(2003-07-13) Tim Bray Thin Client

Tim Bray [on](http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/Webs The Place) the Software Industry Share Crop-ping, and the joys of the Thin Client. You're not a Share Cropper, especially not a sharecropper, if you're building on the Web platform. If you can define your value-add as a series of interactions via a browser, or an interchange of XML messages, nobody can whip the land out from under you... Browsers are more usable because they're less flexible.

But at some point things go wrong. Here's an overgeneralization which I think works. All computer applications fall into one of three baskets: information retrieval, database interaction, and content creation. History shows that the Web browser, or something like it, is the right way to do the first two. Which leaves content creation (where a Fat Client makes sense). Uh, where does Social Software/Collaboration Ware fall? There's lots of content creation there, but in many cases it's interactive with other people's creation, and therefore Reading And Writing become mushed together. Esp if Messaging moves toward an OHS/Node Web approach, modality disappears.