IE8 Versus Chrome 1, Firefox 3, Safari 4 and Opera 9
This article could really be titled how IE8 measure against W3C and other Web Standards. So this is really a report on progress on picking up the pieces on W3C and Web standards since Microsoft’s browser embargo on all feature improvements to IE from 2001 to 2006. The Five Year Freeze imposed by Microsft went […]
Why HTML 5 is Vital to Cloud Computing
Tim Oreilly of OReilly Books has written a piece on the bet that Google is making on HTML5. This is a good introduction a)to some of the key features of HTML5 and b)where they stand in terms of implementation by the key players in the browser and smartphone community. Here are some of those key […]
Google Apps Scripting: JavaScript
The good people at Google Blogoscope have done a story about the new scripting capabilities being added to Google apps. As seen below there are screenshots and examples: But the keypoint is that Google Apps scripting language will be JavaScript. It is not immediately clear which JavaScript engine is being used and what libraries Google […]
Liquida Widgets
For the past few months I have been working on a blog widget … it was just about ready when I got an attack of appendicitis. Just before resuming the project I found the Liquida Post Widget [its Live!, click on it]: Liquida READ ALL Damn! this widget is really good – and ready to […]
A Look at Mozilla Firefox
The NYTimes Technology section has a 3 page story on Mozilla and its most important product, the Firefox browser. This story is notable for 3 reasons. First, it acknowledges the signifigance of Mozilla’s Firefox which has a)become the most popular Open Source software with more than 300 million downloads and b) wrested 25% of the […]
Enterprise Browser Analysis: IE8 As Laggard
eWeek’s Jim Rapoza has done a comprehensive survey of Web browsers evaluating their suitability for Enterprise Applications. This is ever more important in the business world as Cloud Computing accelerates and Web 2.0 programs dominate new Enterprise Applications . Also Netbooks/Smartphones are becoming ever more prevalent with much better browser and Web connections. So businesses […]
JavaScript to Duplicate Java Speeds?
With the browser wars fully engaged – the improvements in JavaScript speed has been no less than astonishing. But now its not just Mozilla versus Microsoft but also Google, Apple Safari, and Opera are in the mix. Just a couple of years ago, IE7 used to lead the parade with the fastest JavaScript performance in […]
Bing’s Advantage
The following NYTimes story shows the impact that Microsoft’s newly re-relaunched search engine, Bing, is having in the search engine wars. Instead of being a hapless me-too, Bing brings real innovation and a competitive advantage in search results display to BING over Google. But the writing was on the wall – Google’s frugal search result […]
The Death of XHTML2
Go to the W3C Web standards website and see the following headline posting: XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5 2009-07-02: Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will […]
Bing to Google: Its Serial
After 10 years of playing increasingly third fiddle to Google’s search engine Microsoft’s Search Engine , Bing, has turned an important corner. It is garnering ravish reviews – the game is on. As we previously reported the reaction to Bing is increasingly positive particularly the innovations on displayed results where About.com and others have done […]
Google as Face of Cloud Vulnerability
Google Breaks Down Editor Deb Donston has done an eye opening editorial in the May 18th 2009 issue of eWeek –” Oh my gosh can we really afford to go to Cloud Computing if even Google can go out for a portion of the day ???’. First there is utter disbelief – this must be […]
Return of the Vapors: Corrected
Update: just 3 days after this story was written Bing was alive and available with few hiccups. The analysis and reviews on Bing have been fairly complimentary: Bing takes nearly 3% market share from Google One of many positive reviews from diverse quarters But perhaps most important of all, Microsoft has Google’s attention now that […]
Opera Browser: More Stunning Innovations
eWeek’s Jim Rapoza and I agree mostly on browser performance but share a common admiration for the Opera browser. We both credit Opera for a large amount of the innovation being done in the world of browsers. Think gestures, CSS adoption, tabs, SVG support, Carousel, fast+simple dowload thru install – Opera has consistently lead in […]
Google Wave:Update
The following is the details about Google Wave, Google’s very ambitious (open source?)effort to takehold of the social networking movement– it is derived from the fairly ample information (but no accessible demos except by permisso) on the Google Wave API pages plus a Business Week overview. Here is the schematic: The key idea with […]
Semi-Structured Data; Some New Servers
The big trend in database is the effort to XML-ize Semi- structured data. This is like a big SOAP project in both senses of the Word. Many of the control structures and procedural setting borrow from SOAP. But it is also an attempt by the major Relational Database vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and […]
AAPL and MSFT Tipping Points
Rapid developments in smartphones and the emergence of Netbooks would suggest that Apple-AAPL and Microsoft-MSFT are reaching tipping points in their respective industries. However, the probability of when and the nature of the Tip may be different. But first before considering anything else, lets take a look at each company’s financial condition: Both from Google […]
RIP JPEG2000
JPEG2000 has shrivelled and not quite died but certainly is not what it promised to be as a replacement for the JPEG image format. Here are the ugly facts: Graphics Support in the Major Browsers Web Standard IE8 Firefox 3.x Chrome 1. Opera 9.6 Safari 4 JPEG2000 No No No No No SMIL Dropped? 3.1 […]
Sun Setting on Open Java?
The Serverside is reporting that Sun is effectively making Java two tiered – an Open Java – and then the latest JDK with all the bells and whistles. See the article here for the almost Machiavellian machinations. These actions by Sun may be motivated by three considerations: 1)The Open Source community (and the whole non-Sun […]
Tracking Browser and Other Web/Mobile Stats for Free
Source: StatCounter Global Stats I must give credit where credit is due – I found this very helpful link at Digital Inspiration blog. But checking around apparently the data has been available for quite some time. The question is how accurate are the numbers – and I will admit to be looking as much at […]
JavaScript RAIA Demos
JavaScript as a contender for RIA usage is not readily contemplated. JavaScript appears to have the same problem as server-based Web UI toolkits from ASP through JSF/JSP to PHP and others – if you want to deliver true RIA with user choice of online or offline operations – tools that are dependent on an online […]
Google => Goofle ?
Now be honest – as a Google Mail user are you seeing a lot more of these type messages? 1)More Ooops messages like these doing ordinary operation in GMail ? 2)Complete unavailability/outages of Gmail Services ? 3)Slllllllow … very slow response time time ? 4)Anomalous results doing simple edits? It is happening more often than […]
Why Mozilla Counts
Mozilla counts in the Web World not just because of some of its pioneering Web development projects but because its Firefox browser really has Web muscle – browser market share. See the the tables below which show the increasing Firefox market share: The above results are from the W3CSchools Survey These results are from industry […]
Bespin – Start of the Browser Wars II
Mozilla are the people behind Firefox. And some users may know it for XUL – the XML based User-interface Language that Microsoft has copied and proprietized as XAML. Some people may know that Mozilla has also a major role in JavaScript having Brendan Eich, the designer of Javascript, on staff. So naturally Mozilla has been […]
More IDEs Surface
Here is another IDE, from alfega, that appeared on the PHP/Web development scene. It has the flavor of CodeGear/Embarcadero’s Delphi for PHP. I have seen at least 5 in the past week. What is going on ? Scramble for the defunct JavaScript/AJAX IDE brass ring – well its far from defunct as Backbase, Bindows, Nexaweb […]
SitePoint Did the Right Thing
SitePoint Books, which is based in Australia, did the right thing by having a 3 day sale of many of its books at bargian price of 5 for $30. Even better, all of the proceeds from the sale will be applied to the Relief Fund for Victims of the Disaterous fire in Australia’s Southeast coastal […]
Return to Pay Per Web View
Time magazine confronts the problem which is plaguing the publishing industry and now spreading to all media – the model for charging for your work breaks down in the face of computing and particularly the Web’s ability to copy just about any work with absolute fidelity at no cost. The current model for getting paid […]
What Microsoft’s Board Should Do
Microsoft’s Board of Directors are faced with some debilitating problems. The company has proceeded to devastate its Windows Brand in the past 8 years and the results are starting to breech the desktop monopoly fortress. The stock price that had been static for 8 years at $25-35 is now taking a downturn into the $15-19 […]
LightCMS, with Emphasis on the Former
The above is the resources given with the “free” LIghtCMS – yep not a lot. Now heavens knows I feel strongly that developers and bloggers need ways of making a return on their investments. But this is sort of like those Google Ad sites – feigning being helpful; but really full of marginal links. LightCMS […]
Hello Welt from Chrome, Safari, Opera
Some strange things are happening to the Weblog in Firefox the post process just decrepitates. Here is the report for the other browsers: – I amgetting thru in Chrome2. – Also in with Safari 3.1 – Also in with Opera 9.5 – Now Firefox rebooted is working – Finally IE7 which also worked only on […]
EU Has Got It Right
The US DOJ under the Bush Administration totally blew the Antitrust Decision with Microsoft. But that was the first sign of an endemic incompetence. Now the EU Commission in requiring Microsoft to preload Windows 7 with the Safari, Mozilla, Google, and Opera browsers as well as IE for a user option of choice (much as […]
Cloud Computing Drivers: AJAX Frameworks
It can be argued that JavaScript AJAX Frameworks are leading software development right now. This is not just UI Web development but the whole tenor of software being developed. Open, agile developing that is cross browser, OS, and database/web server platforms are the regular mashup targets of more developers. And the primary development software they […]
Visions of Cloud Computing
This site has been citing Cloud Computing as one of the critical tools for delivering integrated information at your fingertips. Providing not just the ease of use interfaces but also the access to tools+the complete data necessary for making the right decisions. But Cloud Computing has its skeptics. Information Week did a survey of over […]
VB6 and VBA Are Not Dead, Just Not Supported: Update
Microsoft did not stomp on VB6 and VBA, they just removed any more paid support for it. See the news here. In Redmond’s favor, they made good on a promise in 2005 to do this. However there are are numerous affected parties. On the VB6 side many users including some Microsoft designated Master Programmers, feel […]
Google APIs
Backbase and YUI started it, and now Google has finally succumbed – a great demo interface for its JavaScript APIs: Try it you will like it. But also note that Google is using jQuery 1.26 as its JavaScript Framework for most of the core windowing and display work. Interesting ?
Ajaxians Being Grateful, Skeptical, then Resigned …
There is a podcast at the Ajaxian blog with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, entitled the Audible Ajax. They talk about the State of Ajax and address the following issues: IE8 and standards – they are so grateful for anything that Microsoft puts in IE8 that get closer to standards that is positively embarrassing to listen […]
CES 2009: Yahoo TV Widgets
We cover in our sister publication, PictureThat, the accelerating convergence in functionality and features between still cameras and video camcorders. Still cameras are borrowing much wider zooms, low lux performance, and image stabilization from video cameras while providing HD video recording capabilities with interchangeable lessons in cameras like the Nikon D90 or Canon Mark 2D […]
JavaScript 2/ECMAScript 4 Delayed-Means Forking Inevitable?
I have previously commented on the importance of JavaScript to Adobe and Web 2.o in general – so it is very notable that work on ECMAScript 4 has been partitioned or delayed depending on who you consult. Clearly there is a functional and learning burden making the shift up to JavaScript 2/ECMAScript 4 – just […]
Piria’s Rombla Online Web Developer
Having featured SiteGrinder, its only fair to consider Rombla: The idea is the same as SiteGrinder, make the development of websites more conducive to designers by eliminating most if not all of the coding required to do modern Web 2 website designs. On first glance, I think Rombla is a few steps ahead of SiteGrinder […]
Photoshop for Web Development
Sitegrinder is a Photoshop plugin – not an ordinary photo-effects oriented plugin; but rather a Web Development tool. SiteGrinder allows graphic artist to layout the design for a website page (or pages) in Adobe’s Photoshop. Using the extensive Layer and Layer Comp facilities in Photoshop one can add sophisticated buttons, links, page transitions, galleries, and […]
Google Finance
As one can well imagine throughout the Financial Fiasco, letting the Financial community handle your investments has become both financially risky and intellectually stressing. So I am now doing do-it-yourself investing. Thus I am responsible for tuning and diversifying the portfolio with returns and risks managed to longer term goals. And being a Web developer […]
Picking Through Redmond’s Dirty Web Laundry
An argument being made on this blog is that Microsoft, by trying to stifle Web Development by not improving IE features for 5-6 years(only security fixes were made between 2001 to 2006), has continued to retard Web Development in 3 ways even after Bill Gates’ infamous one-only “Mea Culpa”: 1)many W3C standards did not get […]
Underhyped Software
Let me suggest one candidate for underhyped software – that is software that is quite good but just manages to stay under the radar except for the people doing work with it – the ones in the know. The JavaScript framework jQuery is just such underhyped software. jQuery Selector lab demo from the book jQuery […]
Max Adobe Show
The Adobe Max Show in San Francisco this week is becoming as important to Web and Cloud Designers and Developers as the Microsoft PDF/TechEd conferences used to be for staying on the state of the art in IT development. But now it is Adobe that is moving on a three prong front that is really […]
Chrome vs IE8
Update: See the latest benchmark results including Firefox, Opera, Safari results here. On the day after Labor Day I got a browser surprise. During my Windows XP updates (I always select user customized over the default because Redmond gives me stuff I don’t want unlike on my Linux notebook), Microsoft offered me a chance to […]
The FireBug Advantage
Now some would argue that Firefox deserves to be your browser for the great number of cool plugins that it offers. This story in Computerworld is typical of what the Web savvy are saying about Firefoxs plugin advantage. The Firefox website has this list of 1844 and counting add-ons. Others will say that Firefox real […]
Web Goes the Way of SQL
On theOpenSourcery.com, I have been doing a revamped series of reviews and tutorials on CSS. One of the facts that is emerging is that W3C standards like CSS, DOM, and DHTML JavaScript are being abused, ignored or delibrately bypassed and thwarted by browser vendors despite having close to ten years to deliver on a very […]