Re: Re: web-based application or desktop application?

[hardburn]

in reply to Re: web-based application or desktop application?
in thread web-based application or desktop application?

With regular apps, you can always use certain keystrokes to reach some goal, and thus, speeding up the use of the app tremendously. I don't see how you could build that into a website

Web apps tend to be simple enough that hot keys usually don't make sense. If your web app isn't simple, it probably shouldn't be a web app (HTML doesn't handle complexity well).

Ain't it lovely to pipe certain output to the next app?

Piping is just a means for programs to share data with each other. In a web app, the sharing is usually done by an RDBMS. If you really want to use a pipe, use wget or lynx -source to get the page printed to STDOUT. Certainly, this is far more likely to work than attempting to pipe a traditional GUI program.

Back button can annoy ...

Yup, that's a problem.

[Rex(Wrecks)]

Web apps tend to be simple enough that hot keys usually don't make sense. If your web app isn't simple, it probably shouldn't be a web app (HTML doesn't handle complexity well).

Umm, I use hot keys so much that web interfaces irritate me because I actually have to move my hand to the mouse. Trying to use keyboard navigation for web pages is painful at best. It doesn't matter how simple your web pages are, the keyboard is just not a good tool for web page manipulation, and when I'm working I prefer not having to use the mouse.

Don't get me wrong I surf the web as much as the next person, I just usually don't consider it work per say :) I use a mouse a lot too, I just prefer not to when I am typing a lot or "in the zone" as it were :)

So in a sense I agree with you, web apps are not always the best tool for complex applications :)

[hardburn]

Trying to use keyboard navigation for web pages is painful at best.

I generally prefer my mouse's wheel for scrolling anyway, and movements honed by years of FPS and RTS gaming make me pretty quick with the mouse pointer :)

When filling in forms, most text boxes don't pose a problem, as the default tabbing order is usually correct. HTML does provide a way for the developer to specify a tab order, but I don't think it's used too often. Pull-down boxes may or may not pose a keyboarding problem--for common ones, like a place to fill in what state you live in, I can generally get there without a problem (I live in Wisconsin, which in alphabetical order is the second US state that starts with 'W', so pressing 'w' twice gets me there). I find checkboxes and radios are the biggest keyboarding issue.

[Rex(Wrecks)]

Point taken :)

An example of what I mean is gnats, I used to be working, coding, testing, and hence filing bugs. Everything I was doing was text based, and the only way I ever accessed gnats was via the command line interface, it was just much faster for me than having to use the web pages. Both gnats interfaces were equally clunky IMHO, but with the commandline I didn't have to mouse it, and I didn't need a windowing system on the machine (which was the case all to often).

gnats (good or bad you decide) is actually a good example here, its a case where the HTML interface is most used, but not the only way to do it. For the less computer literate it is an easy familiar HTML interface, and for those like me, it is just a few keystrokes to manipulate. That is the way I like applications, with options to do it the way I like :)