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The early web days were spend developing basic web pages without any complex tools. These days everyone seems to think they need an application style site, and

by robmcm 11y ago

The early web days were spend developing basic web pages without any complex tools. These days everyone seems to think they need an application style site, and whilst some sites really do benefit from this approach, others don't. The trinity of web standards (html/js/css) are still valid for informational, mostly static web pages, but are impractical for developing applications. The discussion of what is a web application is a tricky one to put a finger on, with a lot of grey area. I think of a classic web page being the about us page of a website, while an application is something like photoshop. In between you have things like twitter, or gmail, amazon, facebook etc.

wanda 11y ago
I think what qualifies a web application is the introduction of state and enabling the manipulation of data. Static sites, or dynamic websites without the state problem to the end user, are naturally better off without a client-side app approach (though ajax is still beneficial and structuring your approach to ajax can make client app frameworks/libraries tempting) However, when you start giving the user powers to manipulate data and make the manipulation of data a core function of a website, it becomes a web application. Photoshop is an extreme example of a web app really, and perhaps the most basic web app would be something like a CMS or a forum. Hence why social networks and email clients are created as apps now: they involve repeated display and manipulation of elements which are liable to change. Initial attempts to improve the user experience of such tools as online chat and mail were made by using Ajax and this has culminated in asynchronous Ajax and virtual DOM models in order to achieve a real-time effect without sacrificing accessibility and performance. We went from reloading entire pages to reloading bits of pages to never loading those bits but rather constructing them on the front-end drawing data from APIs. Now with React and similar libs, we are looking at a hybrid approach: exposing data via API but (ideally) constructing and emitting HTML on the server before pushing the app to the client where a virtual abstraction of the DOM is established, but where data can still only be manipulated in one direction. This means that there is no state issue, because while routing and other interactions are achieved client-side, their composition is determined on the server. It's almost a dialectic cycle of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
- robmcm 11y ago
  > Hence why social networks and email clients are created as apps now I think a large part of the definition of "application" is subjective, personally I think social networks, such as a forum or twitter suffer from being an "application". You want to benefit from SEO, fast loading, responsive design, accessibility etc. However a chat app, that's personal and contains ephemeral content is a much better candidate for an application. I expect to see a different setup from other users, I don't want it to be searched, I expect different experiences on different devices etc. Another good example is tweetdeck vs twitter. One is very personal and customizable, the other is essentially a generic and universal between users. I think we are entering a phase of "everything is a single page app" because it's interesting and exciting. Similarly to the early days of mobile of flash development. Hopefully in a few years there will be a renaissance of the simple webpage, and application frameworks will be reserved for the use cases they really make sense for.

by robmcm 11y ago

wanda 11y ago

I think what qualifies a web application is the introduction of state and enabling the manipulation of data. Static sites, or dynamic websites without the state problem to the end user, are naturally better off without a client-side app approach (though ajax is still beneficial and structuring your approach to ajax can make client app frameworks/libraries tempting) However, when you start giving the user powers to manipulate data and make the manipulation of data a core function of a website, it becomes a web application. Photoshop is an extreme example of a web app really, and perhaps the most basic web app would be something like a CMS or a forum. Hence why social networks and email clients are created as apps now: they involve repeated display and manipulation of elements which are liable to change. Initial attempts to improve the user experience of such tools as online chat and mail were made by using Ajax and this has culminated in asynchronous Ajax and virtual DOM models in order to achieve a real-time effect without sacrificing accessibility and performance. We went from reloading entire pages to reloading bits of pages to never loading those bits but rather constructing them on the front-end drawing data from APIs. Now with React and similar libs, we are looking at a hybrid approach: exposing data via API but (ideally) constructing and emitting HTML on the server before pushing the app to the client where a virtual abstraction of the DOM is established, but where data can still only be manipulated in one direction. This means that there is no state issue, because while routing and other interactions are achieved client-side, their composition is determined on the server. It's almost a dialectic cycle of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

robmcm 11y ago
> Hence why social networks and email clients are created as apps now I think a large part of the definition of "application" is subjective, personally I think social networks, such as a forum or twitter suffer from being an "application". You want to benefit from SEO, fast loading, responsive design, accessibility etc. However a chat app, that's personal and contains ephemeral content is a much better candidate for an application. I expect to see a different setup from other users, I don't want it to be searched, I expect different experiences on different devices etc. Another good example is tweetdeck vs twitter. One is very personal and customizable, the other is essentially a generic and universal between users. I think we are entering a phase of "everything is a single page app" because it's interesting and exciting. Similarly to the early days of mobile of flash development. Hopefully in a few years there will be a renaissance of the simple webpage, and application frameworks will be reserved for the use cases they really make sense for.