The Web Computer and Its Operating System: A New Approach for Creating Web Applications

Web applications require not only more sophisticated infrastructure than traditional single-PC applications, but also a different way of thinking, where network-specific aspects have to be considered. In this paper, we introduce the web computer concept, which factors out network-related issues and provides an illusion of a single computer with directly attached CPUs, memory, and I/O devices. By assuming the web computer and its open operating system (webAppOS) as a target platform for web applications, developers can preserve the same level of thinking as when developing classical desktop applications. With this approach, which corresponds to the physiology of the human brain, web applications can be created faster. Besides, the proposed web computer specification can be viewed as a standardized environment (a Java Virtual Machine analog) for web applications.