This site is all about pushing the web to its limits. Well, web browsers, I should say.

It’s about time we asked more from the web. Browsers have been capable of providing a rich, robust, and reliable platform since the beginning of this decade. Dynamic HTML, Ajax, and Javascript have not changed much since 2001. (Ok, ok, I’ll admit there have been quite a few bugs and compatibility issues that have made the job hard at times.)

Now, thanks to innovations from the Mozilla foundation (the makers of the popular Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client), web browsers are again becoming our favorite software application. Mozilla popularized tabbed browsing, integrated pop-up blocking, integrated anti-phishing, RSS bookmarking, standardized 2D graphics, themes, and extensions. (Do I even have to mention Firefox’s much improved security over IE? Click here to see how exposed IE users were in 2006.)

With usage rates for Firefox as high as 30-40% in some countries, Mozilla is again poised to push the limits of the web. Firefox 3 promises a much richer, faster, and more desktop-like experience (even to the extent of being able to run real-time 3D online games).

Partly due to Mozilla’s success, Apple has been encouraged to throw serious development efforts behind its flagship browser, Safari. Even Microsoft has been reluctantly forced to update Internet Explorer after five years of purposeful stagnation so Bill could create his opus magnus and his intended replacement for web browsers.

The net result? We’re in the midst of a much needed period of innovation and creativity. By boosting the way we use browsers, we web developers are helping to ensure a safe, free (as in beer and as in speech), and progressive online world.

It is my goal to further the cause by helping web developers push the limits of browsers in a cross-platform, cross-browser, cross-cultural manner whenever possible.

My name is John Hann. I live in the Boston area.

I have been programming since 1978 and have been building rich internet applications since 1996. (Back in 1996, rich internet applications used browser plug-ins and ActiveX, not DHTML, Ajax, and Javascript.) I co-authored a patent for a rich Web 2.0 Ajax application I architected in 1999/2000.

I amwas a freelancer. Now I work for SpringSource, hacking on s2js and cujojs.