Actually, check out Adobe Air (for ajax developers). Basically it's webkit as a desktop app and pretty mature.
I've used it in the past, but I think Mozilla has a big opportunity here as Adobe has pretty much abandoned the web desktop aspect of AIR to focus on flash/flex for mobile.
Also, Adobe removes some of the best parts of webkit like web workers and I recently found a giant performance bug in their javascript engine that only exists in AIR.
You can now build MSIs for Windows and DMGs for Macs with AIR that will bootstrap the runtime. That said, I haven't used that option.
Up until Craig's lawyers killed my app, I was using the flash installer that was seamless. Same sort of installation process can be seen on TweetDeck which uses AIR.
Yes, but the install is relatively seamless (as long as you already have Flash installed) and only needs to be done once. The AIR update process (for both the runtime and the applications) is also pretty seamless as well.
yes, but if im stil up to date on that, it has its own gui frameworks that your app is tied to forever. Might aswell write the app in Cocoa or Win32 then.
Correct me if Im wrong, can you deploy your client side web app as a desktop application without using the Titanium framework stuff?
I believe you're correct about the framework. I think Titanium apps are packaged with the framework statically "linked", instead of installed separately.
The Titanium mobile API is basically JS bindings for Cocoa, but the desktop API is mostly OS agnostic.
In my opinion, Titanium was smart to make one version for mobile and one for desktops. Adobe should have done the same.
I've used it in the past, but I think Mozilla has a big opportunity here as Adobe has pretty much abandoned the web desktop aspect of AIR to focus on flash/flex for mobile.
Also, Adobe removes some of the best parts of webkit like web workers and I recently found a giant performance bug in their javascript engine that only exists in AIR.