I think the idea is to add some functionality that would make the browser a viable environment for "sovereign applications." That is, applications that are long

I think the idea is to add some functionality that would make the browser a viable environment for "sovereign applications." That is, applications that are long running and highly interactive. Ajax has gone a long ways towards doing this for the web, but a local persistent data store, real networking, offline capabilities, and more fine-grained control of the UI (drag & drop interface, editable, etc.) will make a huge difference. I wouldn't say it's "browser dependent." The point of making it a standard is so it wouldn't be browser dependent... That said, I think there are definitely pros and cons for both specs. I'm kind of excited about the APIs though. (Also, the APIs are technically being developed by a third party, the Web APIs working group.)