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Have you seen the Chrome apps platform?

http://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps.html

It's pretty damned close to what you're asking for.

yeah this is close.... i just wish that it could be a layer on top of C++ or Java rather than js only. The point is that I want to make an app as powerful as a desktop app, just with this type of UI.

If you could run a c++/java app in the background and make RPCs to it from browser events, that would be closer...

How about node-webkit?

https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

It's basically Chromium on top of nodejs. Then you can mix your C++ code with nodejs via addons.

http://nodejs.org/api/addons.html

Yeah this is the closest so far -- a fleshed out version of the RPC avenue.

Thanks so much for the responses, these are really great ideas.

I believe Chrome apps can use Native Client, if you want to message between a C/C++ module and your web application. And of course there are increasingly mature tools for compiling C++ to some subset of JavaScript. https://developers.google.com/native-client/

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