I know. “The Ajax Desktop” sounds like I’m taking things just a bit too far. But I wanted to point out that people are experimenting with things you’d associate more with the web.
To wit:
- Protopage:I was triggered to write this after discovering an awesome new Ajaxian app: Protopage (via FloatingSun). It's essentially a start page, similar to the portal efforts. However, it feels more like your desktop, with configurable background, colour schemes, and sticky notes. One really nice feature is an "Add to Protopage" link for website owners - an update of the old "Bookmark This Page!" (Does delicious have this?). Some patterns here include:
- Lazy Registration Register all you want, but the homepage really comes down to a unique URL, which is established immediately.
- Drag-And-Drop Another desktop-like feature.
- Popup For configuration.
- Ajaxian Screensaver: A post on creating an Ajaxian Screensaver. I made a comment in the Ajaxian Blog posting that linked to it about the possibility of a SETI webapp. Mostly tongue-in-cheek, but I can see it happening. It would be trivial to create (and critics might say it would be sufficiently slow to make a trivial contribution too).
- JSCalc: A calculator bookmarklet.
How far can it go? All we need now is a web-based splash-screen. Oh, wait!
