Applications are the most important component of a computer. Nearly every interface you use to interact with the computer can be classified as an application, for example, Internet browser, file explorer, and video player. Without these applications, computers will become unusable to most users. In 2005, Gmail brought the term Ajax to the world. It, together with the availability of high-speed Internet around the world, sparked the beginning of a whole new era of applications – Web applications. During these years, a myriad of innovative web applications are introduced – EditGrid, Google Docs, Photoshop Express, etc. While these web applications gain their popularity in an exponential rate, the traditional desktop applications have started to fade out. In other words, everything is moving towards the Internet.
Web applications are welcomed by most developers, software vendors and users due to several advantages of web applications over the traditional ones. The first and most apparent advantage of a web application to end-users is similar to a web site. Users can gain access to the web application anywhere and anytime as long as they have a computer and are connected to the Internet, which is now easily accessible with all the Wi-Fi access points spreading over the city. Web application does not require the users to install it locally on their hard drives before using them. It is more efficient and more readily accessible.
Web applications are commonly used in conjunction with cloud storage, like Google Docs. If a user has multiple computers, cloud storage will help the user to manage the files, maximize data consistency and even creating back up of the files. These are all the trivial tasks that the users have to do when they use the previous generation desktop applications. Web applications definitely deliver a much better user experience than traditional desktop applications.
Web applications are also welcomed by developers and software vendors because of several reasons. There is a variety of operating systems available – Windows, Macintosh, Linux, etc. Software developers used to develop desktop applications targeting each operating system individually. In this case, they have to spend a great deal of time tackling different compatibility problems. Development process is slowed down and less time is invested in creating new features. This is really a barrier of software development. However, due to the nature of cross-platform of the web applications, software developers can use much less time in solving compatibility problems. The developers can just create one version of the application and it will be available to most operating systems.
Software developers are humans and humans tend to make mistakes. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to have a glitch-free software. This is the reason why software vendors have to push out software updates from time to time to eliminate newly discovered software bugs. There is a difficulty in this situation that users may not check for software updates regularly and that even if the software reminds them to perform an update, users may just ignore the notification. User experience is affected when they are prompted to update an application or when they encounter software problems because of not updating. Web application allows software vendors to rapidly deploy updates to the application as they have the full control of the server. Users will not notice any underlying changes of the application unless there is a change in the interface. The whole update process is more streamlined with web applications and user experience is improved.
The software vendors have the full control on who can access and use the web application. Piracy has always been the most concerned problem in the software development industry. With web applications, software vendors can issue user accounts to their paid customers to use the application. It is impossible for people to illegally make copy of the application as it must be accessed through the vendor’s server. The vendors can even impose stricter regulations on user accounts like forbidding concurrent login to secure their profits.
In conclusion, web application offers better user experience and more convenience to the end-users and, at the same time, greater flexibility and security to the software vendors. With benefits to the two parties, there is no doubt that web applications are going to replace most of our commonly used desktop applications. Perhaps one day Google’s Chrome OS will become the most used operating systems.
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