Well, that’s certainly nice: in the span of a couple of months, Apple has been making a lot of progress bringing iTunes to the web browser, including letting users see item information and even preview tracks without launching iTunes. Now Apple’s taken it to the next step: you can now browse actual categories of the iTunes Store in HTML.

This isn’t likely to be a feature you’ll use regularly, but it’s indicative of an ongoing trend, where Apple has brought iTunes, piece-by-piece, to the web. Maybe it means nothing, but I think what we’re looking at here is the beginning steps of the online, cloud-based iTunes we’ve all been waiting for.

[via TUAW]