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HTML5 for Desktop Application Development

by Yong Zhi on February 8, 2012

Most developers know that it makes a lot of sense to develop software that you can "write once and run anywhere." It's more economical, easier to implement cross-platform, and generally leads to fewer headaches. Back when the most important and/or dominant platform was the Desktop, QT and Java made it easy to develop software that could be run anywhere. But enter the Smartphone Era stage-left, and you've got a problem - those solutions are not available on iPhones, iPads, etc.

This has led to a lot of buzz around HTML5-based development for mobile apps (PhoneGap, for example is a popular platform for building applications with HTML5). Often these platforms do not support native UI components, but people seem to care less about standard UI nowadays; authoring UI with HTML5 gives people more freedom on look and feel. Traditionally javascript is very restricted for security reason (no local file/socket access etc), but the restriction can be lifted via browser extension.

So, great - we can use HTML5 to write platform-independent software for smart phones. But, we can also use similar technology to write desktop applications with HTML5 - even better!