D Web Services Application Potential?

[Brandon Ragland via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 at 17:40:30 UTC, Etienne wrote:
> On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 at 14:30:49 UTC, Sebastiaan Koppe 
> wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 29 July 2015 at 13:22:43 UTC, Etienne Cimon 
>> wrote:
>>> I actually use the size of a vibe.d application (2mb) to my 
>>> advantage to produce a plugin that will overload certain 
>>> requests on the client's computer (via a windows service or 
>>> launchd daemon and reverse proxy). This allows much more 
>>> extensive use of local resources, which is really untapped 
>>> way of developing web applications at the moment, it really 
>>> lets your imagination fly.
>>
>> That is very interesting. But how do you push those apps to 
>> the end-users without interrupting their browser experience?
>
> You have to make them download the app and agree to elevate. 
> It's not going to be useful for content-based websites, but it 
> definitely has potential in areas where a download 
> would've/could've been necessary anyways e.g. music/video/image 
> editing, phone calls, file sharing, productivity, games, etc.
>
> It really depends on how appealing it makes your application. 
> If your offer beats competition by far, a download won't be 
> regarded as disruptive.

I was hesitant to agree with you, as the whole point of a web app 
is to have it *mostly* in the web browser. But one thing is for 
sure a detriment to things: web apps that should have been native 
apps.

There's nothing like firing up a project management system 
online, and wondering why it's slow, unresponsive, and offers 
little *powerful* features. Open Microsoft Project as a native 
app under Windows, and boom. You're in *real* business.

For these kinds of apps, they shouldn't have ever been made "web 
apps" but the way the world works, everybody wants everything to 
be a "google search away" which is great and all, but places 
serious limitations on just exactly what can be done.

A downloaded plugin, would be a man-in-the-middle solution. Users 
get there "google search away" and developers get the necessary 
native speed, flexibility, and components necessary to perform 
better work.

The browser is a stellar user-interface engine. Certainly better 
than GTK+ or MFC by a long shot. I just don't think the browser 
is a useful *operating system* for all these "web apps" that 
should be native.