These days it seems that everything is online. Your email is online, your contacts are online, and even your important conversations, most likely are happening, you guessed it, online. But something else has come out of the this desire to ingrain the internet into our daily lives, and that is web applications. Imagine an application that you use daily on your computer, you have installed the software, entered the registration codes (assuming you had to), and use this piece of software on a near daily basis. Something like Microsoft Word/Excel, or your companies email, or even your RSS reader. These kinds of applications are already have extremely robust web counter parts and they are just the beginning.
But why put these kinds of applications online? Well for starters, the invention of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) has allowed web programmers to do things that were at one time never thought possible. It all as to do with the ability and idea of being able to access all your important information and documents from anywhere you have computer access. Though, just accessing them is not enough these days, now the ability to edit and modify those documents and files from anywhere is equally important. In this high tech, on the go society we demand the ability to do more everyday and web applications are going to be what allows us to do more work from more places.
What sparked this article you might ask. Well, it was the announcement of Google Docs. This set of online applications allows you to create, import, edit, and save word processing and spreadsheet documents. And it does it all from within your web browser. The word processing side of Google Docs was previously known as Writely, which was the best in online word processing. Google Docs now allows you to save as a Microsoft Word file, an Open Office Writer file, or even as a PDF file. One thing that Google Docs makes easier than it’s application based couterparts is the ability to collaborate on documents. Two people can be editing the same document at the same time and seeing the revisions to a document made by your collaborators is as easy as clicking a single icon. To do document collaboration in this manner using Microsoft’s Office (at least the latest non-beta release) both parties need to be using the latest version of Office and a Sharepoint server needs to be setup on the network. Talk about a lot of work just so two people can edit the same document at the same time.
Online email applications are not exempt from this. In fact, the latest version of Yahoo!’s web mail looks and acts a lot like Outlook. The interface has gone through a major update recently that demonstrates what a web application can really do. Not only does it allow you to read and store your email, but it does it while giving you an interface that you are most likely very familiar with and simple to use. A good demonstration of what can really be done with a web browser and web applications though is Outlook Web Access. Chances are your company has this set up (assuming they are running Exchange Server for email) but if you were to open up your company’s Outlook Web Access in Internet Explorer you’d see Outlook in a web browser (Firefox looks just as good but doesn’t look the same). It is Outlook, you can do anything you could do in Outlook inside Web Access. Microsoft really set the bar high with Outlook Web Access.
So where does that leave us? Well, like I said I believe the few web applications we have seen so far are just the beginning of something much larger to come. Even sites like Netvibes, Google Reader, WordPress, or even Box.Net are kinds of web applications. Those sites are not as robust as say Google Docs or Outlook Web Access, but they perform their tasks extremely well and are just as important in the future of web applications. I foresee a future where the desktop operating system will cease to matter because most users will be using web based applications. However, with widespread use comes the question of income. Several of the available web applications these days are available free of charge, as web applications grow in popularity I think we can expect to see rise in cost for using them.
Anybody out there use web applications that I did not mention here? Please leave a comment point me to them, I would love to see what else is out there.
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In case you did not already know, Microsoft is gearing up to release their “iPod Killer”, the Zune. Several people have already received Zunes to play with and review, including the good people over at Engadget . In fact, the editors of Engadget have posted a Zune interface video walkthrough which is extremely good. You really get a feel for the overall Zune experience and what it all looks like in real life.
Michael Koby 