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Then - almost like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home - the obvious and simple solution to recentralizing everything but the user interface became clear... web clients. With browsers becoming ubiquitous, and the success such examples as Amazon.com, it became clear that the server-side approach worked well. Other e-commerce sites confirmed this fact.

The web client architecture doesn't require ANYTHING on the user's machine except the web browser. Good e-commerce sites don't expect Java applets, CORBA, or even VRML capabilities. They respect the realities of the bandwidth limitations of their customers, and don't overburden them with fancy graphics.

In a word, web client architecture is very pessimistic about the capabilities of the client machine. This pessimism pays back because the PC is often doing much more than just browsing the web. In the case of someone trying to get their job done with your application, you want to be sure to give them something more important than a pretty picture... performance.

ContentsUser InteractionWeb clients

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