In this age of internet applications, it’s popular to predict the imminent death of the desktop application. I think that it might actually take a little longer.

I’ve been using the 1996 edition of Microsoft Bookshelf for many years. 6 month ago I uninstalled it and started using a web-based dictionary and thesaurus instead. Services like Dictionary.com or Google’s “define:” search modifier are good and useful, but they don’t quite cut it. This is really about speed more than anything else – I’m always connected these days, so Internet availability is almost a non-issue. However, result pages are full of useless stuff like ads and futile up-sell attempts, and the time to get a word defined, about 30 seconds, is simply too long. Google Gears and Adobe AIR are not there yet – they also take a long time to load.

So today I reinstalled Microsoft Bookshelf (which, incidentally, comes bundled with Internet Explorer 2.0!). Now I can get my definitions instantaneously, without having to sift through piles of text. Speed is one of Google’s most important UI design principles. For relatively small and infrequently modified databases like dictionaries and thesauri, a desktop app is still the best choice – even if it was created before Google was even conceived.