In the beginning there were dumb clients and the server reigned supreme. Then came the powerful desktops and the server lost control. Then came the Web and while there were still powerful desktops, peoples' desire for storage, search and functionality and small devices, drove them toward the Web as a platform and servers regained much of their power - although, where before it was like a monarchy, this time its more of a bicameral system with a strong executive. Confused? Great. Right on track.
MSFT, Adobe and Firefox are among the big players developing ways to run Web apps (e.g. GMail) in their own personal, customized browsers as opposed to them living as a tab in your browser. TechCrunch has a great article which looks at the major efforts through the lens of Firefox's effort - Prism. ZDNet has an article that also looks at Prism and the idea that it is already available as an extension in the beta versions of firefox 3. You should read both articles but a quote toward the end of the TechCrunch piece caught my eye:
"It’s pretty early to call a winner in the site-specific browser space, especially since heavyweights like Apple and Microsoft are probably poised to enter the game as well. But Prism has one big advantage: a killer app in the form of Firefox. By integrating Prism into a future version of Firefox, Mozilla could quickly get its technology into the hands of its 150 million users. AIR, on the other hand, has the advantage of using Flash and Flex to add sizzle to web app user interfaces, at the price of requiring potentially significant adaption on the part of the web app developer. However the space shakes out, the era of running applications in a tab in a traditional web browser may soon be coming to an end."
Another blog within the ZDNEt universe kind of brings this to a head with an article entitled "Microsoft, Apple, and the death of the desktop" .....a bit hyperbolic and I think misses what to me is the interesting point; design choices. These browser bits are being referred to as "single-site browsers" (SSBs)...an interesting design element here is that when a Web site is presented in a regular browser, the UI has to have buttons and functionalities for all occasions. SSBs can be designed to be customized to a specific Web app and that means slimmed down, sleeker UIs. I am just wondering as all this shakes out, about designing a building Web-based, learning focused SSBs...what would they be good for? What would they be bad at? I don't know the answers but I do think that as designers or learning opportunities, we should be aware of how our learners' computing environments may be shifting and how we can best leverage that shift.
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