Catching Up On the Server Side
Even Amazon?
Fat and Rich—Furthering the Lead
The Microsoft Mobility Mission
Forms, Clients, and Developer Kudos
End-User Productivity Really Does Matter
James Governor
September 24, 2002
A significant problem with pure browser-based apps, with their update-and-refresh usage model, is that state is maintained in the network rather than on the client. This lessens the functional possibilities. There are also associated difficulties of navigation because of the page/update model—click the "back" arrow a couple of times in the browser, and who knows where your order went?
Take Amazon.com's web site, an excellent browser-fronted app for order entry. This is from the company that invented one-click buying; the company that invested millions of dollars improving usability as part of an ongoing improvement process. And it shows. Amazon's front end is a useful and somewhat intuitive application. But even this prime example of thin-client development lacks the immediacy and responsiveness that a run-of-the-mill Windows app can provide. For a less experienced customer, even the Amazon application model is not always so intuitive. ("How can I cancel just one CD from that order?") And Amazon.com sets the usability bar very high. Not every Web app out there—in fact very few—offer the Amazon level of commitment, resources, or attention required to build really usable, intuitive, thin-client applications.
Even aside from other weakness, the ability of the user to "see where they are" in a browser-based interaction tends to be limited, seriously damaging their usability compared to Windows-based apps. In many cases the thin-client user, not the application, has to remember to check all the order details. There is a lack of transparency into the transaction. The application may subsequently run the transaction correctly at the back end, with full integrity, but that is of no use if the order was wrong in the first place.
Of course this is not to say that fat clients always offer better usability—far from it; to a large degree it is a function of the design of the app. We have all used terribly designed fat-client applications, and regretted it. Anyone that has ever sat down in a hotel room with an older version of Windows trying to adjust their network setting knows just how poor the usability paths of this app can be. Are these modem settings? Network settings? VPN settings? How many windows must I open just to get dialup?
Poor design can ruin both fat-client and thin-client apps, but browsers do suffer from an inherent disadvantage with their refresh model, alongside the other limitations we have discussed. In design terms the inherent advantage of thin clients is that the developer has to be that much smarter about ensuring the app works well—which brings us back to Amazon. Our intention is not to criticize Amazon, which is well designed within the parameters of Web interaction, but to point out that richer clients do offer some native advantages when it comes to the user experience—including data persistence, network independence, and flexibility.
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