The next-gen web is starting to gather pace, as this week MySpace integrated Google Gears, Yahoo! announced their new BrowserPlus product and Google launched a browser-based edition of their 3D Earth product. Technologies and formats such as AIR, Silverlight, JavaFX, Gears, XUL, Web Applications 1.0 (DOM5, HTML5 etc.) allow developers to accelerate beyond AJAX and towards a new generation of web applications with better performance, more functionality and tighter desktop integration.
Developers and users are now presented with more web technology choice then ever before; “DLL hell” has been succeeded by “plug-in hell”, as a variety of companies present their versions of what the next-gen web will look like. But on the web, such choice can come at a cost to both users and developers. More than a decade has passed since the first battle over web formats, back then it was Microsoft, Netscape, Apple, AOL and others laying different foundations in the form of browsers, scripting languages, web servers and more. The legacy of that battle is still being felt today, as Javascript developers rely on whole libraries to assist them in developing cross-browser code and CSS developers depend on a catalog of hacks so that their sites can look consistent across different browsers.
With the new rich web application technologies still in the development phase, there is an opportunity to not repeat the mistakes of the past and instead take a standards-based approach. Thankfully during the course of the previous decade companies such as Microsoft became more receptive to open standards, data portability and cross-platform support. Having broad support for open standards simplifies technology for both users and developers, but it is obvious that not all of the currently announced technologies, such as those listed above, will succeed or survive.
via TechCrunch
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