Frontend

From APIDesign

Recently we got into a discussion: What does frontend mean?

On one side the term frontend is very generic. It's wikipedia entry describes it in general terms too. It somehow tries to pretend that any user interface is also a frontend. However, when you look at Swing, you see it being referenced as graphical user interface or as GUI widget toolkit, not as a frontend. As such I believe the meaning of the term is shifting more and more towards web development. The term frontend has been kidnapped by the JavaScript camp few years ago.

Everyone not deeply knowledgeable of Java will expect that frontend means an application running in a browser or in a WebView component (on desktop or mobile phone) written using CSS/DOM & co. The term frontend no longer includes Swing or SWT (the old and almost dead desktop GUI technologies of Java), it only means DOM, CSS & co.

What's your opinion? Does frontend equals (more or less) to HTML5 these days? Vote here, thanks.