I'm not talking about just GUI. After all, the web is GUI as well, since first graphical Mosaic browser in 1993.
I'm talking about rich clients for the web apps. The corporate world has been leveraging rich clients for decades - due to their fast and reliable LANs, and expensive servers.
Modern web applications (pioneered by gmail) are rich applications itself. However, even now with HTML 5, the whole web platform becoming inadequate for rich clients, due to problems such as dynamic JavaScript language, browsers compatibility issues, lack of rich media & animation APIs, lack of APIs to integrate better into the OS, etc.
Java applets, Microsoft ActiveX, Macromedia Flash, Microsoft Silverlight (and several other less known technologies such as WRML, 3DVIA, WebGL, Shockwave) were all attempts to address different aspects of this problem. But they all worked inside a web browser, and many things were not fixable by merely a browser plugin.
Now with the release of the Windows 8, we have the common platform across PCs, tablets, xbox and smartphones. Hopefully, things will be different.
After all, the web is GUI as well, since first graphical Mosaic browser in 1993.
I'm talking about rich clients for the web apps.
The corporate world has been leveraging rich clients for decades - due to their fast and reliable LANs, and expensive servers.
Modern web applications (pioneered by gmail) are rich applications itself. However, even now with HTML 5, the whole web platform becoming inadequate for rich clients, due to problems such as dynamic JavaScript language, browsers compatibility issues, lack of rich media & animation APIs, lack of APIs to integrate better into the OS, etc.
Java applets, Microsoft ActiveX, Macromedia Flash, Microsoft Silverlight (and several other less known technologies such as WRML, 3DVIA, WebGL, Shockwave) were all attempts to address different aspects of this problem. But they all worked inside a web browser, and many things were not fixable by merely a browser plugin.
Now with the release of the Windows 8, we have the common platform across PCs, tablets, xbox and smartphones.
Hopefully, things will be different.
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