I’ve decided that I’ll use this blog for more technically oriented posts, though there may still be some games and anime related content here.
So with that, let’s get stuck into a fairly simple discussion about web applications. Last year Microsoft announced Windows 8 and its new developer platform, which is based on HTML5 and JavaScript, a decision which caused no small amount of criticism. But it is perhaps the most tacit recognition of the importance of web applications by a company which has traditionally not viewed the web with the recognition it deserved. Internet Explorer 10 is a significant step forward from the horrible days of Internet Explorer 6, infamous amongst web developers for its lack of web standards support.
But what prompted Microsoft to base their new developer platform on traditional web languages and markup formats? To answer that, we have to look at why web applications make sense for many purposes.