Ask HN: What are the advantages of web applications over desktop applications? - bryk
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dvddgld
I'd say the most basic advantages a web app has for a user are no install,
cross platform support and same look and feel across those platforms. These
advantages may not seem all that important to the technically inclined but
they are massive.

From the producer side: web applications are faster to prototype, develop,
publish and monetize than desktop applications. This is also a massive
advantage for the average application, cost wins.

The main advantages a native desktop application still has are performance,
native look & feel and native feature support.

Purists will argue these native features are super important (they are in
particular cases), meanwhile economics will keep pushing towards more web and
electron apps. Such is life.

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danieka
The no install thing is huge when you are working in a more enterprise-y
context. Usually the environment is locked down so users can’t install
software and it is a huge hassle to roll out updates, it took several weeks
where I worked.

Also the users local environment becomes less of a factor.

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adventured
Distribution.

Getting a user to install a piece of software, is a large point of friction.
To get them to do that, you have to override all the negative experiences
users have inevitably had with installed software (breaking their system,
malware, abuses like spying on your machine, compatibility, and so on).

With a Web application, you can often immediately hand a user a demo key to
dive right in and begin trying the product. Depending on the product, in some
cases you can present a demo live on the site, no key or signup necessary, the
user can instantly begin fiddling around.

You can't do that with a desktop application, you'll have to convince the user
to download something and install it, even if it's just a demo.

A Web app lowers the bar to first use, that moment of convincing someone to
actually try out your product. This speeds up and simplifies your
distribution. Not having the product installed in thousands of locations, on
thousands of different machines with different specs, dramatically lowers your
support burden as well: there's one live version and it's entirely under your
control. You can train your support team for that homogeneous case.

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ecesena
Auto update.

If you have a desktop app that in any way interacts with your backend, you
need to take into account active client versions before upgrading your
backend. With web this problem basically disappears.

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cimmanom
For users or for developers?

