Developers Re-examine Rich-Client Apps

Computerworld - ORLANDO -- Some corporate developers last week said they will consider switching from Web applications back to their old, familiar rich-client applications because of unpromoted features that they're just now discovering in Microsoft Corp.'s .Net framework.

Many developers had shifted to Web browser-based clients because that soothed the headaches they had encountered when developing, distributing, deploying and maintaining rich-client applications. The trade-off was that they lost the highly graphical user interfaces and, in some cases, intensive data entry and calculation capabilities that many users had grown to expect.

"Sometimes we had to tell the client that what they wanted was unrealistic for the Web platform," said Marc Ginns, an application analyst at Duke Energy Corp. in Charlotte, N.C.

Ginns said his firm's new development focused largely on Web applications, following Microsoft's lead. But he said his group will re-evaluate its Web thrust, based on new features in the .Net framework such as the Windows Forms set of class libraries and design environment for building user interfaces in a consistent way.

"We're not going to go completely back to Windows Forms. We're going to evaluate where it makes sense," said Lisa Woerner, another application analyst at Duke Energy.

It's not just the Microsoft environment that's seeing a resurgence of rich-client development. Mark Driver, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., said he has seen increased use of client-side Java, a trend he began noticing about 18 months ago as users encountered the limits of HTML for rich GUIs.

Daryl Plummer, also a Gartner analyst, said developers should get as far as they can with HTML, scripting languages and their design skills in developing thin clients and move to richer clients when they see a clear need.

"Microsoft and others led all of us down the path of Web apps, and we went happily," he said. "But Microsoft had to make sure that they didn't lose their value proposition, which was the desktop. So they had to find a way to retain the Web dominance and bring back the rich client, which kept their PC desktop domination alive."

Taking Notice

Among the .Net framework features that caught the attention of developers attending last week's VSLive and Gartner application development conferences here were "no-touch" deployment and the new platform's ability to run old and new application components side by side so that old applications won't break when new applications or application components are installed.

Although those features shipped with the .Net framework in February, several developers said they didn't take note of them, since Microsoft's marketing efforts focused on Web services and applications.