Foundations for a Browser-based Application Platform
Daryl Seah, Boon Leng · 2008
ii Being ubiquitous and rich in developer technologies such as JavaScript, AJAX, CSS and DHTML, modern web-browsers are rapidly gaining popularity as an ideal application platform. As such, many feature-rich libraries are available that attempt to simplify web-application development. Unfortunately, there is insufficient support for client-side desktop-like applications, where the need for persistency (without a server) and security (without a sandbox) is important. Moreover, the lack of modularisation, verification, and other high-level language features in JavaScript makes it extremely difficult to create a complex yet maintainable application, let alone an entire supporting platform. In this project, we design and implement the basic architecture for TiddlyCard – a collaborative client-side browser-based application platform. By taking an operating systems perspective and building only upon the core JavaScript language, we attempt to lay the groundwork for a cross-browser platform