Client-side Code vs. Web 2.0

As a developer who specializes in client-side applications, I can't help but be amused and somewhat puzzled by some of the types of web-based applications people come up with. A great example are web sites that help resize and crop digital photos. There are actually a bunch of them out there; a few that were recently mentioned on digg.com (one of my favorite sites lately) include https://www.resizr.com/ and https://resizr.lord-lance.com/.

They seem to be missing the point. How could it possibly be better to upload a 5-10 megapixel image to a site (which can take several minutes per image even on a very fast connection, as upload speed is usually constrained much more than download speed), have the server resize it, and then download the resized image be better than using a client-side application to resize the image almost instantly, and with full interaction and nearly instant undo? Also, how can these sites afford the bandwidth costs?

Is this a usability issue, or has the world simply gone mad? :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 02, 2007
  Yes, I agree. While I like Web 2.0 sites a la Flickr, YouTube or online applications like webmailer, I dont see any benefit in using a Gump or OpenOffice online. Not only the time needed for up/downloading the data is stressful - have you ever thought about safety? Cross side scripting attacs and other "fine" things could steal your valuable data you dont want to share.

• Anonymous
  January 03, 2007
  They must want to be bought by flickr/yahoo type sites that already hold your photos

• Anonymous
  January 09, 2007
  Here Here. Go to http://www.go2web20.net/ if you want to see lots of useless Web 2.0 websites, although some are cool. One idea that amazes me is when someone writes a Web 2.0 app, that acts like an OS. Then they build in applications like email, and Word, Excel and so on. Why would I log in to a "Web OS" to access my email?