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I haven't done a good bile type rant in a while so here goes... Am I the only person that thinks the current browser is a stop gap at best in terms of a base level for application development. I'll admit from a business perspective I can see why we have all these browser based applications. 99% of everyone has access to IE or Firefox. The application runs on the server and doesn't "install" anything reducing deployment costs. In theory that is all good. However, what will it take in the industry to move further?

This rant started today by reading Kevin's blog post on Rich web applications (Kevin's comments have nothing to do with the rant, the concept just set me off). He links to another post about the guys at Oddpost. Apparently they have floated around a number of places writing cool DHTML/Javascript components. From a user perspective applications like Oddpost and Gmail are indeed cool. However, it feels trying to turn a bicycle into and tank. One was not meant to be the other originally.

I'm not ranting to advocate Java is the end all be all solution to this problem. I think it is evolving into an option. There are other technologies floating around like Flex and Laszlo. It just seems to me that the W3C, Microsoft, Sun, Mozilla, and others should be taking a look at the successes and limitations of today's browser based world and "refactoring" things into a better platform for tomorrow development needs. Rich web applications