What can't you do in a browser?

[subscribe] Recent blog entries

• Simple prototypal inheritance new!
• Adventures in Rhino - setters and getters
• Site improvements - fighting with Disqus
• JavaScript task chaining
• JavaScript string building benchmarks
• Efficient JavaScript string building
• Alternative JavaScript worker thread API
• Implementing JavaScript worker threads
• Thread safe DOM manipulation
• Site improvements - CSS sprites
• Trephine worker threads made easy
• Pitfalls of multithreaded browser development
• Site improvements - reducing dependencies
• The unsplittability of XML

What can't you do in a browser?

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put in office.

--Henry David Thoreau from Life without Principle

In the interest of being an efficient and valuable man, I hereby ask the web developer community the following: What have you always wanted to do in a web application that the current technology simply doesn't allow?

I certainly have my own ideas, but I'm curious to know what YOU want. Is it access to the filesystem? or a persistent client side database? Maybe launching shell commands, or running script in another language?

No holds barred, the sky's the limit. Tell me what you've always wished were possible, and I'll see if I can make it happen!