The Wonderful World of Web Applications

There is a flurry of web applications that are competitive with the (basic functions of) desktop applications. What they lack in full-featuredness they make up for in accessability and, well, webbiness. Here's some I tried and liked. Note that it is really fair to evaluate Web Applications on a fairly conservative benchmark as far as I am concerned; not because of the "limits of the media" (which are fairly nonexistant at this point) but because they are not in general the product of anything like the kind of financail investiment that most desktop apps have accrued to this point. For instance, none of the draw apps are backed by Adobe (for obvious reasons) so its not fair to expect them to surpass Photoshop or Illustrator.

However, they do hit many of the main functional benchmarks that those apps have pioneered -- layers, vectors, color and line style choice, etc. -- and add the additional value of being universally accessible and remotely maintainable. You don't have to worry about whether your system is "compatible" with a given web app -- as long as your browser is up to spec, you are solid. This takes a huge chunk out of the pain of the process of application use and development.

Further as a rule, they take a step out of the document dissemination process. Their work is already web accessible by default. This both takes a load off your hard drive and a step out of your delivery process in many cases. There is always of course the hazard of putting a body of work up in a companies' servers only to have them go down but this has yet to actually happen. Much work is in any case transient -- presentations, proposals, and documentation dates itself pretty quickly.

And most of all, their price point is far below that of their inspiration. You can get most web apps for under $100, which is a fair price for most people who need these tools in a non-mainline capacity.