Once upon a time, in order to create a new design and develop it, we would have to fire up Photoshop and craft our layout. We would then slice that up and open our editors of choice to get the development done. But thinking about it now, is that even necessary? With advanced browsers and online applications, can we complete the process online?
In the previous version of the site before I purged the database, I had written about an application called Phoenix from Aviary that was at a basic level, an online alternative to Photoshop that just ran straight from the browser and offered a lot of the same common functionality. Having the option to play around with layouts and designs online was fine but I would have still needed to export and download my designs to develop in my desktop editor.
That was until now. Well, until I had noticed the initial release of Mozilla Bespin anyway. Bespin is basically an online code editor that once again runs in your browser and offers a lot of the functionality you would expect from its desktop counterpart. The best way of explaining it would be to check out the video the team posted online.
A lot of the features are still being implemented and it’s very much early days in development but already, I can see the benefits of using this over my offline application. Imagine you are working on a project through Bespin and you are away from home without your laptop. You can now log in on any computer, go to your online dashboard and continue development or show a client what you have done so far. There are downsides to using it too but those that I spotted are being worked on. Such as collaboration. You’ll soon be able to share your projects with colleagues and work on the same things together.
Besides the design and development industry, there are now also multiple other alternatives to desktop suites that offer plenty of options. There are Google Docs which in its essence replaces the need for suites such as Microsoft Office. Clearly there are still plenty of desktop applications that have no online counterpart, but how long until that application you can’t live without is replicated and can be run from the comfort of your browser?
As always, thoughts are appreciated and welcomed, comments below!
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