There is an emerging school of thought that believes HTML5 is the ideal technology for UI development, even on the desktop.  This concept is being explored and adopted mainly by the financial vertical. There are various reasons for technical decision makers to move in this direction, such as:

• Build a bridge or interim state when moving apps from Desktop to the web.
• With HTML5 quickly becoming the standard in web dev, there will be more HTML5 devs to leverage.  

If you are interested in understanding this concept and how you may leverage it, its worthwhile to check out OpenFin.  OpenFin's runtime allows you to run HTML5 desktop apps with native performance and interop with WPF, .NET, Silverlight, Java, Flex and Adobe Air apps.  

Some of the runtime benefits include:

• Popup notifications
• Window docking
• Window tear-out
• Taskbar and System Tray

IgniteUI is the perfect UI compliment to the OpenFin runtime.  You may use IgniteUI to build powerful HTML5 apps that run on the desktop powered by the OpenFin runtime.  Infragistics has partnered with OpenFin to help developers build high-performance, rich desktop apps.  To see an example of an IgniteUI application running on the OpenFin runtime, please check out our Financial Dashboard demo app on OpenFin's site:

The Finance Dashboard sample demonstrates the data chart, combo, dialog, and zoom bar controls for the Financial Services industry. The data chart is optimized for high-speed financial charting. This sample uses large datasets with millions of data points and real-time updates. The data chart enables key statistical and technical indicators and comparisons to key competitors.