It’s very rare to find something that really shows what browsers are capable of if people put their mind to it. An example we have all come to love is Google Maps which was truly unique and even worked in IE6. At the other end of the spectrum, I have recently come across JSWars. This is unashamedly aimed at Firefox 3.5 but really does show what a modern web browser is capable of.

For those of you who are not using Firefox, JSWars is an arcade style shoot’em up game in the old tradition. On one side of the screen is a ship which you can move up and down and which can fire bullets at streams of baddies which fire back. It does all this while subjecting you to a crushing sound track and the usual bullet and explosion sound effects. (It is loud, so if you are reading this on Friday afternoon in the office and fancy a go, turn the volume down on your PC first or people will know).

What makes this game special is that it is completely implemented in HTML and Javascript. No Flash, Java or plugins were used. This is important and noteworthy because it shows where certain web browsers are going. We have a game here which implements high-quality interactive animated behaviour through a familiar interface - seeing what Google did with two-generation-old technology we will have to see what others can do with this. Modern web browsers don’t just have interface changes there are other changes. For example, HTML 5 allows client side storage in SQL databases. Now there are all sorts of potential security problems with that which developers will have to think about and users might need to understand but we are starting to see people use these facilities in websites – particularly iPhone ones as Safari on the iPhone supports the standard.

Obviously the issue is going to be what web browsers can do this. JSWars works in Firefox (and other Gecko web browsers). In principle it should work in Safari (and other WebKit browsers like Chrome) but doesn’t seem to. So that it can work, it has to use the new HTML canvas tag – and you know which web browser does not support it but there may be a way round that.

So if you want to waste some time on a Friday afternoon, you are going to have use Firefox.