Why is BlogBridge a downloadable application and not purely web based?
Why is BlogBridge a downloadable application (like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon and others) and not a web based (like Bloglines and Findory?)
As the small yet energetic group of people bringing you BlogBridge, clearly we have to make some basic choices, and indeed web vs. app is one of the biggest ones. Truth is we know that we can’t possibly please everyone and that’s ok.
Even our newest BlogBridge topic expert, Richard MacManus, prefers web-based systems. Is it because Richard’s beat is Web 2.0?
I am not going to tell you that having an application is always better than being a web site - and I am not necessarily agreeing with the opposite either.
But I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why we chose the path we chose:
- Rich user experience: No matter how wonderful your AJAX is, there are still well known and severe limitation to the kind of elegant user interface you can build. Lots of people like GMail, but even more love Outlook.
- Highly responsive: Achieve a speed and responsiveness, with drag and drop, direct manipulation, elegant controls that are just wonderful.
- Doesn’t require a web connection: I guess this speaks for itself. I can use BlogBridge without a live internet connection. Yes, always-connected is coming, but it’s been coming for, what, 10 years?
- Decentralized infrastructure: Maybe a bit parochial, but to run a web based application we would have to provide a scalable infrastructure of servers (like you can be sure Weblines have.) With our approach, you bring your own CPU cycles.
- I’m a desktop-app guy: Definitely parochial. My background and interest is in rich user interfaces that really leverage the platform and are just nice to look at, so that was my bias when we first started.
No doubt there are some disadvantages, and I know them well: applications need to be downloaded and installed, which is a real barrier for users; if you use more than one computer, you need to install the application on each one.
These are not religious positions, I am not claiming that I’m making a bulletproof argument - I am not trying to start an argument! - just giving a little bit of the background of why BlogBridge is the way it is, that we realize that it’s not for everyone, but that we believe it’s good for our target users.
I chose BlogBridge as my daily news reader because it takes the best advantage of the usability that desktop GUIs can provide with minimal sacrifices in terms of the convenience and flexibility of Web apps.
Java Web Start, though probably not the runaway success that Sun may have hoped, really gives users the advantages of a Web application on the desktop: you can run the app on any PC (with a Java VM) no matter the platform and you get instant and automatic updates as soon as the developers deploy them. The remaining advantage, accessing your subscriptions and preferences anywhere you go, is provided by the BlogBridge service.
I make my living on Web technology, and see as much potential in Web 2.0 as the next guy, but in information-rich domains like this one, desktop applications do the job and they do it well. Why be at the mercy of a browser-based interface?
Besides that, all the online services I’ve tried (and even many hybrid services) make sacrifices in functionality or customizability in order to ease the burden of infrastructure on the application provider.
In the case of NewsGator, for example, the FeedDemon desktop app receives the content for feeds that are synchronized between multiple locations from NewsGator’s own server rather than fetching the content directly. As a result, users operate at the mercy of NewsGator’s fixed refresh interval and occasional server outages.
NewsGator has sacrificed some advantages of desktop applications in order to support a Web application interface in parallel. BlogBridge doesn’t make that sacrifice, and that’s why I use it.
Comment by Kevin Yank — September 26, 2005 @ 6:14 pm
As long as their is an API you can let someone else build a web-bridge but I think it is something that is worthy of keeping a pulse on.
I have a home and work, workstation. At both of these locales I have BlogBridge running. However I have a slow old Ti400 book which runs BB too slow, and my wifes lappy, and a few work terminals which I only have web-privs on. I like to sit and hunker over news or searches/agents on my big boy machines but I feel disconnected when I can’t get to my feeds elsewhere. Especially when I am in the field and my Palm/Treo has no ability to see any Bridge goodies.
So I understand applications, and I like what you can do with them locally, but I get a lot more disconnectedness than when I used to use a web-based service. Luckily BlogBridge has such a strong draw with me due to it’s abilities I just can’t give it up now! I only hope that more and more creative endeavours spread and other views into my reading world are available in time.
-a
Comment by Andy Ciordia — September 28, 2005 @ 9:09 am