Anyone who’s got an iphone or anything like it, will know that it’s easier to access information online through an application rather than through the browser. For example it’s easier to use the ebay iphone application than visit the ebay site on the iphone safari browser. This is because the application is designed specifically for the iphone, and can make use of it’s strengths (touch screen) and compensate for its weaknesses (small screen).
Now it seems there might be advantages to using applications on a PC. Adobe has created something called Adobe Air which allows useful desktop applications to be created with much greater ease and much less expense.
One of the first sites onto this is ebay, who have created an application called ebay desktop which allows you to access all the features of ebay without opening a browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. It also provides benefits to the user such as real time updates (no constant refreshing) and instant notifications.
So users look out for desktop applications of your favourite sites, and websites look how your site might benefit from runing as an application.
1 Comment
December 9, 2008 at 5:41 pm
You picked up on a big movement that’s bringing web applications to the desktop. We just launched a preview release of Titanium, an open source platform which allows developers to build rich desktop and mobile apps. Already have a couple demo apps available that you might want to check out.
http://titaniumapp.com
David at Appcelerator