Why are web applications more popular than local applications?

Question

I ask this because at work I am supposed to develop a web-application that is used in an intranet, by two people. It's an application that should keep some states in a workflow. So I have to keep data in a session and have to care about concurrency. It would be so much easier to develop a normal desktop-application. But the client was clear on this (I wished everything in the spec would be so clear): he wants a web application.

I know that many people don't want to install applications, but here are two users, and I'm able to install it on the computers of them.

So I want to know: What are the reasons, why webapps are so popular these days? Is it a hype and in two years the clients will demand more desktop-applications? Or is there something about webapps that makes them especially sexy/appealing?

Answer 1

Your point in general is false: web applications aren't more popular than local applications.

In your specific case, the client probably wants to take advantage of these things:

• seamless upgrades
• availability from any machine without you having to install client software
• "no crashes"
• ability to try it out before you finish the software
• perceived reduced cost.

If you happen to disagree with their evaluation, you could try to persuade them that your experience suggests that a web app is not the best fit for this.

Or perhaps you should consider exploring continuation-based web frameworks, such as Seaside. They make persisting state through stateless interactions more straightforward.