Introducing the Web Platform
As you are reading this story, displayed on a web site, you are looking at an application running on the Web. Whether you are looking at this website on your mobile phone, be it IOS or Android, or on your laptop, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux — the very same Web is making it possible. The software may not be exactly the same; the particular implementation of the Web — known as a browser engine — will differ according to your choice of computer, and your choice of browser. But, whatever engine runs the app currently showing this page, it will come with — almost — the same set of functionalities as all other engines on all other computers: this set of common functionalities is the Web Platform.
What is special about the Web, is not only that it is the most widely available platform for application development in the world, but also that it is developed out in the open —the specification and the various implementations are all open-source — and organically: no single company owns the Web. The future direction of the platform is determined by a diverse crowd: from employees of the world’s largest tech companies, to humble freelance web developers; their forum is the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group — shortened as the WHATWG. This little-known organization — founded by Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, and Apple — produces what are known as Living Standards: specifications in name only, these documents change continuously in a desperate race to reflect the realities of the Web. In parallel, another race occurs: two tech heavyweights — Apple and Google, Microsoft dropped out already — and one lightweight contender — Mozilla — compete with each other to offer the fastest, most up to date, and most reliable implementation of a web engine.
But, are these web engines based on the standards produced by the WHATWG — and other bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) — or are the standards based on the web engines? Trying to answer that chicken or egg question has long been abandoned by the community; instead, the focus is on working software, standards that attempt to reflect reality, and an ever evolving platform running the Web.
This book, taking the form of a series of articles, will take you on a tour of the Web Platform: the architecture of the engines, the key concepts of the standards, and the culture of the community. While remaining accessible to the layperson, this book is an excellent way for web professionals to take their understanding of the platform they develop for to the next level.
First, we will look at what an application platform exactly is.
