About 1½ week ago, I met the CEO of Wipcore where he presented their new versions of their system for e-commerce.
Before
I met him, I had decided to question the previous version of their
tool, where the admin interface demanded that the user used Internet
Explorer on a PC, and the fact that they had to install a DLL fix for
computers that didn’t have developers programs with the necessary DLL
files.

I was going to
argue with him that, first of all, if the system is web based, you
shouldn’t need to install extra DLL files just to be able to run it,
because then the principle of being accessible from any computer falls.

Second
of all, you don’t want to (although being an admin tool where you can
ask for different criteria from the user/administrator) demand that
they use Internet Explorer on a PC. The least you can ask for, in my
eyes, is that it is available in at least one web browser per platform
among the three major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux. The only thing
that is needed to achieve this is that you, except for Inernet Explorer
on PC, make sure you support Firefox (who also contains support for
WYSIWYG editing through Midas).

But
before I got the chance to confront him about this, he presented their
new .NET based version of their admin tool that, lo and behold, wasn’t
even in a web browser interface any more. They had come to the
conclusion that they weren’t satisfied with the functionality and
stablility being offered in web browsers and had decided to build a
Windows application in .NET (a so-called Windows Form).

Since
the administrators in their respective implementations were so few, and
dind’t have any real interest in working in the system from other
computers or from, for example, home, they thought that a “real”
aplication suited them better.

I
haven’t really decided what I think about this yet. Part of me is of
the principle that as many things shall be web based and don’t require
any installations, that the only thing needed is a capable web browser.
On the other hand, I’m aware of the fact that, among other things, the
functionality that a Windows aplication offers can’t really be matched
by a web browsers.

So,
the question is: Have they chosen the correct path or not? Are we
trying to create too advanced solutions that web browsers aren’t
suited/ready for, or is it lack of of knowledge and competence that
results in companies avoiding web based interfaces?