Somewhere deep in the depth of number 1 Infinite Loop,  Apple employees are quietly developing and deploying a new web technology that is seen as the answer to combat Silverlight and Flash, SproutCore.

SproutCore is a JavaScript framework designed to make web applications that work a lot like desktop apps. The solution was developed outside Apple by Charles Jolley, but Apple soon hired the developer to its .Mac (now MobileMe) team.

What’s different is that the system doesn’t dictate to developers which standards to use, such as Flash. How is that possible I hear you ask? Well, that’s because SproutCore is based on open JavaScript standards, which makes it widely compatible with pretty much every browser out there at the moment, as well as their respective platforms.

This also means that the development is much quicker and offers a variety of other usage and server-side improvements in comparison to some other rich internet creation apps.

This lets the application run inside the browser, rather than requiring a plug-in: “A SproutCore application is a JavaScript application that runs entirely in the web browser. It can often run on its own, without even needing support for a web serverexcept when it makes sense for the application. This frees the server developer to focus on the things the server can do very well such as saving, restoring and aggregating data and performing expensive operations. Meanwhile the ‘thick’ client running in the web browser can handle the task of presenting the user with a friendly interface that is fast and intuitive,” the SproutCore website explains.

If only we’d been there, we would have seen SproutCore demonstrated to 600 developers at WWDC last week.  Next year chaps!

We’ll keep you up to date with all the happenings, as they, er.. happen.