Talk:Web application

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[edit] History

Could someone translate the history part from the corresponding german article. It is much better described there. I would do it, but im not good in translations.

[edit] Please stop deleting relevant links and information

If one does not wish to discuss web-app and/or webapp and restrict the dicussion only to web_application, then there is no reason to be over inclusive and reserve these redirect links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-app and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webapp

One does not need to have an IQ of 250 to understand that. Either you include it and allow content about it as well as links or you release the redirect and allow someone else to start an article about it.

Other issue: why are people changing/deleting relevant content without even checking? I see one of the guys here has been doing nothing for the last 6 months except going around and reverting articles everywhere in wiki, signing: Spam or vandalism. I assume that he means to his own Spam and vanadalism.


Well, it is possible to set up a page WebAPP and still have Webapp redirect to Web application with a disambig link at the top of the article. And, if you mean me in that last comment, have you bothered to look at some of the articles I've been reverting, or did you just assume that because I am disagreeing with you, I must not be able to make any correct decisions? Veinor (ヴエノル(talk)) 14:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, I will do it, I also hope you could keep a link to this article when done as an external link to prevent confussion.

Thank you and merry christams & happy Hanukka! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.164.214.186 (talk • contribs) 09:07, 15 December 2006.

Note that, in order to do so, you will need to register an account.

[edit] Weblogs as web applications

On the Talk page for weblog I'm trying to convince a guy called Stevie that a weblog is not a web application. He doesn't get it. --robotwisdom 23:05, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't see what name calling will get you. Weblogs and all the standard features that go along with them could only be handled by way of web applications. What else do you propose handles all these features? Magic? — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 23:16, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

Blogs are web applications. If they aren't web applications, then what exactly are they?!??! --Niclinley 00:51, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, if you look at the whole Talk:Weblog mess, you'll see that the point thrashed out through much discussion was that although nearly all weblogs are Web applications, not all weblogs are Web applications, so it would be inappropriate (at least according to some people) to treat weblogs as a subclass of Web applications (in the object-oriented programming sense). --Coolcaesar 04:18, 19 August 2005 (UTC)



[edit] Rewrite

Good job on the rewrite and merging from "browser-based". However, I am a bit concerned about the following sentence:

Because of their architectural similarities to traditional client-server applications, with a somewhat "thick" client, there is some dispute over whether to call systems of this sort "web applications"; an alternative term is "rich internet application".

It would be a good idea to provide a source for this dispute. Flash and Java applets are indeed applications delivered over the web, with code updates made only on the server-side (with the rare exception that a plug-in or JRE needs to be upgraded to a particular version, but this applies to any web applications that may utilize their resources). With no need for traditional client distribution, I don't see how they can be seen differently from a web application. One could compare the web browser to common plug-ins and the JRE (which merely make the thin client a little thicker), as being tantamount to OS fixtures, as they are so ubiquitous.

I am not looking for a back-and-forth argument here and these will be the last words I say on the matter. But I will be looking for a source. Thanks. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:43, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

That sentence was based on conversations I've had with people who either work or teach in the field, so I don't have any print or web source to cite. Their argument was that a well-designed client-server system can update a thick client transparently over the internet in much the same way as you'd update a cached Java applet (what MS is trying to do with Windows Update), the difference between a browser-executed app and an OS-executed app is arbitrary (see DoJ vs. MS), and some of those "applets" get pretty darn chubby. The disinction's getting blurrier; I was trying to acknowledge that, instead of simply asserting my own position (that a browser-executed Flash app is just as much a web app as anything done with HTML & Javascript). In retrospect, "disgreement" would be better than "dispute", because no one in any of these conversations lost their temper. :) Tverbeek 23:40, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It appears that a potential rewording lies in the words you use to your response here. Clarity is a Good Thing (TM). — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 00:15, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Interface

I was a bit surprised to see the statement:

"The Web interface places some limits on client functionality. Application-specific methods such as drawing on the screen, and more general-purpose techniques such as drag and drop are not supported by standard browser technology."

I am not sure whether this is untrue or just misleading. Go to this web application, and, if you have Java (pretty standard in browsers these days), you will find that your standard web browser does indeed support a drag and drop interface. The whole application is based on it.

In fact, we could also note that "drag'n'drop" is at this time quite perfectly done using javascript (even more supported than java, and more transparent). For example, script.aculo.us - Folletto

I've updated this section. Java and Javascript are pretty standard now in web browsers. Stephen B Streater 07:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The earlier statement "the web interface places some limits on client functionality" is more accurate. The browser interface places limitations in client design and performance because of the controls available and the inability to use local machine resources. The AJAX initiative attempts to address some of this by enabling richer interfaces and a Smart Cleints architecture enables local resources to be used as well as providing a richer interface. Nevertheless a web application has limits and it is misleasing to say otherwise. --Richardsgray 17:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization issue: "Web application" v. "web application"

It looks like we're encountering yet another American English v. Commonwealth English issue again. I just ran some searches on Google with the site: operator to confirm my suspicions. Most American technology news sources prefer "Web application," including News.com, InternetNews.com, InfoWorld.com, PCWorld.com, and eWeek.com. The same goes for major newspapers like the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News.

I think the article should remain in American English because the Manual of Style policy is to allow non-country-specific articles to remain in the dialect in which they were originally drafted. Also, although the first Web application was developed at CERN, the vast majority of Web applications as well as the underlying architectures (ColdFusion, ASP, CGI, etc.) were all developed in the United States.--Coolcaesar 01:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

"Web" is becoming decapitalized. See [1]. --Brunnock 01:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm aware of that article by Wired News, but I don't see its relevance. One, it's about the Internet, not the Web. Two, even if it's relevant, Wikipedia is supposed to follow trends, not set them. See the Wikipedia:No original research policy. Most mainstream publications are still using "Web application," and Wikipedia is not a soapbox for advocacy of the minority spelling. Also, I just discovered that Microsoft Corporation uses "Web application." --Coolcaesar 02:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
You didn't read the article. The very second sentence states, At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net. Anyways, you can do a search on "Web" and "capitalization" on Google. The first 3 hits advocate a lowercase spelling. --Brunnock 02:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, many of the other hits returned in response to that search are advocating the use of the uppercase spelling because it's what the Associated Press (and therefore much of the mainstream American English media) uses. Wired News is standing alone in its position; the vast majority of newspapers and magazines are deferring to AP style because most American journalists are trained to write in AP style as a matter of habit. I'm aware that many blogs have followed Wired News on this one, but the last time I checked, this is Wikipedia, not "Blogopedia." Wikipedia should be following the style that's verifiable, traditionally widely used, and not original research. --Coolcaesar 03:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that the "web" is not a proper noun with respect to the concept of a "web application". This is because a web application can run on a single PC using a web server on the same PC. And a web application can run on an intranet, arguably not part of the World Wide Web. A web application only becomes a Web application if the application is designed solely for the public Web. And most web applications I've seen can run on the public Web, an intranet or a just a desktop PC. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 04:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I find the above comment convincing. My feeling is that "web application" should be lower case, except in the title. As it happens, Web 2.0 applications generally do run only on the Web, but even the first line of the web application definition includes intranet.
On a related issue, capitalising "internet" annoys all my non-techie friends. I notice that it is still called "Internet" here. Stephen B Streater 05:34, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know, "Internet" is a proper noun, referring to the one-and-only Internet. I see it as a sort-of brand name for the thing. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 20:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The Queen is captialised - there can only be one queen important enough to be called the Queen after all!. Places are also capitalised. We could argue that the Internet is a place, and so should be capitalised. Non-techies think that it is arrogance, like saying "I work in Banking" would be - ie my job is more important than yours. There is and can only ever be One Internet, and I work in IT (if you can forgive the pun). The Internet is unique like the Queen, unlike your thing which is merely one of many.
I think that these new ideas are capitalised, but familiarity breeds contempt, and the Web -> web browser, web applications and The Internet -> internet software, internet hardware etc. It's just a question of how far along we are. "Web 2.0", but "the internet" is where my audience is at.
World Wide Web is a proper name. Web is simply short for WWW, therefore, it is still a proper name, and all proper names are capitalized, as the English language dictates. Wired stands alone in their use of the uncapitalized word, and their reasons are faulty. The internationally recognized official Web standards are established and published by the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C and can be found at the site [www.w3.org]. It must be acknowledged that the standard (i.e correct) is always a capitalized W whenever referring to the World Wide Web in any form, including: Web, Web site, Web page, Web server, etc. Structured systems such as the Internet, and civilized society in general, function and succeed, based on well established standards, protocols, definitons, principles, and yes, even rules (laws). To abandon those leads to confusion.
Claim: Because one or more established commercial media publishers (Wired was a paper periodical before they expanded to e-publishing on the Internet.) may change their corporate style manual or ignore their own established standards and practices at any point in time, that somehow makes them a public authority on standards useage outside their individual company.
Answer: False. Media publishers (commercial or not) are a priviliged subset of society that is able to compose, publish, and somewhat enforce their own style manuals, intended for internal application. It is society at large, or else certain industry specific consortiums which must choose, establish and attend to any designated authoritarian entity on standards. Countless many of those exist, e.g. SI, ASCII, etc., and apply to global society as well as to technical realms including the Internet. As stated in the intro to this Wiki article, it is the Associated Press which society (at least in America) recognizes as the current standard bearer for journalism (including e-publishing on the Web). Wired can freely do as they please, without being burdened unjustly as any kind of standards bearer. ~ UBeR 17:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I use a capitalised Web in order to promote a single unified Web. A lowercase web implies several different sorts of "web". For example some mobile industry players have wanted to create a "mobile web", which would fragments the Web as it is today. Hendry 10:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:CITE and WP:V. Thank you. --Sean Brunnock 02:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please provide hard evidence of common shorthands for "web application" before posting to article

Add your evidence here. And Google hits isn't "evidence". — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 00:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I concur with Stevietheman! What the hell is a webapp? As a former programmer, I wrote Web applications, not webapps! --Coolcaesar 00:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Why don't you visit the WebApp article and see what that has to say? --Sean Brunnock 01:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
WebApp redirects to the web application article. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:10, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Now I remember. There used to be a magazine called "WebApps". The WWWC still has a page for it- [2] . --Sean Brunnock 01:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Google results are evidence of the popularity of words or terms. Usage is what makes a language. What else do you want, a search of all of [LexisNexis]? I'm a programmer and have written web applications too, and I completed one this week, and I've known about the word webapp for a long time. Even if it's not an official part of the language by your definition, Google shows that it's used often enough to be mentioned here. -Barry- 02:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
What part of the world are you in? It could be we're seeing a divergence between different dialects of English. This is a major problem on Wikipedia in general. --Coolcaesar 04:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
East Coast, U.S.A., and if "webapp" was used here only, it should still be mentioned. Personally, I don't like the looks of the word, and I thought it should be "web app" until I searched Google, but it's used often enough to be in Wikipedia. I never heard of "weblication" at all until I researched it, and I think even that should be mentioned. -Barry- 06:50, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I was going to propose "Web app" as a compromise, but Google gives me 13.6m hits for Webapp, including: Apache. Stephen B Streater 07:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
"Popularity" of a term doesn't make it encyclopedic. How about actually showing genuine technical articles that commonly use the term "webapp". Note that the use of "webapp" as simply a shortcut or a sloganeering or a magazine name won't cut it. I know IBM was calling them "weblications" at one point in genuine technical articles. I don't know if "webapp" was ever an official alternative name for "web application" unless that can be proven. Weblogs came to be officially known as blogs when that new version officially took over and was widely recognized; I don't see anything of the sort occurring for "webapp". — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:10, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand. How does a term like blog "officially" take over? WebApps magazine was edited by the World Wide Web Consortium and Tim Berners-Lee was on the editorial board. How much more official do you want to get? --Sean Brunnock 21:44, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
So what---advertisers make up cute names for things all the time. Just because iRobot calls its vacuum cleaners Roombas doesn't mean all robotic vacuum cleaners are automatically Roombas, right? I think what Stevietheman is looking for is verifiability in the sense that well-respected sources like the New York Times are actually using "webapp" on a regular basis. Or, since we're talking about computer stuff here, reliable sources like Dr. Dobb's Journal or Communications of the ACM would probably do just as well. If you can dig up several solid citations to show that the general or technical press is actually using "webapp" on a regular basis, then I think no one would have an issue with that term being mentioned in the article. The reason we're having this debate is because I and several other editors simply haven't seen the word "webapp" in common use. --Coolcaesar 22:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
You're equating the W3C with a vacuum cleaner company? --Sean Brunnock 22:51, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's not like the title "WebApps" went through the full W3C recommendation process, like Uniform Resource Identifier did. The point is that some things are promulgated as official standards and others are just informal usages. In the latter case, it's important to get evidence of widespread and consistent usage. --Coolcaesar 04:48, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Uniform Resource Identifier was such a popular phrase that the top 2 search results for it are IETF and the RFC, the third is the Wikipedia article, and the rest are reprints of either the RFC, or of Wikipedia... Another triumph design by committee? Ojw 14:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC) who's wondering what answer you'd get if you asked a random web user what the Uniform Resource Identifier of google's home page was...
Here are the 751 results from Google Scholar for the word webapps. -Barry- 06:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I already stated that Google results don't prove the point here. You have to show that the term is in regular common use in technical or business journals, as a web application is a technical and/or business entity. Just because there's a slang for "web application" doesn't qualify it as an alternative term. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 05:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Google Scholar, not Google.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html
"Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research." -Barry- 05:45, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Could this question be resolved by citing some of the relevant searches from Google Scholar, rather than the totals? If Google Scholar is as good as they say, it should be possible to pick out a few choice refences from reputable sources. Stephen B Streater 07:15, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I found the following with Google book search-

  • Web applications, or WebApps, also have a very well-defined runtime environment., Learning Java, ISBN 0596002858
  • As time passed, HTML was augmented by development tools (e.g., XML, Java) that enabled Web engineers to provide computing capability along with information, Web-based systems and applications (we will refer to these collectively as WebApps) were born., Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, ISBN 007301933X
  • We define a Web Application, or WebApp, as a WIS component that covers at least one of end-users' goals., Web Engineering: Principles and Techniques, ISBN 1591404339

--Sean Brunnock 14:52, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Client side web applications

See, for example [3] has client side Java classes listed. Stephen B Streater 01:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

You're misreading both this article and the article you linked to. Java applets are not web applications. Web applications run on a remote server. You can interact with web applications with an applet, but an applet by itself does not constitute a web application. --Sean Brunnock 12:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I haven't found anything to contradict what you say, so it looks like you're correct - I'll leave the wording up to you. As it happens, all the web applications I can think of have server and client side parts, so meet your criteria. Stephen B Streater 12:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Then again, what if you're running a web server on your PC and you use a browser to access a web application running on your PC? It's not a remote server, but it's still a web application. So the current definition looks good to me. --Sean Brunnock 12:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what part of the current article is in question, but using an application that's on your own web server still means that the application is running on the server side as opposed to in your browser. It's even less of a web application if it's a non-web application server. If you have a cgi emulator, you could use a web browser to interface with software on the same computer with no web server and no internet connection. One reason that wouldn't be a web application even though a web browser is involved is because you wouldn't be using it as a web browser, even if you're on an HTML page with a form that interfaces with an application.
And I agree that a Java applet isn't a web application. It's software that you download to your computer. I don't think it matters whether it runs in your web browser or not. -Barry- 14:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Isn't the simpler explanation that java applets aren't World Wide Web, as defined on that page as hypertext, resource identifiers, client-server and markup? i.e. a web-application can be expected to use HTTP, HTML, and URLs (or equivalent). Ojw 14:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Some Java applets are client-server. For example, my own company's Clesh. It runs in an HTML web page with a URL, and it communicates with the server through HTTP. Stephen B Streater 14:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Ojw: The "combination of four basic ideas" list doesn't give a perfectly accurate definition of markup language. I think the definition of hypertext could apply to a Java applet too.
Stephen: The client-server applets would be web applications. -Barry- 15:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikipedia as example

I would think readers unfamiliar with the subject would find it interesting to be reminded that wikipedia itself is an example of a web app. Is there any reason why it's not mentioned here as a particularly relevant illustration (and in the Application Service Providers article)? ["wiki" is mentioned very briefly in a passing list near the top, but doesn't really make the point with any impact.]

[edit] Removing the external link - reBOX API

I think this external link shouldn't be included in this article. It is an advertisement and I would like to remove it. Mayankkapoor (talk) 14:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)