Advancement in Web Technologies
- 1. Advancements in Web Technologies By - Hitesh Roy
- 2. Web Browsers • 2004 - Mozilla launched Firefox as Netscape Navigator fades out. • 2007 - Apple introduced Safari as mobile web browser. • 2008 - Google Chrome was launched. • 2015 - Microsoft Edge was introduced to replace IE and fight Chrome. The web browser acts as a client to contact the web server and request information from it.
- 3. HTML 5 vs Flash Player • Both are used for structuring and presenting content on the web. • Both supports audio and video formats. • Flash Player is criticised for its performance, consumption of battery on mobile devices, number of security vulnerability it has and being a closed platform. • Steve Jobs published an open letter describing reasons for not supporting Flash on iOS devices. Thus making HTML 5 modern web standard. • Adobe stopped supporting Flash player from Jan 1, 2021
- 4. Websites vs WebApps • Websites are one-way informational feeds. They do not allow viewers to interact or communicate back to the site. • Web Applications are website with functionality and interactive elements. Modern web apps have further evolved into - • SPA - Does not require reload. • MPA - Requires page reloading during use
- 5. JavaScript - The language of web • Used to add interactivity to the webpage. • First appeared in 1995. • JS obey rules specified in ECMAScript while also providing additional features. • ECMAScript is standard that ensures Web pages behaves similar across different Web browsers. • Rendering engines present in different browsers are responsible for interpreting and displaying content. • Safari uses WebKit. Chrome and Opera use Blink. Firefox uses Gecko and IE uses Trident.
- 6. Rise and rise of JavaScript
- 7. Few interesting advancements in web - Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) - PWAs are web apps built and enhanced with modern APIs to deliver advanced capabilities and increased reliability. What can PWAs do ? • Modern PWAs can get access to messages, user location, camera, microphone and type of device user is using. • PWAs can also use WebGL and WebVR. Example of PWAs - • Flipkart Lite, Oyo, Treebo and Tinder :)
- 8. WebGL - • It is a JS API for rendering high-performance interactive 2D and 3D graphics. • It does not require any plugins if using compatible web browser. • All the major browsers support WebGL. Example - • Aquarium Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) - • Open source HTML framework developed by Google to allows pages to be served more quickly. Uses CDNs to cache the pages. • Very useful for slow internet connections. Examples - • TOI Article
- 9. TensorflowJS - • Framework to develop Machine Learning models in JavaScript and use them directly in the browser. • Relatively new and yet to match Python ecosystem. • Uses WebGL internally Example - • Tensorflow demo Web Stories - • Web based version of popular story format found in many apps. Examples - • Web Stories