What's in your toolbox?

[JonO]

For my personal project (Far Horizons) I'm not sold on the web based GUI yet, and am still leaning towards a cross platform downloadable client.

For one thing, I feel like gamers take the installable game more seriously than they do the web game. Though I am definitely biased as I develop cross platform desktop software for my job. Going the web route would give me the chance to play with some exciting new technologies like WebGL, Canvas, and other HTML5 goodies.

One advantage a browser-based client would give you is ease of updating. Forcing the player to dl every build can get old, real fast. On the other hand, being able to offload some of the data-store can be a blessing.

Have you played with jQuery much? It adds a great deal to the front end and combined with AJAX (which it supports natively for quick and dirty trips to the server) makes for a very smooth transition.

I think players respect applications running in a browser that look like they are part of the 21st century, but tend to think less of those that are static HTML with full screen refreshes every time a tiny piece of the display is updated. Unfortunately a lot of PBeMs have websites that look very 90's. Take a look at Rolling Thunder.