XForms and Internet Applications: Internet-facing desktop applications

A really interesting discussion is underway about Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps over on Read/WriteWeb.

The general point is that whilst web-based applications are incredibly useful:

the future of computing isn't entirely web-based.

Author Ebrahim Ezzy argues that instead, the desktop must be improved:

What we require then are smart, webified, internet deployable desktop applications - that can reliably store data, serve it robustly, and interact with both remote and local databases. This connected model will ensure that applications will function in both online and offline states - for a seamless, uninterrupted experience.

The fact that this topic is getting discussed is great, although I think from the comments and views that I've read, one permutation is missing, and that is the creation of an additional layer above the desktop that web applications can make use of to turn themselves into desktop applications. A key part of this idea is that this layer should be standard.

That's what we've done with Sidewinder; we've created a cross-platform environment that supports features such as creating windows that dock to the side of the display, can auto-hide, have transparency and opacity, and so on. Sidewinder also allows events that are fired in one window to be registered for in another (allowing applications to be built from smaller pieces).

However, unlike traditional desktop applications that need to be written in C++ or Java, Sidewinder applications are written in either XHTML or JavaScript...or more often than not, both.

So a web application could be as simple as an XHTML file that contains a page with a clock in it, through to a complex application in JavaScript, that in turn creates many XHTML windows and manages events passing between them.

We call these applications 'internet-facing desktop applications', since they want to be desktop applications, but they have so many internet-related features that they are most easily built using web technologies such as HTTP servers and XHTML pages. By providing a framework that takes this into account we can get the best of both worlds.

I mentioned that a key idea was the use of standards, and Sidewinder uses XHTML, XForms, SVG and MathML to build applications.

We have various demos that show how easy it is to make a web application into a desktop one: