the Uncanny Valley of user interface design: "a Windows application should look and feel like a Windows application, a Mac application should look and feel like a Mac application, and a web application should look and feel like a web application."

I couldn't have said it better. I remember back in the early days of Firefox, the application didn't "look" like a MS Windows window ... which turned me off from it. I also know I detested Hotmail for its emulation of MS Outlook (why people try to emulate this horrible, horrible program is beyond my reckoning).

In my opinion, a "failure" in a web ui is for one of the following reasons:

1. Attempts to emulate a desktop environment and fails (RoundCube looks beautiful, but it actually feels very gawky to use, while Gmail has the opposite problem)
2. Slowness (I never liked Zimbra cause of the "slowness" of the app - I also know DekiWiki has had similar complaints). People will use whichever application is faster - I prefer Gmail to my personal email, cause I want a low overhead when reading my email ... but I prefer Thunderbird for my work email, because I do need the added UI overhead for some of my more complex tasks (sorting, flagging, and folder-ing [Don't like labels])

The end user doesn't care what an application is written in - they just want it to work. When you enforce a desktop paradigm onto a web user, they get into the desktop paradigm mindset. When you break that paradigm, you take the user on the defensive ... which is why I think most web apps would be better off not emulating desktop applications in the first place. I've always been from the school of consistent UI - action should behave similarly across an application ... this helps people feel comfortable within a new UI.

. . .

Of course, none of this applies if you're writing a language in Java. No matter what you do in Java (native UI controls), you can always tell a Java app by howwwww frrrrriiiggggiiin ssssslllloooooooooowwwwwww iiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttt iiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssssss.

I'm pretty sure Limewire is written in Java, cause when I load it up, it takes about 30 seconds after my initial click for me to get any useful "please wait" screen. Of course, I think I mis-click so I click again, which fires up another instance of Limewire ....