The Browserless Internet

It's not really a new a idea - here's a Network World article from more than six years ago talking about the idea. But I think we are going to hear lot's more about it real soon now. This week, Adobe Labs released the first public version of its much-heralded Apollo development environment, a cross-platform tool to build internet applications that live on the desktop, with all the additional solidity and security that can provide. Here's a video of a wee demo: a desktop application that manages e-bay auctions. We've been thinking about such applications for over a year here: last May I wrote in this blog The idea of the Internet and the browser have been welded together in our minds, but really the Browser is just one way to display the content we pull across the network. Developers are just starting to realize that what used to be thought of as desktop apps can access data and content from anywhere on the net just as a browser can. I'm convinced that this technology - not Apollo in particular - but internet delivered desktop apps using the public net rather than your office LAN as their infrastructure - are going to bring a lot of power and security to non-profit applications in the very near future. The major development platforms have been working with components that handle internet data and document access for years now; browserless internet apps can be built in virtually any of the existing desktop development environments popular today. So stay tuned.