Transforming the web into a real application platform: new technologies, emerging trends and missing pieces

The World Wide Web has evolved from a simple document browsing and distribution environment into a rich software platform in which desktop-style applications are increasingly becoming first class citizens. The document-oriented origins of the Web are still evident in many areas, though, and traditionally it has been difficult to compose truly interactive web applications without using plug-in components or browser extensions such as Flash. However, the ongoing standardization work and emerging technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript 2.0 and WebGL are quickly altering the landscape of web application development. In this paper, we present a number of prior challenges and shortcomings, and describe how new technologies can be used for solving many of the problems. The research is based on our hands-on experiences in building various web-based systems in which a number of different web application development technologies have been used extensively.

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