Mashup Camp 3: Bridging the Gap: The Web and the Desktop

Kevin Lawver

This is a presentation. If you'd like to view all the slides like a normal web page, you can.

The Scene

• Desktop apps are using more and more web services
• The web is leaking onto the desktop in widgets and windowless browsers
• The preferred programming paradigm is more web-like than ever

Today

• Open APIs
• Desktop apps are essentially windowless browsers
• Many more apps include renderers in them somewhere

The Web Won

• Forgiving programming model
  • Fairly easy to get started with
• Flexibility
• Upgrade path between versions smoother
  • Ever thought about "sunsetting" a website?

Beginnings

• Modern IDEs embrace markup, javascript (or javascript-like) interfaces
• Modern apps are providing more and more data through web services
  • and digesting, or built on top of, web services (feed readers, etc)

Demo

• Greg? (I sure hope this works)

Tomorrow

• Better browsers
• Better scripting standards and tools (DOM3, WebAPI)
• Better markup standards (Web Formats, XHTML+)
• Easier to use IDEs
• Straight-from-the-web compilers (see Amnesty Singles)

What's Next?

• What do you want to see?
• What can we do to help?
• How does the relatively slow rollout cycle of desktop apps keep up with the ever-amorphous web?