Hacker News Reader

I think people in general are missing the point about rich-client web-apps. It is NOT about offline access, but about leveraging web-app skills (HTML, Javascript) to access hardware resources that otherwise would be blocked by the browser.

Web-based apps and RIA are here to stay, but there's still space for client-side apps. Example: Skype and iTunes.

View on HN

Someone already could deploy the user interface of their application using HTML/CSS, using either the awesome IWebBrowser2 COM interface from Microsoft, or the Mozzila Browser. Norton Antivirus is using IWebBrowser, Skype i think is uzing Mozzila's... Applications like Skype could never be developed using anything else than the perfomance of native compiled C/C++. And if not compiled, they could never use tricks to stop you from debugging Skype...

Skype uses Qt, not Mozilla: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=skype+qt&btnG=Google+Search

I agree that a Javascript-based client-app might not perform as well as a native C/C++ app, but I would not say "could never be developed"...

Adobe Apollo does generate a compiled package (aka "air"). I believe Apollo also generates a native executable file after the app is installed.

PS: I'm not an Apollo evangelist. I just wanted to point out that web-based client apps are not about off-line features.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com