Python and Java are relatively painless in this regard. >Even today, it's a giant pain to write cross-platform apps in anything but C or C++ This is actually easier due to better cross-platform toolkits that were developed and would have continued development even if webapps hadn't become a thing. There are still cross-platform applications from a single code base. Certainly a reason, but not the definitive one.

>The reason we can use linux as a desktop is because of web applications. Those days are still here, depending on the application. >Where would we be today if you couldn't swap between Mac and Windows laptops - or worse, had to have both - because you depended on applications that had no common operating system? It was unpleasant, but it was absolutely possible.

Not really - you could write cross-platform GUI applications from a single code base in 1996 if you wanted to without using Java. >Java or single operating system applications were the alternative. Instead, HTML evolved into dynamic HTML / 'the DOM' / HTML5, and each layer of abstraction built there was 'good enough' to dethrone all challengers - in no small part due to, again, people heeding the advice of the OP quote and not implementing browser-locked software. But, that didn't happen, and it certainly wasn't for lack of trying - see Java Applets/Web Start/JavaFX, Silverlight, and of course the elephant in the room Flash / Flex. Now, of course with the Chromium hegemony we have an old-is-new-again set of problems on the web, but I do think that for a time, people _did_ listen to this advice and stopped writing applications for _only_ IE4/5/6.Īs an aside, I do still think that if a cross-platform application framework that were built from the ground-up for secure Internet-delivered application use had ever materialized in a robust way, we would probably be in a better place as an industry. In fairness, 'DHTML' / programmatic manipulation of the DOM was just invented in 1996 and eventually ended up being the envisioned successful client application runtime implemented across browser versions and runtimes.

Firefox flash plugin keeps crashing