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This question comes up a lot, but to me it always sounds like "Why eat at a restaurant when you can cook at home?" The main reason people do it is that simply t

by GHFigs 17y ago

This question comes up a lot, but to me it always sounds like "Why eat at a restaurant when you can cook at home?" The main reason people do it is that simply to have someone else do all the work other than the eating, or in this case, the writing.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
What other work? It's no more work to open an application than to open a website. In fact, it's a lot less because I don't have to fire up my browser, navigate to the site, sign in through Facebook, etc.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  That's not the kind of "work" I'm referring to. Actually, I'm mystified at how you can even call any of that work. The physical and cognitive load of reaching any site, anywhere, is already small, and vanishingly so when it's a site you use frequently. A new browser window or tab is something you probably do dozens of times a day. Think about it: the site is intended to be used daily--anybody that actually 'buys in' is going to have that bookmarked, shortcut-ed, homepage-ed, or at least in their autocomplete. And logging into Facebook? A typical Facebook user is never not logged in. Where is the work coming in? I'm sorry to expend so many words on that, but it really does seem strange to me that someone in this day and on this site would regard going to a website as a lot of work. But to my original point: I'm talking about the work of actually making the thing. The parent post specifically refers to "WriteRoom/OmmWriter plus a scoring script" as the alternative. Where does that script come from? Who maintains it? Whose computer does it run on? Who is responsible for ensuring that it continues to work? The answer to all of those is either "you, yourself" or "someone else". There are occasions why "you, yourself" are the best person for the job, but quite often there is no particular need to waste your attention on a problem that already has an adequate solution for. Sometimes (just as with cooking) you may even get more satisfying results that way. In this case, the author is selling you on a specific habit with a tool specifically tailored for the problem of incorporating and maintaining it. If you are interested in that problem at all, the attention-conserving approach would be to try that tool first, before reimplementing your own partial solution.
derefr 17y ago
I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application, when both the process and the product of using it are completely anti- or a-social. Is it just that you don't have to worry about where to store it/when to back it up? I've forgotten about that concern since I started using Dropbox. There are a few implicit advantages to making something a web application: upgrades for free, no installation, etc. but there are also implicit disadvantages: network latency, inability to use when out of service range, and so on. What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ -- it's not really web application, per se, it's just an application that requires an Internet connection, and happens to use HTML as a presentation layer.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application And that's exactly what I was responding to. A web application is somebody else's problem, from start to finish. In this case, everything but the writing. Any other solution has its own constraints and so on that become your problem, which quite often isn't worth the expenditure of attention. What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/ + 30 seconds.
  - derefr 17y ago
    And you just agreed with me without realizing it, because we're talking past each other. The term "web application" doesn't refer to a technology, but rather a means of access. I never asked "why does this product use HTTP/HTML/CSS", or "why is this product accessible over the network", or anything like that—those are technical questions, and have technical answers. The question I asked was "why is this a web application—meaning, why should this be accessed through a web browser?" Web browsers imply a certain social cognitive model. Prism, and Fluid as well, as you pointed out, are programs written to shift the user's mental image of how the application works, from the social, public, status-seeking "web application" mindset, to the local, safe, tinkering-around "desktop application" one. The fact that these programs exist is a testament to the fact that how a user accesses your application matters to them. Remember, Prism/Fluid apps are still "somebody else's problem"—that's what makes them so great, compared to regular desktop apps. So the question is, why did the developer choose the web mindset, rather than the desktop mindset, when options (Fluid, Prism) are available that nullify the disadvantages of the desktop mindset?

by GHFigs 17y ago

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

What other work? It's no more work to open an application than to open a website. In fact, it's a lot less because I don't have to fire up my browser, navigate to the site, sign in through Facebook, etc.

GHFigs 17y ago
That's not the kind of "work" I'm referring to. Actually, I'm mystified at how you can even call any of that work. The physical and cognitive load of reaching any site, anywhere, is already small, and vanishingly so when it's a site you use frequently. A new browser window or tab is something you probably do dozens of times a day. Think about it: the site is intended to be used daily--anybody that actually 'buys in' is going to have that bookmarked, shortcut-ed, homepage-ed, or at least in their autocomplete. And logging into Facebook? A typical Facebook user is never not logged in. Where is the work coming in? I'm sorry to expend so many words on that, but it really does seem strange to me that someone in this day and on this site would regard going to a website as a lot of work. But to my original point: I'm talking about the work of actually making the thing. The parent post specifically refers to "WriteRoom/OmmWriter plus a scoring script" as the alternative. Where does that script come from? Who maintains it? Whose computer does it run on? Who is responsible for ensuring that it continues to work? The answer to all of those is either "you, yourself" or "someone else". There are occasions why "you, yourself" are the best person for the job, but quite often there is no particular need to waste your attention on a problem that already has an adequate solution for. Sometimes (just as with cooking) you may even get more satisfying results that way. In this case, the author is selling you on a specific habit with a tool specifically tailored for the problem of incorporating and maintaining it. If you are interested in that problem at all, the attention-conserving approach would be to try that tool first, before reimplementing your own partial solution.

derefr 17y ago

I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application, when both the process and the product of using it are completely anti- or a-social. Is it just that you don't have to worry about where to store it/when to back it up? I've forgotten about that concern since I started using Dropbox. There are a few implicit advantages to making something a web application: upgrades for free, no installation, etc. but there are also implicit disadvantages: network latency, inability to use when out of service range, and so on. What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ -- it's not really web application, per se, it's just an application that requires an Internet connection, and happens to use HTML as a presentation layer.

GHFigs 17y ago
I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application And that's exactly what I was responding to. A web application is somebody else's problem, from start to finish. In this case, everything but the writing. Any other solution has its own constraints and so on that become your problem, which quite often isn't worth the expenditure of attention. What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/ + 30 seconds.
- derefr 17y ago
  And you just agreed with me without realizing it, because we're talking past each other. The term "web application" doesn't refer to a technology, but rather a means of access. I never asked "why does this product use HTTP/HTML/CSS", or "why is this product accessible over the network", or anything like that—those are technical questions, and have technical answers. The question I asked was "why is this a web application—meaning, why should this be accessed through a web browser?" Web browsers imply a certain social cognitive model. Prism, and Fluid as well, as you pointed out, are programs written to shift the user's mental image of how the application works, from the social, public, status-seeking "web application" mindset, to the local, safe, tinkering-around "desktop application" one. The fact that these programs exist is a testament to the fact that how a user accesses your application matters to them. Remember, Prism/Fluid apps are still "somebody else's problem"—that's what makes them so great, compared to regular desktop apps. So the question is, why did the developer choose the web mindset, rather than the desktop mindset, when options (Fluid, Prism) are available that nullify the disadvantages of the desktop mindset?