It took a good deal of time, but at last, it made it and it’s not Java. Also it proves that Microsoft was right. Back in the 90s Microsoft was darn right to fear Netscape and the web browsers for they would have stolen users away from Windows.Maybe it is thanks to Microsoft efforts to take Netscape off the scene (or even thanks to Netscape mistakes in riding the browser wave) that it took so long, but eventually we are about to no longer be bound to a specific OS or even a specific computer, everything is going on-line, accessible from every Internet node around the world. gmail, writely and irows are the forerunners of the next frontier, the on-line application that looks exactly like your desktop application. But as long as new toolkits and frameworks are developed more are to come. Until now I had a look at a couple of framework that looked very promising yet quite clumsy in performance. But have a look at Bindows. It is pretty fast, slick and responsive, it also looks and behaves exactly like a desktop application.
Ironically, although Microsoft fought Netscape and Java, it was Microsoft itself that developed the base components for Ajax technology. Funny, isn’t it?