. New versions can be rolled out without touching client machines. One day Google has three tabs, the next it has a new "news" tab.
• Client-agnostic. You can check your Hotmail account from any machine anywhere in the world. You don't have to lug around a laptop.

After reading that list it seems so obivous: browser-based apps win hands down. Paul, where were you 10 months ago?

Notes for later: Doc Searls Writes "Deconstructing Desktop" http://doc.weblogs.com/2002/08/10#deconstructingDesktops