More JavaScript please!

JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, Prototype and Dojo are all relatively new, circa 2005. Before the days of JS frameworks though doing any kind of JS development could easily and rapidly turn into a nightmare. Those days are a thing of the past though and with the great support and flexibility of the current frameworks, JS development has been easier than ever. It's no longer a problem to build complex and cross browser supported JS applications anymore.

Couple the JS frameworks together with the increasing effort to speed JS up in the browser engines and make it more efficient, I think we are beginning to see a paradigm shift on the Internet. More and more applications will be moved to the web, where they have some very distinct advantages. With web applications patches can be applied and pushed live almost instantly, without having to push the update to each client. This is a huge benefit, allowing you more control over your application as it's more in your hands and not the user. Having a web applications also makes it very easy to distribute and grow out your infrastructure should you need to.

This already has been happening over the last decade, albeit much slower and not as obvious. Take Yahoo, Microsoft and Google for example; all of their web mail applications have improved leaps and bounds from the early days. Google especially is embracing this shift in how the Internet is utilized: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Picasa, etc. While these are all great applications and are an excellent example of what can now be done with the increasing availability of hardware and JS improvements, I personally think it's just the tip of the iceberg.