I can imagine an "application browser" being essentially a virtualized runtime browser - you point to the 'url' of an application, it downloads the runtime and source code and environment (if you don't already have it) and everything gets sandboxed and compiled on the fly, and runs as if it were native code. Of course, nothing would touch your actual filesystem, and you could get rid of an application as easily as you clean your browser cache today. This would also have the advantage of being language agnostic.
This is already technically kind of sort of possible with any number of sites that use compile-to-js languages, but these are invariably limited by the capabilities javascript and HTML. I suppose the ultimate version of this would look like browseable software images like Docker or something.
This is already technically kind of sort of possible with any number of sites that use compile-to-js languages, but these are invariably limited by the capabilities javascript and HTML. I suppose the ultimate version of this would look like browseable software images like Docker or something.