Web Application VS Windows Application
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@guyinpv said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@scottalanmiller said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@guyinpv said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
...but they still have their C++ native Windows apps
Not for two generations they haven't. Last one was Office 2010.
What is your source for this? We are completely talking past each other.
MS announced that they were doing it before the 2013 release. It's very obvious just in looking at and using MS Office 2013 and later. That's why the big leap backwards in functionality, they wrote a whole new code base to be web enabled. But that's why their hosted app is rapidly becoming a mirror of the local one... same code base. If you use the current MS Office, it's really easy to see that it acts like a modern web app with just everything that shows a browser totally hidden.
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@guyinpv said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
If you're saying that their C++ app runs inside some kind of container, that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about web languages (JS, HTML, CSS, Node, Meteor, React, et al) running in a container as a desktop app. Versus apps written in general languages Visual C++, C#, VB, Objective C, etc.
The INTERFACE would need to be in HTML5, obviously. But the back end can be anything, C# is very popular for web apps.
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@guyinpv said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
For example Ext2Fsd is a Windows app that only has basic Ext4 support and can only have read-only access to a Ext4 drive. OS API limitations?
Right, but that's a system utility... neither a business tool nor a bespoke application. There is no question that the WIndows defragmenter or an AV product need to be native apps. But bespoke business tools... the stuff that businesses build for internal use... that's what the context is.
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@guyinpv said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
These deeper APIs are the only thing I can think of that make an app locked to a platform. A "registry editor" app makes sense in Windows, not Mac and Linux. Linux firewall tools or a CRON utility doesn't make sense in Windows.
All the same things, though.... OS tooling for the IT team to use to manage the OS. Take away the OS and there is no need for the tools. The tools are not apps for the end users and no company is making them themselves for internal use.
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Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
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@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
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@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
100% agree.
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@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
Are you sure? What makes you think that the Adobe Cloud means that the apps are Web Apps and not just a subscription service with cloud components?
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@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
Adobe Cloud is still 100% native apps. Web apps is not related to subscription pricing.
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@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
Are you sure? What makes you think that the Adobe Cloud means that the apps are Web Apps and not just a subscription service with cloud components?
I don't, think that Adobe Cloud means the apps are magically Web Apps instead of native. Heck, the Adobe Cloud would be a LOT more valuable if they were web apps!
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@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
Are you sure? What makes you think that the Adobe Cloud means that the apps are Web Apps and not just a subscription service with cloud components?
I don't, think that Adobe Cloud means the apps are magically Web Apps instead of native. Heck, the Adobe Cloud would be a LOT more valuable if they were web apps!
Not to nit-pick, then how does Adobe's Adobe Cloud start them in that direction?
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@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
Are you sure? What makes you think that the Adobe Cloud means that the apps are Web Apps and not just a subscription service with cloud components?
I don't, think that Adobe Cloud means the apps are magically Web Apps instead of native. Heck, the Adobe Cloud would be a LOT more valuable if they were web apps!
Not to nit-pick, then how does Adobe's Adobe Cloud start them in that direction?
Well, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean that, but just as a (former) Adobe customer, having to download that bloated mess of stuff is a pain at best. With our internet connections around here you might as well forget about it at one location, and the other would at least download it over a weekend.
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@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@travisdh1 said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Scott do you hear about companies porting apps like Photoshop or Final Cut over to Web Apps?
I haven't yet, but that's the direction Adobe started with their "Adobe Cloud". Great, I get to pay twice as much to use you're software now. I'll stick with GIMP and Blender for now, unless someone gives me a valid reason they need one of the Adobe apps for 1-2 months.
Are you sure? What makes you think that the Adobe Cloud means that the apps are Web Apps and not just a subscription service with cloud components?
I don't, think that Adobe Cloud means the apps are magically Web Apps instead of native. Heck, the Adobe Cloud would be a LOT more valuable if they were web apps!
Not to nit-pick, then how does Adobe's Adobe Cloud start them in that direction?
Well, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean that, but just as a (former) Adobe customer, having to download that bloated mess of stuff is a pain at best. With our internet connections around here you might as well forget about it at one location, and the other would at least download it over a weekend.
Web applications does not imply that anything is downloaded, though.
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Right, the whole point of this thread is basically apps that platform independent. Apps that will run in an HTML5 browser
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@Dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Right, the whole point of this thread is basically apps that platform independent. Apps that will run in an HTML5 browser
At least as their interface. The entire app doesn't have to be there.
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@dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Assuming that Office is written for a web browser, then what keeps it from just working on Linux?
Policy. If MS doesn't want to release it for Linux, you don't get it. What it is written in has never been a factor. C# and C++ both run on Linux, and before it was web based, it wasn't available on Linux.
Same with Spiceworks. It's been written in Ruby since day one, and Ruby is native to Linux. But SW never was willing to release on Linux, regardless of the fact that they wrote and tested on Linux, then packaged only for Windows afterwards.
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@dashrender said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Right, the whole point of this thread is basically apps that platform independent. Apps that will run in an HTML5 browser
Sort of, you have always had access to platform independence with non-web tech. It only feels this way if you are steeped in Windows-only culture which is relatively unique in that nearly all Windows software was traditionally "Windows only" by design. Most platforms never had that culture.
If you use Qt for example, you can use TCL, Python, Ruby and any number of languages to make platform independent, non-web apps and always have. Same with Java, obviously, although that sucked for different reasons. C#, C, C++ all let you make cross platform desktop apps.
Web apps can be non-platform independent just like desktop ones. Web app is an architecture and is far, far more than just the interface. Thinking of web app design as just using HTML5 on top will lead you down all kinds of mistaken paths. HTML5 interface might "work on any OS", but that doesn't mean that the service producing it will. You could write that service in something that only runs on Windows or Linux, and only shows its interface locally, and make a web app that is completely platform dependent, if you wanted. That would be highly dumb, but it's just as doable as it ever was.
It just doesn't seem like it is because of culture. People writing desktop apps generally live in a "my way or the highway, use my preferred OS" world, and people building web apps tend to be more modern and live in a "make better software in a modern way" culture. This trend is what gives you the impression of one doing one thing and one doing another, rather than the technology under the hood.
Web app architecture simply gives us a modern architected system with a universal interface standard. It gives us the ability to leverage things like load balancers, proxies, caches and such that are standard, and deploy standard interfaces and choose, by simply not breaking the defaults, to have local and/or remote interfaces over a network.
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When it comes to web vs legacy applications, especially with modern JS libraries, webassembly, etc aside from a few niche cases which you have to basically struggle to defend, asking whether or not to start with web or ancient technology is like saying:
"Look, I know that cars are fast and everything, but they have a lot of up keep and there's so much going on with them and they're scary, so wouldn't you say that a horse and buggy are still a viable solution to travel with because I'm confused and/or intimidated by cars."
Or to put it more obvious: "Yes, web is easy to update, easy to secure, easy to keep it from being pirated, but I'd much rather have an application anyone can easily reverse engineer, lock out my updates, have to worry about a billion platforms or one single one where I still have to struggle with antiviruses, permissions, to the point where I act like Eaglesoft and just demand local admin rights for all users no matter what... sounds like web is great but, I heard serious applications are written with mud bricks, whoops, I mean old approaches because I don't know about jQuery and handling multiple browsers sounds impossible!"
Or in the case of the OP: web is about design and old applications are about whatever... let me hip you to something, all good web designers are terrible, terrible programmers. This is why these are typically two jobs. Yes, plenty of them defend how awesome they are at coding, how they care about standards, etc but if they actually let you see their code you'll find that either it's crappy code or a crappy design. That goes for both web and old style applications, it doesn't matter. Straight forward vs pretty.
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Wow old thread. I read it all though. Strange this guy never came back when it was obvious he was having so much trouble.
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@jmoore said in Web Application VS Windows Application:
Wow old thread. I read it all though. Strange this guy never came back when it was obvious he was having so much trouble.
Maybe he changed his name. he was super active in 2016, then vanished.
