Today, the IT world is swamped with applications and programs, and the internet is everywhere.

Applications, be they standalone desktop applications or web applications, can now interface with web services over standard network protocols, which raises a question: Which type is better?

The answer is there is no clear answer, but we may be approaching one. Read on...

Standalone (or desktop) apps traditionally performed a lot faster and had far more User Interface (UI) capabilities than web apps.

They are natively supported by the underlying operating system, which makes them dependent of the platform they run upon. The industry calls these Rich client apps.

Web apps were traditionally limited to the out-of-the-box UI capabilities, but they could and can be run without any specific requirements from users' operating systems. The industry calls these Thin client apps.

During recent years, a lot of initiatives have surfaces to somehow bridge the capability gap between Rich and Thin client applications. Some have been more successful than others.

There's specifically one that grabs attention - the EXT JavaScript library, which amazingly transforms the web experience into rich experience.

Now... having web apps covering wider and wider IT areas than ever before, will standalone apps become history someday?

I think so...