It is an interesting proposal, assuming users that spend most of their time on the web really only need a web browser on their computer. In another interesting twist a few months ago, Google Chrome OS was announced. In order to compete in the future, developers will have to create engrossing Web 3.0 sites, and Canvas is the answer. Additionally, web site visitors don't want to wait for applets to load and developers don't want the hassles associated with them. Take CSS for instance, if website publishers are given a choice between using CSS or some other 3rd party plugin to organize their HTML pages, the resounding answer would be CSS. The reasoning is that it is a native browser technology, and users will be likely to choose it over cumbersome 3rd party plugins. While it is true that the internet is a continuously morphing environment, this author is confident that Canvas technology will be running the websites of the future. One issue is with competing technologies, such as applets, other multimedia plugins and those technologies not yet developed. The community continues to push for more robust Canvas features and there has been significant progress and the technology is entirely capable of supporting 2D graphical scientific applications. Over the past year, they have seen the Canvas technology develop and have investigated many of its shortcomings. Rich Apodaca continues to be at the forefront of emerging web technologies and provides insight on their impact to the sciences, including javascript/Canvas, on his blog Depth-First. Expect this technology to allow for quick and engrossing graphics without the need for fully installed applications on the desktop. Brad Larson at Sunset Lake Software mastered the technology to create the impressive Molecules app on the iPhone. While OpenGL ES (OpenGL for Embedded Systems) is only a subset of OpenGL, it has proven to be quite effective in producing great 3D molecular graphics on non-desktop platforms. Imagine advanced quantum computations with beautiful output, wide-spread open source simulation packages, and functional molecular modelers all optimized for the web and easily integrated into Web 3.0 sites! We will be developing 3D ChemDoodle Web Components as soon as WebGL is adopted by the browsers, and we aim to provide the funding, development and support for this open source package that the community requires. We will soon be able to develop fully native web applications with 2D and 3D graphical user interfaces completely in javascript for web browsers. WebGL opens new possibilities for the Canvas element, and I quote the best explanation I've seen so far, "The goal of WebGL is to expose the low-level OpenGL ES 2.0 APIs through JavaScript so that they can be used to draw hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in the HTML Canvas element" ( source). Some readers may already be very familiar with WebKit, as it is the open source browser engine that runs Safari. Only a couple days ago, WebGL (complete with a very impressive video!) was quietly introduced into the nightly build of WebKit. The Canvas element, as currently implemented, allows for only 2D graphics.
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