It's one thing to ask tool builders about their application development vision. It's certainly relevant to contemplate the challenges software developers will face. But if the application platform—in this case, the Web browser—doesn't cut it, the computer industry may be in a world of hurt.

Don't assume that toolmakers are perfectly aligned with the browser developers. Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems, says, "The people who make a living building Web apps and tools for them live on a different planet than the people who build browsers."

Yet, for a happy Web development future, browsers have to change. "Today the browser is a pretty tough execution environment," says Jochen Krause, CEO of Innoopract (the company behind Eclipse RAP). Alex Russell, project lead for the Dojo Toolkit, believes that the browser makers have failed the development community. They've made application design incredibly difficult, he says, because "the majority of browser vendors haven't published a road map, so no one knows what's coming."

Alternatives may be necessary. David Wadhwani, Adobe VP, RIA platform, says, "Browsers may hit a wall because of political conflict between browser vendors and their own agendas." As a result, he believes, "Developers will depend more on plug-ins to extend the browser."

This raises the question of whether future Internet applications will rely on the browser per se, on plug-ins or on...well, something yet to be invented. And should they?

One possibility: "The border between the operating system and the application will get more and more porous," says David Temkin, Laszlo Systems CTO. Right now, the browser doesn't know when you plug in a digital camera, so—unlike desktop applications that are integrated into their host environment—it can't take action when that event occurs, he says. "We'll have to see more communication between plug-in vendors and OS vendors," says Temkin.

But the architecture may need some deep navel gazing, he believes. The Internet (and thus the standards for it) has a heritage of documents; that's not how applications work, Temkin claims. "There's a little bit going on with the browser where it's the tool of choice for delivering network apps; that isn't its heritage, and that's holding it back," says Temkin.