The web browser is not the shell[1] or window manager, and it never will be. It may render GUI widgets just fine, and you could use it as a shell, but only beca

The web browser is not the shell[1] or window manager, and it never will be. It may render GUI widgets just fine, and you could use it as a shell, but only because you can technically use any program[2] as a shell. I know developing native client applications is not popular recently; there good reasons for that, such as wanting to develop your software for as wide an audience as possible. What you have to remember, when choosing your development environment, is that there are always limitations to every platform. On the web that means you are always going to be sandboxed not only in what the application can do, but also in how it can interact with the user. Given that we always have to care about phishing, CSRF/clickjacking, and numerous other types of malware, applications developed for the web will never[3] be able to do many of the things we expect from a native application. This doesn't mean you can't do good things on the web (we could list numerous examples of Great Tools that are available on the web); it's just isn't going to ever have all of the features you get with a "real" native app. Even if you try really hard to get away from "document"-style nature of the web, the sandbox and realities of making things safe for the user will always be a problem. Yes, we can try to work around that by rebuilding another OS -inside- the browser. Some people are certainty trying. Instead of throwing your sanity away on that never-ending pile of problems endlessly-expanding complexity, I suggest simply realizing that while some things just aren't going to be practical inside the browser, for other problems it's still a decent platform to develop for, and it is slowly getting better. Oh, and the Mac/OSX people will be angry you try to get them to force them to use too many non-native GUIs. /* I'm skipping the discussion of the "software as a service" scam... I'll assume, for the moment, that the desire to make the web into an GUI shell is not simply part of a scam to try to convert one-time sales into a recurring service fee. */ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28computing%29 [2] I once saw /usr/bin/gopher stuffed into /etc/passwd as the shell [3] at least I hope it's "never" - making a platform where I can impersonate too much of your native GUI over the network just asking to be attacked