Firefox 3 and Google team up for offline apps

It is nice to see Google and Firefox hand in hand, but I have news for them. I already have apps. that works quite well offline. Why make online apps for offline work when we have offline apps that can do online work?

DajomU

Quoting:Why make online apps for offline work when we have offline apps that can do online work?

May be to standardize on web interface, since it is so easy & more user friendly, instead of VB, or C, or C++. May be to simplify and standardize the development process by using JS, HTML, XML Http, etc... May be to work offline when you need to and synch when online is available. ...

I don't know for sure, but they must have other valid reasons that we are not aware of!

From a sysadmin's POV, if I can deliver an application to my users, but I don't have to visit each desktop (either physically or virtually) to install said app, the convenience and time savings are huge benefits to me as an admin.

The problem in the past with online apps has been that they could only be used while connected to the network.

So, making the app web-delivered, but usable offline delivers the benefits of convenience and time savings to the admin, and full-time usability to the end-user. The best of both worlds.

However, this presumes that the applications will run from my company servers, not from Google. So these points may be moot.

It's to satisfy Gates' Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates'_Law). What's better to offset this amazing improvement in CPU speed than an application written in interpreted JavaScript in a clunky browser? We can't allow our computers to be too fast!

Quoting:The best of both worlds.

What you said sums it all up.

In an enterprise environment, and for the majority of users, running client applications (running locally) is the biggest joke. MS invented the concept of running applications locally to reap more money from individual licenses for every single application. MS always claimed that they want to empower the users. They even went so far to claim that, networking PCs wont work and the Internet is not going to fly. They even fought against the concept and refused to get into it. What a crock! It took Novell to get it going and MS had to get into the technology when they realized it was going to kill them

In the enterprise, users don't need to be empowered to be more productive, they need to have reliable, secure, robust environment, not empowerd. They need to be able to do what needs to be done for the business, not empowered to do what ever they want.

web based applications create the best 3-tier environment. This setup enables users to access central data repositories, over a fast network, from any computer almost instantaneously. With the new offline capability, it will allow users to do offline and synch when they need to with the repository.

The benefits you cited are a small part of the long list of other benefits that this setup can furnish.