At the Google I/O Conference HTML5 was on display. Google showed that every major browser except Internet Explorer now supports the CANVAS element and other HTML5 tags. That's one big exception though. Internet Explorer dominates web browsers the way Google dominates web search. Without IE support it's going to take a lot of pushing to make the canvas tag and others mainstream.

Microsoft has it's weight behind Silverlight and pointed out a few weeks ago that Silverlight has more installations that Chrome, Safari and Firefox combined. In typical Microsoft fasion they will fight for the closed platform under their control instead of an open web standard. For once, I think they may be right about it. Javascript is a great language but it's not what I would select to write a rich application for the desktop.

Google wants everyone to believe that Javascript plus HTML5 is going to replace all native applications. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. For one, Javascript is sent over the wire in source code form and then run in the browser. This is not the way most developers want to distribute their apps. Precompiled byte code in downloadable modules makes a lot more sense. It's smaller, it doesn't need to be compiled on the fly and offers at least some protection for developers from the average user tinkering with their code. If you want to offer the source code for your app over the web I'm all for it but Javascript forces you to send source code.

Silverlight isn't perfect. It's controlled by Microsoft and that is very limiting. I'd rather see the Mono project pushing Moonlight as an open source alternative.

I do think that desktop apps are almost dead at this point. With high speed connections and local storage there isn't much difference between a well architected web based app that supports and off-line mode and a traditional desktop application. I just don't think that the canvas tag and HTML5 are going to usher in this new era of web based programs.