bedeviled mojo slop

Regarding this comment on browser-based software development (via Scripting News). (my emphasis for the quote I want to highlight)

No doubt, it would take a lot of extra work to release editions of Google software for non-Windows platforms. Cross-platform development is enormously difficult: that's a fact of software life. (Browser-based software is so attractive because you don't have to worry about writing different versions for different operating systems; the browser makers have already done that heavy lifting for you.) I always understood this intellectually, but now, after several years of following the work over at OSAF for my book, I feel it in my bones.

I wish it were as simple as "Our application is browser-based. All our problems are solved!"

You have to worry about making sure the software works for different versions of the same browser and for different browsers. Take a look at the About GMail page listing the browser compatability. Browser-based software development requires a great deal of testing to ensure compatability and consistency across versions of a browser and across browsers. The current crop of browser-based applications underscore the need to provide for "graceful degradation". Browsers have been doing it for quite sometime to compensate for things like HTML markup. To the end user, depending on their browser and version of their browser, your browser-based application might work completely or it might degrade to provide most of the application's essential functions. Sometimes it's easier and quicker to provide a hotfix to a 900KB application as opposed to a 4.7 MB application.

Long story short: You can still write browser-based applications that suck.