O'Really?

You know it’s December when it starts snowing in your web browser. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Or programmatically:

snowStorm = new SnowStorm();

There was a time, not so very long ago when JavaScript snow would have been “best viewed in browser x”. Thankfully now JavaScript much more reliable, the JBrowse [1] Genome Browser provides a nice example of this in bioinformatics. JBrowse is one of many proofs that JavaScript can be used to take some of the computing load off the server, and do it in the client (web browser) instead, while providing more sophisticated applications for users – not just gimmicks like snow.

References

1. Skinner, M., Uzilov, A., Stein, L., Mungall, C., & Holmes, I. (2009). JBrowse: A next-generation genome browser Genome Research, 19 (9), 1630-1638 DOI: 10.1101/gr.094607.109

[Creative Commons licensed snowstorm picture by Atli Harðarson, JavaScript SnowStorm code by Scott Schiller, move your mouse around to guide the snowstorm.]