Firefox 6 came out during the last week. I then see a few tools that highlight using JavaScript to process what you would expect from something in native code via a plugin.
An MP3 decoder written within JavaScript
http://jsmad.org/
A PDF viewer written in Javascript - with footnotes, color, diagrams.
http://andreasgal.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html#7
This ties back to the Hanselman interview with Erik Meijer -where he refers to JavaScript as the Assembly language of the web. The low level code that other tools are beginning to compile to -example Script# and other tools - that Hanselman followed up with in additional episodes.
All this makes me wonder what is coming in Windows 8. (maybe this is why the Build Conference sold out months ahead of the event?)
However - the MP3 player link above works in Firefox and not in IE9. So there is more work to be done in the browser area, but the efforts in this area of late are really noticeable. (IE8, IE9, beta of IE10 - Firefox 4, 5 and 6 were not that far apart .. maybe too close together for some). The rapid changes to the Google Chrome browser. This increasing pace and direction of standards in the browsers is interesting, and when tied to mobile phones, and tablets as the new devices, becomes more interesting and intriguing as to where computing in general is moving. Virtualization of computing resources, cloud integration, with those hardware changes,makes for a very dynamic landscape for the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
That dynamic element, for the computing world - in this decade, assumes the world economies can stay afloat...the force that will determine acceleration, or collapse at this point.