>Having said that, I think the basic goal of implementing a traditional >"operating system" UI in a browser is inherently flawed. While there may be >value in a lot of the technology, I doubt the "WinXP explorer shell" look >in a browser will ever take off.
I agree. I've seen people trying to create web OSes for 10 years. I've never understood why people thank that analogy will work--at least with current technology. Sure, people want low cost alternatives to pricey Microsoft products, but users can't do what they expect from real desktop software on the Web (at least not with having to go with addons/plugins.) For example, the biggest issue I've seen with 99% of implement WYWSIYG web-based editors (FCK, TinyMCE, etc, etc) is that inserting images does not work like it does in a traditional application. You can't just paste the image or drag-n-drop it to the canvas. I've used XStandard (a browser plug-in) in the past to resolve this issue (as it will upload binary objects via a web service automatically.) This works well, but still much slower than working in a local environment. Microsoft's been trying to push software rentals for a while and that's probably a more affective avenue than trying to build a web OS. I mean eyeOS looks nice (and seems to be quite a great achievement,) but I don't see people seeing this as a viable solution to computing. -Dan
