The web is wonderful and software as a service (SAAS) makes it even more useful, giving us the ability to access our documents, images and videos using sites like Google docs, flickr and youtube wherever we go without needing to bring it all with us. This ability to access content wherever we are provided we have an internet connection is one of the biggest selling points of SAAS but there are other things to consider before throwing desktop apps out the window for good, not the least of which is desktop cohesion.

When using a given desktop environment you expect the programs you use to be consistent in their UI and to work together. For example, when using the Gnome desktop environment as I am now it is expected that I can select an image in F-Spot (the Gnome photo management program) and choose to send it to one of my contacts in Evolution (the Gnome email client). This is pretty standard behaviour.

On the other hand when using web applications I have no way of selecting a photo on my flickr account and sending it via email to one of my google contacts. At the very best I have to download the picture, leave flickr, open gmail, compose the email and attach the picture. This seems far too much effort in comparison to the ease at which such a task is accomplished using the equivalent desktop applications.

A second issue is the lack of a common visual interface between web applications. Taking each individual web application separately there is (normally) a clear reasoning behind the design. However when looking at the web applications as a whole the user interfaces vary greatly and although they are all usable individually when switching between sites often (to email pictures to friends for example) the interfaces can become confusing as the user is having to context switch far to often.

SAAS is a very useful concept but unless all the software comes from a single company or a group that have agreed on standards to work with it will continue to fail at what should be very simple tasks that users are used to expecting from the desktop applications they are used to using. The core problem lies in the lack of a common standard for an interface, either visually or programatically, to be used by all web apps but the very idea of imposing a standard opposes core concepts of the web as a creative medium.

There are two obvious solutions to this problem. The first is dull, uninnovative and useless as a realistic solution and is to merely revert to desktop applications. This immediatly solves the problem but loses all the benefits of switching to SAAS in the first place. This ’solution’ is obviously not viable for anyone who desires the benefits of SAAS.

The second solution is to somehow create a common interface between the web applications. Whether this is by seperating the service from the interface and developing a variety of interfaces to fit with the users expectations or by creating a single common interface for the web apps is something that remains to be seen but until web applications improve the interoperability between apps the SAAS platform will be left lacking a very basic and vital feature of the desktop based competition.