Web GUI vs Native GUI [closed]

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I'm trying to decide between a browser-based interface and a native interface for my app.

Can someone help me complete a list of Pro's and Cons?

All the questions around this subject always end up wit开发者_JAVA技巧h replies like 'web apps are easier to deploy or update', so to make it very clear: the app will run locally on the user's machine, it's not running on a server.

Example:

Web Gui

• Pros: Users can bookmark parts of the application
• Cons: Keyboard accelerators often don't work

Native Gui

• Pros: Application are integrated (can be minimized to system tray,etc)
• Cons: You have to create one for each platform (Win/Mac/Android/etc)

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If it's going to be a desktop application, then build a desktop application. You could use a portable language (e.g. Java) to build it so you wont need to port it to several platforms.

I'm not sure I see very many advantages to building a browser based application if you're not going to host it on a server (why is this not an option?)

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I seriously doubt if anything that is answered here would help you much. If you apparently cannot think of a comprehensive list of cons and pros yourself, you apparently don't know about opportunities and bottlenecks on each platform. There are many factors to this decision, and a choice cannot be made based on a general list anyone would post here, without knowing what you want to build.

If I were to give you a choice, build a server application. Build an application that can be controlled by REST calls. If that application works, you can choose to build a Desktop GUI, a web GUI or maybe both. The UI should be just a small part of your application after all, and you wouldn't want to have to rewrite all of the application if you needed to switch from Web to Desktop or vice versa.

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It depends on the features of the app. It is a simple data listing app with a small storage requirement, html5 based apps can be developed using technologies like AIR, Phonegap etc. If your app is very interactive, graphical based, and required very high performance, then Native may be a better go.

Going with HTML technologies gives the added benefit of targeting multiple platforms with one code base.

I have a write up on HTML5 vs Native vs Hybrid on my blog here. Hope it is useful.

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Try to evaluate the complexity of your interface, if you've got tons of data to show and tons of iteractions for the end user, just forget about web stuffs and go native.

Moreover, you need to clarify which language you intend to use. You can always resort to a web based GUI, but you will need to install on client machine at least a web server (or an application server if you go J2EE).

Regards

PS: from my point of view WWW is "JUST" a way to deliver content, not applications, HTML wasn't designed for complex graphics, and modern apps, just need a cool appeal (as long as you're not writing some mobile stuff with relatively simple interface).