A friend of mine just showed this site to me today, which I apparently missed when it first debuted several months ago. It’s a nearly perfect re-creation of the Apple Keynote presentation-making application — or as nearly perfect as can be expected within a Web browser — built with the Cappuccino Web framework, which enables “desktop class applications” through JavaScript.
280 Slides is an impressive piece of work, but I wonder if it isn’t somewhat quixotic too. Though browser applications will inevitably become more desktop-like as they become more powerful, that doesn’t mean they should be designed to look and function like the software that lives on your hard drive. It’s still important to be true to the medium and the platform. That’s why Gmail is such a huge success; it doesn’t try to ape the desktop. Rather it makes the most of the strengths and weaknesses of the browser. Trying to re-create the desktop experience note-for-note seems like an ill-advised way to create a great browser application.
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