It's time for finals, and we're going to celebrate with marathon blog posts! In a series of 6 blog posts, I'm going to cover Client Applications, Internet Infrastructure, Web Servers, Applications, Data, and Services.
The doorway into any of these topics is Client Applications. These are the side of the internet most users are familiar with, as they are the part of the process users interact with directly. Rather than keeping all the necessary data on a local hard drive, these programs can interact with a server over the internet to display HTML code, gather data, or use a web service to produce the finished product.
A great example of a Client Application is the web browser you are using right now to read this blog. The browser itself doesn't contain anything particularly interesting on its own, but is able to translate HTML, JavaScript, and other code from servers out in the Internet to become much more than the humble program resting on your hard drive.
There are lots of options for Client Applications, and while the main player was web browsers five years ago, we are not as limited anymore. With the increasing number of web services and smartphones, there are more ways to consume data across the network that doesn't live in your device.
Probably the biggest change for Client Applications is the iPhone app. Despite being a device and not a Client Application, the processing power and limited storage, along with its almost-anywhere connection, the iPhone and its relatives rely on the internet to provide content. Apps on the phone may not hold anything substantial on the device itself, but can connect to the web or a web service to provide a great experience.
In a nutshell, the Client Application is moving to the forefront of computer usage. Stay tuned for the next entry in our series: Internet Infrastructure!
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