Actually change is already happening.

Heavier use of JavaScript means there's been an arms race to improve both scripting engine and DOM performance. As SVG and HTML5 become more widely used we're also seeing GPU hardware acceleration being exploited more and more by browsers.

These things feed on themselves. The better they perform the more they get used, the more they get used the more demand for improved performance.

With hardware improvements from the handheld to the desktop and continued browser innovation I suppose we might even come close to the replacement of native desktop applications at some point. Probably not browser-based because the HTTP interaction model just isn't well suited to everything, but maybe based on browser technologies.


XAML/WPF took a proprietary crack at this from the point of view of just the UI. It will be interesting to see whether or not WPF survives or eventually gets replaced by IE's UI engine Trident (or perhaps IE10's Lynx-based UI engine).

Since IE10/Lynx is expected to require Windows 7 that brings up an interesting question. How soon do we really expect XP SP3 and Vista to vanish from the Earth?

I'm betting on Trident for now, but maybe that's just me. I need to support Windows XP and Vista users for some time yet.