Interesting because I have never heard the argument that developers prefer to design web sites over desktop applications.

As a developer, I have designed both desktop applications, as well as web sites in PHP, ASP, ASP.NET and even CGI. ASP.NET has made web development a lot more interesting because of its event driven model. I no longer how to worry about spending time writing JavaScript to take care of round trips to the server. It's almost exactly like programming a Windows application.

However, that said, I have to agree with the author of this article. Designing desktop applications is far more interesting, to me. Essentially, I agree with the author on every point, so I won't repeat anything, but I will say, that it is unfortunate that my experience with the end user is what ultimately forces many developers to design applications that run on a website.

For example, a lot of end users hate the idea of having to install software. Honestly, I'm not sure why. But many of my clients love that we can deploy to a web server and the application is instantly available to anybody within the organization that has a web browser. In addition to the ease of deployment, web applications are a lot easier to update because it usually (in my case) involves only updating two computers (the web server and the database server).

There are, however, great technologies that should be making desktop applications more appealing. Unfortunately, these technologies haven't gotten much attention. For example, One Click Deployment is a great idea because it permits applications to have to be manually installed only once. After that, the client can be designed to upgrade itself if an update is available. Computers can even be configured to permit non-administrators to perform these upgrades. One great example of this idea is the Paint.NET application.

I prefer to design web applications, and probably will do until someone solves the no-effort client update issue. ClickOnce is a step in the right direction, but it is still not as easy to update the client as it is to update a website.

gavinjoyce, could you maybe point out some issues that you've had with ClickOnce? Personally, I have never written an installer that used ClickOnce deployment --I've only used applications, such as Paint.NET that took advantage of the technology. However, in my limited exposure, I have been nothing but pleased.