But "the .NET runtime" will probably never be as ubiquitous as needed to be compared to a web app. Unless you're talking about an intranet application, that is. IE6 and Firefox cover enough computers to be considered "all of them". .NET does not and may very well never reach that point.

And even if somehow every computer did have the .NET runtime (doubtful) and some how they all had the same version of the .NET runtime (dang near unpossible in the next 7 years), you still won't be able to sit down at an internet caf?, rent a computer, and install an application with a URL like you can current check your GMail.

That "no installation" part is the beauty of what the original post was talking about. No muss, no fuss. Sure, .NET promises something similar eventually, but so did Java and it had a much wider target audience (i.e. not just current versions of Windows).

There was a time when not every computer had a web browser, too.

".NET promises something similar eventually"

It's here today. We build smart clients at work. Do you know how I deploy them? I copy files to a webserver. The user launches an .exe by typing a URL into their browser, or clicking on a bookmark:

https://internal.company.com/myapp/myapp.exe

.. and then the app loads. But don't take my word for it, try it yourself:

https://www.sellsbrothers.com/wahoo/wahoo.exe

Does that wahoo.exe link actually work? It didn't work for me. Nor would it work for a huge percentage of the population, a larger percentage than those for whom it would work.
Even if it did, there wouldn't really be a real difference between that and linking to a download, would there? That's not exactly impressive. ClickOnce (or whatever it will be called) is impressive but still doesn't address the cross-platform problem.
For internal applications that probably shouldn't have been web apps in the first place, "smart clients" are definitely a better replacement. I don't have the luxury of doing intranet development anymore, so in the "rich vs. reach" argument, "reach" always wins for me.

"How I wish developers would spend more time obsessing over user interface patterns instead of design patterns"

Oh yes please! Because the world needs more pretty apps that are poorly written because the developers had no architecture or design skills.

Form follow functionality. UI patterns are important but let's not pretend that a pretty app is more important than one that actually works.

I wish I was privy to all these pretty-but-functionless apps being developed (examples?). From where I'm sitting, I see mountains of complex, ugly software. I'd like a few throwaway apps that did one or two things well while looking cool.

Dang, I just summarized Apple's entire business philosophy. :)

Yeah, wahoo loads fine for me. There is a bit of a shortcut in IE, which hooks the IEExec.exe helper and makes it a one-click operation.

In Mozilla you have to "Save As..." on the .exe file and then double-click on it to launch it. Should work though, if you have the .NET framework.

I haven't tried wahoo in 2 or 3 years, at the time, you had to make security changes in order for it to work via the URL. I believe it originally worked during the first betas of .net v1 but security in .net or IE was cranked up a little shortly thereafter. From that point on, the percentage of people who have Windows + IE + .NET installed (which is already a huge requirement compared to "just type the URL and there?s your email") would not be able to run via the URL unless they downloaded a program to change security settings (which automatically disqualifies it from the "just type the URL and there?s your email" race) or the user would have to change the settings themselves (another disqualification. non-admins and my mom don't want to hear all that, they want to "just type the URL and there?s your email").

Wahoo does not work via IE for me but not if I download it. When I download and try to run it, I get "File or assembly name WahooControl, or one of its dependencies, was not found."

Oh, right. My mistake. You have to download and open the EXE via the browser prompt. The base path for a smart client is the URL. It has to know where it was "born" to retrieve any dependent assemblies.

That's really odd that it doesn't work via direct click in IE though. Works OK for me in XP SP2 and IE6, as one would hope. And for what it's worth, the Smart Client apps we deploy via our intranet work great for a couple hundred users running NT4/IE5.5 and XP/IE6.*

* Technically .NET 1.1 doesn't support NT4 as a client platform, but we just switched to .NET 1.1 two months ago (don't ask) and most of our NT4 clients are being rapidly phased out.

Over the last 6 years I have been consulting for large and small firms in the financial industry (e.g. hedge funds, investments banks, etc.) and have found that all (100%) of them have been investing more and more time in migrating from Windows or older UNIXes to Linux or Solaris on both servers AND workstations. This is not all corporations out there by any means, but a much larger percentage than I personally expected.

One major thing the blogger here is forgetting about is security! If I were a CIO I would NEVER dream of letting my employees access public .NET apps from a URL for them to do whatever they want. The Browser model of security is not great, but it is far better than having random apps run on your corporate networks! So in a nutshell the web-based public/personal email sites will still have the upper hand here and will do for the foreseeable future.

I am not saying that the visual look and feel is great at all these sites, but, honestly - who gives a damn if it looks like a desktop rich client that was designed by a small number of UI folk using their own preconceived ideas of what a rich UI should look like? To me and almost all my family (which are all non-techie other than myself) don't care as long as it functions the way they want it to!

.NET fans face it: apps on the corporate-level will be in-house developed or highly controlled by internal/outsourced IT watchdogs in any self-respecting business with an IT organization. .NET fans should NOT be competing with websites because their applications are VERY different indeed!

UI PATTERNS AND TECHNIQUESsite,a new designe patter for you...

Net fans have a glance on this website and you will hhave something good for youself.

Wow, it is 2008 and I've just read this!!! Nice post and so useful!