> Has it ever been easier?

Yes. I remember many years ago I wrote a web application for a swiss banks financial intelligence unit. It was only used by a handful of people and they wanted a really rich user experience, so I wrote -- in one day -- the complete application again as a fat client. It was simply better in every way. The main client said, "That's it! That's what we want!" The director of IT said, "That's a fat client. We can't have that in the bank." The web app was never terrible, but the fat client I made them was much better and easier to create.

Everyone here who is arguing that web applications are 100% as easy to produce as fat client applications are arguing out of ignorance.