Tell me more ×
Answers OnStartups is a question and answer site for entrepreneurs looking to start or run a new business. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite
1

hello all i just wander what web apps you wish they could be desktop apps?

share|improve this question
I think it should be the other way around. Everything is moving to the browser now. – jpartogi Dec 14 '09 at 12:27
5  
I like this question. The browser experience kinda sucks, and the responsiveness you can get from a desktop app is second to none. It goes around in cycles anyway, so now we are seeing a turn back from dumb terminal to smart terminal with all the "offline" technologies we are seeing. – Gabriel Magana Dec 14 '09 at 13:04
I agree with gmagana. Apps are moving to browsers to make distrubution and sharing easier and eliminating installation, not to give a better user experience. – JeffO Jun 8 '10 at 12:54
Excellent question. There are app types where desktop cannot be effectively replaced by a web-app: Those which requiere high performance (not shared) and very fast responsivesnes, like games, CAD, Modeling and others with a complex UI. In those cases the web should be the updating delivery mechanism and collaboration path. By the way, the browser "jail" sucks. – Nestor Sanchez A Dec 15 '11 at 18:49

closed as off topic by Zuly Gonzalez♦ Jan 17 at 15:51

Questions on Answers OnStartups are expected to relate to startups within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

5 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

An email client with GMail's capabilities, but as a standalone desktop app.

I have a blog post describing specific areas where I believe GMail shines over current desktop clients at:

http://blog.virtualsanity.com/2009/06/email-clients.html

share|improve this answer
2  
+1 for this. I use Outlook heavily (even to read GMail, I really can't stand GMail's interface, but I understand I might be the only one on the planet who thinks this way). With Xobni, Outlook becomes very useful. And nothing beats reading all your incoming emails from all accounts in one place. And I don't want to get a phone call and not have the exact emails mentioned at my fingertips at that second, so online email is not for me anyway. Great suggestion. – Gabriel Magana Dec 14 '09 at 13:08
up vote 3 down vote

I think web apps are mostly centered around connecting people with each other and with content. You will probably not see an online DVD burner application (unless it again links people with content they do not have, such as a burn-to-order DVD service for example). There are some efforts to build word processors and such online, but they are really low quality when compared to the offline counterparts.

Anyway, so for applications that are currently online that could be good offline candidates I think are the following:

  • Apps that do not connect people and people with content. Look for apps from someone who had a good idea, but only knows how to program on the web, and therefore implemented the idea only on the web without actually thinking if it was the right medium.

  • Apps that are online where downtime due to connection problems are a big problem. Business applications seem to fit this. You can lose your email for half a day, but not the application your business runs on.

  • Apps that facilitate offline access to online data. You can think of Outlook and other email clients as a big offline cache of online email. It's a cache that allows you to search for and organize your data. EMail is certainly not the only place where this applies. Nearly all online apps store data of some sort, and sometimes it would sure be nice to make a backup of your data and/or have offline access to it.

  • Apps whose responsiveness requirements are not matched by the web. Yes, the web is slow and requires mouse clicks. There are many applications in business that require quick data entry and navigation and people like to memorize which function key to press to get their job done. The web just does not have this, and even if it did, you still have to wait for web pages to load.

  • Apps whose information is too confidential to be stored online. Do you want your doctor to be using GMail to send/receive your medical information? Do you want your insurance company to be able to google facts about you to terminate your health insurance? What about your business data? The salary list for your employees? Google's CEO very recently said that you have no right to expect privacy on the web, so heeding this warning, all online applications are fair game to be rewritten in a more secure way.

You would be wise to see things from businesses' point of view. there are many companies that automatically rule out any online application usage because of the sensitivity of the information they would be storing. Nobody wants to be the next headline on the news about lost confidential information.

My bias is that I have a background in financial applications, so, together with the medical industry, these businesses might be the last to move into the web, if they ever do. There is little the web can offer to these businesses besides prettier user interfaces.

Anyway, there is a huge market in apps that go against the view that everything is going web. Just because you can connect to the world does not mean you should.

share|improve this answer
ok but do you have concert examples? – Meir Dec 21 '09 at 15:34
up vote 2 down vote

The picture management part of FaceBook would work better on the desktop. It would be so much easier to select, crop, comment, and organize into folders from a desktop app and then just upload/sync the whole thing.

share|improve this answer
is it still relevant idea? – Meir Dec 17 '11 at 4:31
up vote 0 down vote

This sounds like you are looking for ideas on a product, and it will be difficult to move people from a webapp to a desktop app, esp when you have things like Google Gears, or the built-in database in HTML5, so that webapps can function reasonably well off-line.

It would be interesting to have Google be a desktop app, but that is unlikely to be feasible.

If you had an example of where it may be beneficial to give up the benefits of a webapp it would be useful, to help spur ideas from others, I expect.

share|improve this answer
Agreed. The question should be "what desktop apps would you like to see as web apps". – Olivier Lalonde Dec 14 '09 at 11:18
I'm intrigued by the new HTML5 capabilities too, but it will be a while before those new features become mainstream. The spec is still in flux and browser support iffy at the moment. – DThrasher Dec 14 '09 at 18:55
And isn't "offline web app" essentially saying "desktop application" using different words? I think it's funny that web applications are sneaking back onto the desktop by other means. – DThrasher Dec 14 '09 at 18:57
yeah im looking for ideas... – Meir Dec 14 '09 at 21:24
@DThrasher - An offline webapp is different in that the javascript will look locally for the info, within the browser's db, and sync up later, when there is a connection, but, the user shouldn't see any difference, or a minimal difference. HTML5 won't be mainstream for several years, but FF has about 25% share, and that is accelerating, so within 2-3 yrs I expect that it will have over 50%, but developing for it now makes sense, IMO. – James Black Dec 15 '09 at 0:59
show 1 more comment
up vote 0 down vote

Mozilla Prism and Adobe Air both let you run web apps on the desktop. Doesn't really answer your question, but thought it could interest you nonetheless.

share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.