Five years ago, when prototyping some apps for PDAs, I’d never consider HTML + javascript. This is because there are enough form factor issues as well as browser incompatibilities to keep one awake all night.
Things have changed.
WebKit seems to have gained ground in the mobile space, giving compatibility a much needed shot in the [...]

I was disappointed when I found out JavaFX interpreter is not shipping in the final Java runtime. Shipping the interpreter is key to inlining script with HTML, and will accelerate adoption of this shiny cross-browser platform.

There are tens of millions of web developers who have already been trained to edit text in a file and [...]

me: What is the long term future of javafx.ext.swing.* classes in JavaFX’s
technological roadmap? Are new Node-based ui classes in-the-works to supercede this?
Joshua Marinacci: We plan to keep the swing classes but they will only be in the desktop profile. New gui classes based on nodes are in the works. These new gui components will be [...]

This page is where I keep track of interaction design patterns. It will be particularly useful to implement these behaviors in JavaFX/Flex base-classes for nodes so that UX designer don’t have to nitpick over details like these:

Yorai discusses the effect of mouse clicks and shift click, control click on focus, selection, activating in-place editing, dragging
Raymond [...]

Zef writes in Ajax Reality Check that

Does anybody realize where we came from and that these “web 2.0 technologies” aren’t great at all, but just the best we could do — in the browser?

However, I assert that desktop apps do have something to learn from the browser¹, and it’s not ajax.