[LAD] "bleeding edge html5" has interesting Audio APIs

[hollunder at lavabit.com]

> On Sat, 2011-11-19 at 11:53 -0800, Iain Duncan wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 3:24 AM, Stefano D'Angelo
>> <zanga.mail at gmail.com> wrote:
>>         2011/11/19 David Robillard <d at drobilla.net>:
> [...]
>>         > Writing one UI that works on all reasonable devices for free
>>         with zero
>>         > software installation?  Free "remote control" with any PC or
>>         tablet or
>>         > phone with wifi?  Yes please.  Whatever cons there are, they
>>         don't even
>>         > come close to trumping that very tangible user-visible win.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm, I'd have to say though, as someone who does RIA apps for a
>> living, (mostly in Python + Dojo and JQuery) it's still a freaking
>> pain. Compared to using PyQT or PyWx, all of the javascript widget
>> libraries still really hurt. Mind you, I'm sure that will change.
>> Probably in less than a few years too!
>
> Yeah, it's moving extremely fast.  Frankly you have to be pretty blind
> or stubborn to not realize that web tech is by far the safest UI
> investment at this point.
>
> That said, making something work in a browser is, at least for me (and
> presumably many around here), dramatically less of a pain than having to
> deal with Windows and Mac OS X directly.
>
> There is, of course, the option of simply not caring about other
> platforms and the irrelevance that comes with it, but the dramatically
> increased user base is nice for those of us that desperately cling to
> fantasies about getting enough donation money to survive off this libre
> audio software thing :)
>
> Given how easily and nicely you can stick webkit in anything these days,
> nobody even has to know it's actually HTML under the hood anyway (though
> for audio purposes, the remote control via tablet thing is too awesome
> to not want to provide to people)
>
>> What I'd like to see is something that fills the same role as the
>> browser, but is a clean break from the sorry cludgey state of
>> javascript. I'm sure the Android guys are on it though, so I'd agree
>> it's likely the path of the future. Maybe we will at last see the
>> arrival of the universal appliance platform that java was supposed to
>> give us 20 years ago? ;-)
>
> Indeed.  Like it or not, that's what the browser is finally becoming.
>
> I wish the language was a bit less insane (I never look forward to the
> nightmare of developing in anything without a decent type system), but
> oh well.  See above about user tangibles trumping petty developer
> gripes.
>
> -dr

I realize this question might be provokative, but I've never seen this
comparison before and am genuinely interested in your opinion.
Both java and browser/JS are cross platform. Both are available on almost
every device out there. Why is browser/JS the way to go?