

Putting Apps on the Web - jchrisa
http://blog.couchone.com/post/2940851396/putting-apps-on-the-web

======
steveyen
I see this as the unevenly distributed future.

Eventually, some API layer will "win" that unifies or abstracts away our
various local data store headaches (sqlite, gears, localstorage, coredata).
CRUD once, replicate anywhere (and anytime the connection comes back). Even if
your app is an App instead of a webapp.

A REST-ful approach, such as with apache couch, with an open, easy to
implement (copy?) protocol that just stands on the shoulders of the web will
win.

Allowing the app itself to be treated as just more auto-replicated data is
yummy meta frosting.

------
Xurinos
General rule: If your "web app" changes the behavior of the back and forward
buttons, you are doing it wrong.

~~~
jchrisa
I'm suggesting that you can call it a web app even if it doesn't run in a
browser at all. What matters is that the data is linkable / remixable. The UI
doesn't matter.

~~~
Xurinos
It is like saying my MUD is a web app. A MUD is a service accessible with a
telnet client and usually accessed by special "MUD clients" as opposed to
plain telnet; these clients parse, record, and manipulate MUD data.

How loose is this definition? The way phone networks are stitched together
today, you could call the phone operation a web app, too. In some places, I
have found the Skype app over 3G to have higher quality than my AT&T
connection via my iPhone. The only difference between the two appears to be
which application I use. As far as I know, nobody calls any mobile app a web
app unless it was obviously a direct link to some webpage taken directly from
a browser.

I was once hired to help a company transfer financial data over their
modem/fax lines. The data is linkable, mixable, and transfers between systems.
Was that a web app?

Is the File Explorer, when it views files on a remote Windows share, a web
app, even if I am connected by a null cable between two systems?

More accurately, I think you are describing any application connected to a
network, as opposed to what we traditionally call "an app that runs on the
web". I am not convinced that the Dark Mists MUD gets "web app" status, even
if I redirect a port through apache to the MUD server.

I concede the point, though, if we are talking about providing clients other
than browsers to users. My original post contradicts the idea that we should
write fancy apps in the browser. I have no problem with conjuring a new kind
of protocol that runs over our network and provides an application feel (for
example, X). It is, IMHO, silly to break features in the real app people use
(the browser). If you are referring to something completely different, then I
am off topic.

~~~
jchrisa
I'm talking about native apps that are based on APIs so RESTful that a browser
could also do the good stuff the native app does, if only someone wrote the UI
code for it.

