Modules and Wholes

Web app design is a hot topic, with a good book published recently, Web Application Design Handbook : Best Practices for Web-Based Software.

I love the fact the web is getting smarter and more dynamic. Sadly, it seems there are some limits to have far this can go. Joel Spolsky, interviewed in Salon notes:

The other problem is the richness of the user interface. If you want
to make an application like, say, Photoshop, doing it on the Web would really suck. But there are ways you could consider making that happen. If you could have billions of gallons of Javascript, and if the Web browser gave you simple drawing capabilities and a simple canvas to draw on, then you could implement Photoshop 100 percent in Javascript. Trouble is, it's a lot of code, and Javascript is not an efficient language; it's not fast, and for security reasons, it's actually hobbled in all kinds of ways that people don't even know about. For example, by the time you give it about 500,000 Javascript statements, the Web browser just turns it off.