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Web Navigation:
Resolving Conflicts between the Desktop and the Web
Web applications
In discussing applications in our workshop, we defined two
types of applications: Web applications and Net applications.
Web applications are essentially desktop style applications
whose primary reason for being viewed in or via a browser is
ease of deployment and are discussed here.
By contrast Net applications
use the Internet, but not necessarily the Web.
Page Metaphor
The complexity of these Web applications often results in a conflict
between the page metaphor and the application navigation. When
this occurs, the Web application should be run in a browser window
that has been stripped of its browser controls. This requires
opening a second browser window from the first one that was used
to navigate to the application. A word of warning: doing this
can result in the usability problems described in the next section.
Browser Dependency
Launching applications from a main browser window into a second
browser without browser controls as recommended in the previous
section is currently the best technique of making applications
available via the web without mixing metaphors. This technique,
however, has an unfortunate side effect. From the perspective
of the user, the second browser window isn’t a browser window
at all. It is the application window. The dependency between
the two windows is not clear in the interface. The user may intentionally
kill the browser and thereby inadvertently kill the application.
A technological improvement that was discussed in the workshop
was that of creating a plug-in model where the browser could
spin off an independent browser process or virtual machine for
each application that was launched. At present, none of the browsers
provide this functionality.
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