I came across this article of how Apple is selectively implementing HTML5 and putting out a lot of disinformation about following standards.

Apple is hyping HMTL5 again, this time with a new website purporting to show open web development in action. But the company’s standards-following rivals have pointed out the Jobsian site is peddling nonsense.

Apple’s HTML5 ’standards’ hype debunked • The Register

Their ship is already sinking. Mobile is the next thing, and they need to wake up and smell the coffee, they represent a minor percentage of the market. The rest are all jumping in on open standards. Even Nokia has now made the Symbian OS open source. Other large players are beginning to realise it is in their benefit to follow open standards, because no one company is ever going to corner the market on technology. There will be always a new player out of no where. And the best way to control the competition is to ensure that the market follows the agreed open standards. Those who don’t live up to the standard, will whither and die, because the end user will have a substandard experience. Because what are the content developers going to develop for? Why the largest market / platform there is of course! Why else did Microsoft’s vision of things hold dominance for so long? Because they had the largest platform / market share. But that is no longer the case. The platforms that people access their information is rapidly diversifying, and so Microsoft have been caught napping. They thought there was no end in sight for the dominance of the desktop platform. Then along comes mobile. Bam! Now its a desperate catch up, which they will never do. Their worst nightmare is being realised. Linux is becoming dominant on mobile, largely thanks to Android. How can a commercial OS developer like Microsoft compete against a free OS like Linux? Answer, they can’t! So we come to Apple’s tactics. Build a jailed platform and broadcast propaganda. Hey fine for the fanatic converts, but they are fools to think they will ever win any sort of platform or market dominance like Microsoft ever did. So their pick and choose implementation on HMTL5 will ultimately backfire on them as it did with Microsoft and earlier web standards. Developers will curse their name, and develop for them second, if at all. They will ultimately be force to also play catch up.

Steve Jobs and Apple are not the only ones Adobe have to worry about when it comes to the future of Flash. There are veritable legions of everyday web developers willing, and eager to ditch Flash.

There is now, less and less reason to use Flash on a website as the new HTML5  standard is starting to be implemented by the browser vendors. How does HTML 5 sound the death knell for Flash? Let’s list some of the major features of both side by side.

So as you can see all bases are covered. But, HTML5’s ascendancy is all dependent upon browser implementation. Again we’re heading into an era of competing browser technologies as some browser vendors choose differing implementations. HTML5 video is a good example. FireFox only supports, the Ogg Theora format, while the others are going with H.264. This hardly makes developers’ or content providers’ lives easy.

But somewhere along the way, everything will harmonize. And at that point, Flash will be history. It’s inevitable. Why would you mess about with a third party plugin when the browser will natively do all the things you require?

Multiple file uploads were for a long time a reason to have Flash on your site. It was just so frustrating to use standard HTML forms to upload multiple files. You had to select each individual file one at a time. But now, along comes HTML5 with multiple file upload. Progress indicators are now also possible. There is even an example of a drag and drop multiple file upload. The future of useful web applications is bright, but Flash won’t be there.

While I enjoy using openSuse 11.1 Linux (since switching over from Windows) one thing that has consistently bugged me is the Network Manager. It was always problematic with regards to wireless networks. And googling will show many posts pointing out that it is bugged. So for the life of me I just don’t understand why it was included with the openSuse releases when it is so clearly broken.

However, I have discovered an alternative that works!

Wicd is an open source wired and wireless network manager for Linux which aims to provide a simple interface to connect to networks with a wide variety of settings.

Now when this software even has a page on the official openSuse website, why is it not in the official release?

When you exit Private Browsing mode in Firefox 3.5, you cannot pick up the trail again from where you left off — anything your browser remembered up to that point, has vanished.

Does the Incognito Window in Chrome work the same way? Surprisingly, no — and this is where one starts evaluating the browser makers’ design decisions. If you exit the Incognito Window (”Nothing, honey, wasn’t doing anything…just checking statistics”)re-enter it again, and then re-enter the page you were on, you’ll find your shopping cart is intact, right where you left it. So exiting that window did not erase your trail.

Read the full article here:

Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 1: How private is private browsing?

The forth coming Firefox 3.5 brings with it a slew of DOM and CSS advances, while not forgetting to mention the rendering and JavaScript speed improvements. These improvements ratchet up the competition for Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight. (Silverlight? I’ve never found a site that uses it yet.)

Firefox 3.5 adds support for the HTML 5 audio and video elements and now fully supports the HTML 5 offline resource specification. Rich internet applications here we come.

The full list of improvements can be found on the Mozilla page Firefox 3.5 for Developers.

Mozilla Labs revealed a new open-source project called Bespin, a Web-based programming environment they hope will combine the speed and power of desktop-based development with the collaborative benefits of cloud computing.

Bespin proposes an open extensible web-based framework for code editing that aims to increase developer productivity, enable compelling user experiences, and promote the use of open standards

They appear to have build their own extensible GUI using the HTML 5 canvas element and JavaScript. It looks exciting and promising. Programming development where ever you are.

Then again, it means there’s never any excuses about not being able to access your computer and your projects when you are wanting to be unavailable.

Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.

Google Chrome Browser

The internet is a buzz since Google's release yesterday of its browser named Chrome. There are many wild predictions about its future, what it means for Microsoft and Firefox and a share of nay sayers. I downloaded and to it for a test drive myself. But I waited a day to see what reactions would be and if more detailed information came to light before I went shooting my mouth. Overall the reaction seems to be very positive.

A number of things stand out about Chrome.

1. On the surface, its page rendering seems fast. It uses WebKit
2. Browser tabs are spawned as separate tasks. This the most talked about feature so far, because it means that if one website's scripts are running slow, the other tabs will not slow down. The problem child can then be killed off. This point gets my vote.
3. Chrome uses the V8 JavaScript engine. It means Chrome has speed advantages over many of the other browsers.

The general consensus seems to be that the new browser is clear pitched at web applications, and specifically web applications that continue to work when off line. Many see this as the way of the future, where applications are not tied to any one particular operating system, and are available anywhere, any time.

The browser then coupled with Google's Gears, a collection of web widgets, clearly puts in competition with Adobe's Air and Microsoft's Silverlight. As JavaScript engines become faster and if a standard HTML video element was adopted, the future looks dim for these two proprietary platforms. This is one point that seems to have garnered much applause from the technical community.

The next thing that seems to be rather sensational and wildly exaggerated, is that Chrome is Window's killer. As many people have pointed out, Chrome needs an operating system to support it. So Windows is not about to go away. But, where it does spell trouble for Microsoft, is when Chrome and other browsers create a fast, stable platform for web based productivity software, its Office cash cow is in serious trouble.

For me, it has been interesting to use Chrome for the past day, but four things stop me from using it more regularly.

1. No add ons – I love my Firefox ad blocker, Firebug development debugging tool, as a developer, I can't live without this one.
2. Its CSS rendering is not up to date. It fails the Acid 3 test. My WordPress admin theme does not work properly. So I'm using Firefox right now to write this.
3. There seems to be some JavaScipt incompatibility, some of the WordPress Editor Monkey features didn't work.
4. I can't install Flash. While this Chrome is meant to ultimately mean the demise of this platform, the nearly the whole internet still uses it. For instance, Google's own Analytics.

None of the other browsers are sitting still, so the competition is on. I believe we can expect to see some amazing developments from all of the browsers in the near future.

 Life as a modern web developer would not be bearable without a decent debugger tool such as Firebug for Firefox. It allows you to debug your JavaScript, inspect XMLHttpRequests, the DOM, CSS, and edit them.

While I love Firefox and Firebug, there are other browsers out there that I also have to develop for, the dearth of decent debugging tools these has often left me grumbling and lamenting.

But on one of those procrasting whims, I started googling. And much to my suprise I discovered that the latest version of Opera, 9.5, comes with a built in debugger called Dragonfly.

Dragonfly is only in beta, but what it offers so far is very promising indeed. It may not have all of the features that Firebug currently has, but it is certainly a very useful tool as it is. With the addition of this feature to Opera, the browser is now a serious contender as a developer tool. One thing that was a little annoying, was that Opera's Dragonfly web page doesn't clearly state that, you only need to be using the latest browser, and can activate it under the menu option Tools / Advanced / Developer tools.

My curiosity then led me on to look at Safari next. And yes, there appears to be a similar tool also, but after server attempts at following the instructions from multiple websites I can't activate it. The steps one has to go through to enable it are counter intuitive. With both Firefox and Dragonfly, they are easily accessible via a menu of icon. So I've given up on Safari's development tool until they make it easier to access.

Now there is one browser yet to mention, and I hear the collective groan, Internet Explorer. Once the darling, it is now the millstone around the necks of developers across the world. For years they have had a developer tool in beta, that just has never progressed anywhere. It doesn't even offer an integrated JavaScript debugger.

The future of browsers is becoming very competitive again, with those clearly moving in the right direction, the others that need to pick up their game or be left out of it.