Push the cloud?

There's just something about the cloud that intrigues me nowadays. This is a bit of a shift for me as the shape of things to come is web apps. I've always hated developing web apps. It's irrational, maybe...but there it is. There's something about designing and developing a thick-client interface that always made me happy. The ability to build a frame made of frames made of frames, etc. and on and on seems so elegant in theory and in practice. I've gotten over the hate (working in web development for a few years will do that), however I still can't help but feel that html/xhtml/dhtml interface design is inferior in some meaningful ways. I could be wrong, I often am, or at best only part-right.

Part of the issue I have with web apps is apparent in the last paragraph...
"html/xhtml/dhtml".

The concept of Standards is a simple one. And yet how many freaking standards are there for interface design on the internet? I mean you have these three, and then you have the various css standards, and then you have browsers which are compliant with this one but not that one and this browser is compliant with only parts of this standard and good freaking grief. It's not unworkable, but it is frustrating from time-to-time. I get that it's nice to not force users of your application to install software(unless you incorporate flash or java applets...oops). But when I write a thick gui, I at least know what my standards are.

But back to the cloud. I want a Chromebook. I really, really really do. Which is why the whole web app thing is conflicting. I also want to be able to do some light coding on any machine I own. So I'm poking around looking at cloud ide's and whatnot. I've found 2 that look promising but they both have that foreboding BETA word plastered here and there. Cloud IDE has a google app, which is nice for the whole chromebook integration, I had some issues setting up a Java project, we'll see about that one. Kodingen is another, but I haven't been to poke around in there at all yet. They have a decent bit of user interaction on their site, which is a nice touch. Maybe I'll mess around with that over the weekend.