[thelist] Spolsky: things you can't do really well in a webapplication

[Ken Schaefer]

Well, if you use IE, and you're building a web app in a trusted security
zone, I don't see any of this as being too difficult. Can't you host the
Office spellchecker inside IE? You can stop users from closing their browser
(well, you could warn them at least), you should be able to do some things
offline, you can do some OOB stuff using IE (think OWA) so even if all the
data isn't loaded client-side, you can send updates to the server and
retrieve information without needing a full HTTP round-trip.

Obviously XUL or XAML will change things in the future, but I'm under the
impression that a lot of this is doable at the moment - if you have an
appropriate trust level between the the application server and the client.

Cheers
Ken


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel D Canfield" <joel at spinhead.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 3:18 AM
Subject: [thelist] Spolsky: things you can't do really well in a
webapplication


Quoting from Joel's (the other one, not me) latest article:
======================================
Here are a few examples of things you can't really do well in a web
application:

1. Create a fast drawing program
2. Build a real-time spell checker with wavy red underlines
3. Warn users that they are going to lose their work if they hit the
close box of the browser
4. Update a small part of the display based on a change that the user
makes
without a full roundtrip to the server
5. Create a fast keyboard-driven interface that doesn't require the
mouse
6. Let people continue working when they are not connected to the
Internet
======================================

So, I'm curious. Some of 'em seem, conceptually, simple. Spell checker?
Keyboard driven interface? I appreciate the qualifier 'well' in his
comment, but is this really accurate, right now today?

joel
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