A Desktop User Experience in Web Application
From our front-end web developer, Steve:
The potential power of web applications has grown a considerable amount in recent days with announcements like 280 North's Objective-J and Cappuccino javascript frameworks. Demonstrations are available at 280 Slides - a wonderful online slide presentation app. 280 Slides feels so much like a desktop app that one forgets they are on the web at all. on the web. We even started using interactions like 'command-z' for undo and all the copy, cut, and paste keyboard shortcuts without even realizing it.
Another framework that has come into the spotlight is Sproutit's Sprout Core. Its a full MVC javascript framework that was used in the recently announced Mobile Me web applications at Apple's WWDC. These apps are also being marketed as a desktop experience on the web and the video tour of the applications certainly supports that claim.
Admittedly none of these frameworks really offer anything new that hasn't been done before, they're just being packaged differently. They put the javascript at the core rather than just add some splashes of animation and functionality here and there. They also make all of the "magic" happen independently of the server. This brings an interesting twist to Safari 4's new "Save as a Web Application" feature which allows web application developers to build an app using all web technologies and run it on a Webkit framework as a desktop app. The user would not know the difference between these Webkit applications and regular desktop applications. Moreover, they would be cross platform, working on Mac as well as PC by default.
Pretty cool.