HTML5 in Boot to Gecko

I have just read Christian Heilmann's post about Boot to Gecko and I am very excited to see how HTML5 + JS + CSS3 stack can ever power a mobile phone user interface.

These are good times for web development. It is moving from client side web development, to server side, then to mobile apps, and now as the top layer used to run all the applications of a typical phone. We need browsers and OS makers to push forward these technologies, implementing better Javascript engines, and making reality the latest HTML5 APIs.

Thanks to the rapidly release cycles that we are seeing in desktop browsers, developers can take advantage of the most recent tools to implement better websites. But mobile web development is still a step behind, and we need browsers that can easily be updated without needing to make a whole OS update, and these browsers should strive for bringing to mobile devices features like access to its hardware (see Device API) and better usage of the hardware on which they are running.

Why Windows Phone doesn't support file upload? Why PS Vita doesn't support audio, video, WebGL or localStorage? From a developer's point of view it is a pity that we can't use a web stack for granted, having to deal meanwhile with polyfills. This makes it slower to embrace new features, and makes the large mobile devices eco-system even more complex.

I really welcome initiatives like Boot to Gecko, that show off how incredibly powerful the web can be, and make web development a first citizen on mobile environment.