The Browser as an application platform

With Google launching their chrome book is significant as it reflects a substantial shift in the world of computing. For the first time ever, the application platform isn’t the operating system, nor is it adobe air, .net or java, it’s the browser. The browser once, a simple tool for fetching and rendering content is now the most important application platform in the world.

Ultimately the reason we are converging on the browser being the platform is because java failed. If java came any bit close to it’s promised mission, the underlying operating system wouldn’t matter and every application would be written in java.

It missed completely and in the hole it left the browser became the platform.

Wanna write a application that works on everything from Mac, windows, Linux, beos, iOS, android, webos, etc; write it for the browser.

Ironically the universal programming language will be JavaScript not Java. Javascript’s code integrated with, and embedded in, HTML, not Java applets distinct from HTML.

This is why HTML 5 is so important. It will actually let us developed advance applications for the browser.