Exciting things lie ahead with emerging browser technologies supporting the new HTML5  standard.

I found this blog post “Video Tag and Subtitles” which demonstrates the new video tag, but also uses JavaScript to add subtitles.

The demonstration requires a standards compliant browser supporting the HTML5 video tag, which currently is Firefox 3.1 / 3.5 or the nightly build versions of Safari (Webkit) or Opera.

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.

I have always learnt how to code by example. I find some one else's code open it up have a look around, and start hacking. But every once in a while I'll come across some code that has been obfuscated. It has never stopped me in the past, and usually I've taken a long and laborious way to make it readable again.

Well today, I was feeling particularly impatient with the JavaScript I wanted to open up. I looked through my Firefox plugins and found nothing, so I then googled for a solution. To my surprise I found something extremely simple and elegant.

alert(function showMeTheCode() { yourJSgoesHere });

The "yourJSgoesHere" is of course replaced with the code you want to unobfuscate. Firefox will then print you an alert with neatly formatted JavaScript. Enjoy!