Web application framework company Sencha says it is witnessing an expansion of downloads for its HTML5 tools for desktop and mobile application developers -- and as a result, the Sencha developer community has more than doubled over the last year and now numbers over 220,000 registered members.

The company points out that this growth comes in the face of comments made my Britain's Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who issued a warning in the December issue of Scientific American saying, "The web as we know it is being threatened. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles." He cautioned that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter represent 'walled gardens' that are connected to the web, but still essentially separate from it -- and that this in itself is killing the art of the web application developer.

According to Sencha, developers of consumer-facing apps are now gravitating toward mobile web technologies as a flexible solution for reaching mobile users on smartphones and tablets. This transition has been accelerated by the emergence of advanced, WebKit-based mobile browsers that embed the latest HTML5 technologies. In addition, many enterprises have begun to migrate their core enterprise applications from first-generation web architectures to modern, single-page web applications powered by the latest AJAX technologies.

"We're seeing an incredibly positive response from developers who are inspired by the potential that HTML5 offers on advanced platforms such as Android, iPad, and the RIM Playbook. This generation of tablets demands touch- and gesture-driven interfaces and this is spurring a wave of new application development," said Michael Mullany, Sencha's VP of marketing and products. "2011 is shaping up to be the Year of HTML5," he added.