Lately there have been quite a few articles published about the rebirth of the Desktop application. However, few have been quite as informative as “Return to the Desktop” an article in the September issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal. This piece does a nice job of presenting an unbiased view of the technology driving the move back to the desktop. From Google Gears and Adobe AIR, through to Microsoft Silverlight and even the Apple iPhone, this article provides a broad spectrum view.
Dr. Dobb’s Journal is a classic publication in the software development world, with a history that dates back to 1976.
Tags: Adobe AIR, Google Gears, iPhone, Silverlight
I think that “swinging of the pendulum” (to paraphrase the above article) is the right term. In the last 7-8 years, we experienced an overwhelming trend to put everything online and behind thin-client user interfaces. This dramatically limited people’s mobility and productivity. It looks like the pendulum is swinging back to favor productivity (this is what RIAs do) and mobility (with the capacity to occasionally connect to the net, as Adobe’s AIR allows you to do) now.
I thought i’d also mention that rumors of an offline Gmail are becoming increasingly serious: see here.
No longer a rumour, Gmail users can access their mailbox offline by adding the Google Gears plug-in to their browsers. The service is still pretty experimental in that you can’t send attachments, but you can do pretty much everything else.
Really this is the ideal solution for Gmail users when traveling or when the internet connection is a bit spotty.