Web desktops - do you find it interesting?

Question

As a win32 developer moving into web deveopment the last few years, I found the
web desktops based on extjs very interesting.

Coolite Desktop (broken)
Ex

Answer 1

I think they serve as purely tech demos, I don't see the web desktop getting any traction unless Google jumps on this and offers all their major apps (Google Office, Gmail, etc) as apps within a web desktop.

Of course the whole desktop methodology doesn't exactly fit the browser mentality very well.

Answer 2

NO.

Also, Uncanny valley of UI.

Answer 3

the desktop metaphor in a web browser is neat, but

• the first link was still downloading images after 1 minute so i closed the browser
• the second link came up instantly and looked really good
• for intranet applications this might make sense
• for task-based site with multiple tasks this might make sense
• this isn't that new of a concept - BBS software had this 20+ years ago, and extended it to the web 8-10 years ago; the metaphor was not very popular because that's not how people use the web...yet!