Design

Design for Web Applications

Web applications are software applications that run on web browsers. A well-designed web application takes advantage of the Internet’s access to information and worldwide connectivity. Designers can use everything they’ve learned from both desktop applications and informational web pages.

In general, a web application lets users do and save something, whereas a web page lets users find information. However, a web site can contain many small programs without necessarily being a web application.

The difference between desktop and web applications is that web apps can take better advantage of the Internet’s abundance of information and worldwide connectivity. For example, web applications can display live data-streams such as government statistics, baseball scores, and stock-market tickers rich help resources, and provide links to live chat, troubleshooting databases, policies and procedures documents, and much more.

Designing usable web applications continues to evolve as new technologies become available to increase the amount of interactivity and feedback available.