Lots of "Web 2.0" pundits like to argue that it is just a matter of time before Web applications make desktop applications obsolete and irrelevant. To many of these pundits the final frontier is the ability to take Web applications offline.  Once this happens you get the best of both worlds, the zero install hassle, collaborative nature of Web-based applications married to the ability to take your "apps on a plane".  Much attention has been given to this problem which has led to the rise of a number of frameworks designed bring offline capabilities to Web applications the most popular of which is Google Gears. I think the anti-Microsoft sentiment that courses through the "Web 2.0" crowd has created an unwanted solution to a problem that most users don't really have.

Unlike David Heinemeier Hansson in his rant You're not on a fucking plane (and if you are, it doesn't matter)!, I actually think the "offline problem" is a valid problem that we have to solve. However I think that trying to tackle it from the perspective of taking an AJAX application offline is backwards.  There are a few reasons I believe this

1. The user experience of a "rich" Web application pales in comparison to that of a desktop application. If given a choice of using a desktop app and a Web application with the same features, I'd use a desktop application in a heart beat. 
2. The amount of work it takes to "offline enable" a Web application is roughly similar to the amount of work it takes to "online enable" a desktop application. The amount of work it took me to make RSS Bandit a desktop client for Google Reader is roughly equivalent to what it most likely took to add offline reading to Google Reader.
3. Once you decide to "go offline", your Web application is no longer "zero install" so it isn't much different from a desktop application.

I suspect this is the bitter truth that answers the questions asked in articles like  The Frustratingly Unfulfilled Promise of Google Gears where the author laments the lack of proliferation of offline Web applications built on Google Gears.

When it first shipped I was looking forward to a platform like Google Gears but after I thought about the problem for a while, I realized that such a platform would be just as useful for "online enabling" desktop applications as it would be for "offline enabling" Web applications. Additionally, I came to the conclusion that the former is a lot more enabling to users than the latter. This is when I started becoming interested in Live Mesh as a Platform, this is one area where I think Microsoft's hearts and minds are in the right place. I want to see more applications like Outlook + RPC over HTTP  not "offline enabled" versions of Outlook Web Access.

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