May of us use hotmail or facebook or other web sites for communication and social networking. You ask anyone, the first add on they look for is some sort of notifier that sits on there desktop that tells them something has happened on a site they participate. This is particularly true in the case of heavy bloggers and the world of media.

So why not have your static content running on your desktop which simply calls out to the web site to “WEBSERVICES” to get updates on data and not just content.

Wouldn’t it be nice to develop a highly interactive web experience which sits in your tray and tells you a client wishes to talk to you or they have responded to your blog or a multitued of other possibilities.

I believe most of you are thinking of the internet as a one way medium and this is not where things are going. Deskrun, Javeline and the AJAX Implementation model allow for richer experiences being delivered through both traditional and other channels. The web is becomming about interactivity to passivity.

That’s nice, but until that quote becomes “is not an issue” there will be people who need to access their things like e-mail, notes and documents offline.

Not to mention the fact that the browser sucks as an interface for a custom application. Sometimes you need your own interface and full control. People need to stop confusing the web apps with apps in general.

Last time I checked my local computer store was chocked with software on the shelf.

Is there really that much need to bring web based apps back to the desktop? Granted there are some cases where it would be necessary to work offline, but surely that’s becoming less and less of an issue as broadband becomes more ubiquitous?

Is there really that much need to bring web based apps back to the desktop? Granted there are some cases where it would be necessary to work offline, but sureley that’s becoming less and less of an issue as broadband becomes more ubiquitous?

Example use cases for Deskrun would be big profile based community sites that can now have a more direct link between their users and the site as they can make little Deskrun applet that lives in your system tray, notifying the user directly when their friends get online or a new message has arrived.
Also, businesses that heavily use web-applications in their intranet environments, can now more easiliy get full functionality like local file access, your own icons and so on.

If ever could be ported to work on Mac and *nix, that would make it that much better.

commenters please remember that the internet is not just a vehicle for “sites” – at heart is a very cheap, very accessible transmission medium.

Let me answer some of your questions and points

Deskrun is a way to deliver your web-AJAX application to the desktop, with only a bit of extra work.
If you make your resources access (webservices) use local files, or a cache you can have your ajax application run as an executable. This has benefits for people who dont have continous internet access, such as insurance agents visiting clients but you would still want to use one AJAX development to fit offline as well as online use. This is not a step ‘back’ its just added usability for your development. It will actually function just fine as a ‘Flash’ deskrun if you use a flash file inside the HTML

But Deskrun has more features.
Deskrun contains a virtual-filesystem to access resources, this means that ‘packaging’ a deskrun application is really easy. Deskrun has a built in ‘webserver’ to access files. Such as: jav://app/file.jpg. When Deskrun runs unpackaged this ‘app’ folder points to a directory on your disk. When it is packaged, it points to a ‘sort of’ zip-file which is appended to the deskrun executable. The filesystem has many more features like easily accessing windows shortcuts, moving, copying, renaming, and has full access to the windows explorer namespace.Deskrun also contains a ‘http’ filesystem that can synchronize local files with a webserver (up and down).

On the presentation side, Deskrun allows you to make 8bit-alpha transparent windows, odd-shaped windows, borderless child IE windows inside your browser or MDI-child windows. Deskrun also has System tray functionality, system wide hotkey registration. It can ‘flash’ your windows, do message balloons on your tray and it has built in installer function.

In terms of multiplatform and Firefox use, DeskRun is built multiplatform, and the use of IE has been completely abstracted. I am currently experimenting with embedding a version of firefox inside Deskrun. The idea with deskrun is not like XUL, which is a completely separate environment. With a bit of thinking, it is really easy to make applications that run in Deskrun, as well as on the web. Javeline Framework has these abstractions built into its core.

I hope this answers your questions. Other questions or comments you can find me on the the developer forum at Javeline.org

Best,
Brad Neuberg