Depends on who's paying the bills.

SAP is still web-based and millions are still paid to access it.
Basecamp is a milliondollar app and is web-based.
peoplesoft applications are web-based and is also a million dollar app.
finacle (used by many nigerian banks) is web-based and also million-dollar app.
Jira atlassian,
Microsoft sharepoint(web based and used by any company worth its salt)

wake and smell the flowers people. If you are not skilled enough to architect a proper web application say so.

Just say you are content with writing applications for clinics and schools and not interested in going after the real big spenders in IT worldwide (the banks, energy, telecoms and transport companies). Can you actually imagine an airline installing applications all over the place instead of running a centralized website? makes little sense(no offense intended. sorry).


Besides a company like firstbank will not be complaining about NEPA will they? do you complain about NEPA when booking your Arik flight? no. you find a cafe with gen and book. so thats not even an argument.

In this case, the figures speak clearly too not emotions. Change your target customers and stop worrying about figures.

kodewrita, you get the point. It depends on who is paying the bill. I'm not targeting banks and big spenders. My niche market does not require complex nor web-based solutions at the moment.
Another fear is that I have over 2000 affiliates (mostly from Regnow and Avangate) all over the place marketing my products, and if I go web-based I may lose most of them.

The issue here is not having enough skills to architect a proper web application. In fact, I've found web-app far easier to develop than desktop versions. Skills can be acquired when the goal has been set and determination to succeed prevails. After all nobody was born a programmer. If you've read my previous post attentively, I stated that things may change in nearest future, meaning I'm open to new developments and don't claim to know everything. I'm still learning and will continue to do so.

And by the way, even if you go web-based and, by some miracles, you succeeded in developing applications that supercede Microsoft SharePoint and the rest, how do you plan to market your products? What are the resources at your disposal? Where do you get the million-dollar marketing budget from? At best, you will sell to local banks in your state. That is not my vision of a successful software business.

Lastly, if you're interested you can team-up with me to combine resources. But you must first provide me with some sample project of yours so I can assess you by result and not only by empty words. Upload some of your work somewhere online and PM me with download link.
Who knows, this may be the beginning of a fruitful partnership.

Have a nice day.

Joseph Ogunbiyi,
author and publisher,
http://www.josytal.com - Affordable Software for Small and Medium Businesses.


P.S.
The web-based version you see on my website is half-complete project and I’m still contemplating on whether to continue or discard the whole thing. Opinions and criticism always welcome. Always.

Developing web apps are most often more difficult than developing standalone apps
especially when you have to create really intuitive GUIs or when parts of your
program have to be "statefull".A lot of Web developers complain that session
management is a pain in the butt.

very correct. If i have to choose between writing a very rich GUI in c# or Flex for example i will choose c#.

Deployment: Now this is where most people believe that web based apps are of the
most advantage but I don't always agree,

This is no longer an issue these days. With ClickOnce in .net you can autodeploy changes to users at anytime. The java equivalent is called webstart

I don't know if you mean using HTML/javascript, because am pretty sure that with Silverlight 4 you can access your web camera, printer and play game online with game controller (while running in full trust). Even the coming HTML 5 will let you do some of those as well.

@Syma, my original post was made back in 2007. That's ages ago in the IT world. A lot have changed from 2007 to 2011. But think of it, even if you use Silverlight or Flash, your users' browsers don't support them out of the box. They each need to install plug-ins to use peripheral devices. I am not sure but I think HTML5 will change that all.

Depends on who's paying the bills.

SAP is still web-based and millions are still paid to access it.
Basecamp is a milliondollar app and is web-based.
peoplesoft applications are web-based and is also a million dollar app.
finacle (used by many nigerian banks) is web-based and also million-dollar app.
Jira atlassian,
Microsoft sharepoint(web based and used by any company worth its salt)

wake and smell the flowers people. If you are not skilled enough to architect a proper web application say so.

Just say you are content with writing applications for clinics and schools and not interested in going after the real big spenders in IT worldwide (the banks, energy, telecoms and transport companies). Can you actually imagine an airline installing applications all over the place instead of running a centralized website? makes little sense(no offense intended. sorry).

@Kodewrita, is that then a proof that web apps are replacing standalone apps. Why point at very big companies and ignoring the mass market.

You get the point. It depends on who is paying the bill. I'm not targeting banks and big spenders. My niche market does not require complex nor web-based solutions at the moment.
Another fear is that I have over 2000 affiliates (mostly from Regnow and Avangate) all over the place marketing my products, and if I go web-based I may lose most of them.

The issue here is not having enough skills to architect a proper web application. In fact, I've found web-apps far easier to develop than desktop versions. Skills can be acquired when the goal has been set and determination to succeed prevails. After all nobody was born a programmer. If you've read my previous post attentively, I stated that things may change in nearest future, meaning I'm open to new developments and don't claim to know everything. I'm still learning and will continue to do so.

And by the way, even if you go web-based and, by some miracles, you succeeded in developing applications that supercede Microsoft SharePoint and the rest, how do you plan to market your products? What are the resources at your disposal? Where do you get the million-dollar marketing budget from? At best, you will sell to local banks in your state. That is not my vision of a successful software business.

Lastly, if you're interested you can team-up with me to combine resources. But you must first provide me with some sample project of yours so I can assess you by result and not only by empty words. Upload some of your work somewhere online and PM me with download link.
Who knows, this may be the beginning of a fruitful partnership.

Have a nice day.

Joseph Ogunbiyi,
author and publisher,
http://www.josytal.com - Affordable Software for Small and Medium Businesses.


P.S.
The web-based version you see on my website is half-complete project and I’m still contemplating on whether to continue or discard the whole thing. Opinions and criticism always welcome.

I like this forum, greetings all