What the Web!!!

On: 4:36 AM By: Unknown 23 comments

What the Web!! Yes, that is what came to my mind (pun intended). I have been working on web technologies for quite some time now and I have to say that it has reached all new heights  lately.

The growth of web technologies was not quick, it was slow and subtle in the beginning. From 1991 to 2000 it was stabilizing slowly, 2000 to 2007 saw the advent of Ajax but still there was no dramatic changes in the way people saw web technologies, average Internet traffic was the same from 1991(Thanks to IE for that). The fun began towards the end of 2007, sadly that's when the last Netscape browser came out and gladly Chrome was unleashed. 2008 onward was the exponential growth of web technologies (Was the browser war between Chrome and Firefox to be blamed?)

The link provides a nice representation of this Evolution of web

Today web technologies are no more looked down as sidekicks, they are the hero now and with the crossover to server side by Node.js web technologies are slowly replacing traditional Javaish technologies everywhere.

The penetration is way beyond client side web. With JavaScript as the lead protagonist, today JavaScript is being used at full swing in;

• Traditional websites (HTML, CSS, JS, JQuery, Bootstrap, etc.)
• Web apps (HTML, CSS, JS, Jquery, Ajax, Angular, Backbone, Ember, Bootstrap, etc.)
• Client side applications-Chrome apps, Firefox plugins, windows apps, etc. (HTML, CSS, JS, Jquery, Ajax, Angular, Backbone, Ember, Bootstrap, etc.)
• Mobile Applications -Hybrid Native apps, Responsive Mobile web Apps (HTML, CSS, JS, Cordova, Jquery, Ajax, Angular, Backbone, Ember, Bootstrap, etc.)
• Desktop applications- Packaged apps running in Node
• Server side (Node, Express, Tower, etc.)
• DB ( Mongoose, CouchDB, etc.)
• Robotics (Arduino, Node, etc.)

Today Javascript is becoming more and more powerful, with each ECMAScript version release. It could be said that it is becoming more LISP like in nature and is being adopted in wide use cases.

Most noteworthy for the sudden increase in the popularity of web technologies should be attributed to NodeJS and how it changed the way Javascript was used and perceived to be, this led to lots of spin-of frameworks and libraries. Node makes it possible to build javascript apps for server side, desktop and even for creating your own army of robots.

Similarly the hybrid mobile app revolution was brought in by Phonegap a.k.a Cordova, which is slowly closing the gap between native apps and hybrid html apps. Mobile UI frameworks like Jquery mobile, Sencha touch, Ionic, Bootstrap,  etc., with the power of cordova is helping web developers world wide to expand their horizon to the lucrative mobile application marketplace to compete head on with the likes of native android and iOS apps.

Another noteworthy improvement is in the client side JavaScript frameworks and libraries. Jquery started revolutionizing client side scripting which soon paved way for other libraries and frameworks like Bootstrap, AngularJS, Backbone,  Knockout, Ember, etc. , to name a few. Today it is entirely possible and practical to write an end to end JavaScript web application using a JavaScript webserver and host it on a nodeJs server.

All of the above mentioned frameworks and libraries need a post of its own to do justice, most of them are bread and butter of most developers and hence I would be writing a series on the newer and revolutionary ones soon.