html5

A Microsoft evangelist has mocked Google's decision to remove H.264 video support from Chrome, implying that Google is trying to impose an edict on an industry that's already made up its mind to the contrary.

In a blog post, Tim Sneath, who runs Windows and Web evangelism for Microsoft, likens Google's WebM video codec to the utopian but unsuccessful Esperanto language. The blog post rewrites Google's original announcement that the company is removing support for the widely used H.264 codec to advance its own WebM.

Both technologies can be used with the nascent HTML5 … Read more

Apple has rolled out a new tool for developers looking to create ads for iAd, the company's mobile-ad platform.

Launched yesterday, the new iAd Producer is designed to help developers create, test, and launch mobile-ad campaigns to run under iAd. Freely available to any paid member of Apple's iOS Developer Program, iAd Producer runs under Mac OS X 10. (No word from Apple on a possible Windows version.)

The software presents a visual design layout in which developers can specify the device they wish to design for and then see how their ad would flow from page to … Read more

Microsoft wants to give Web developers a way to get their feet wet with emerging HTML5 technologies.

Today the company is launching HTML5 Labs, a standalone site that will include demo code for two cutting-edge HTML5 technologies that aren't quite finished: Web Sockets and IndexedDB. Developers who want to try to build sites with either specification will be given code that Microsoft plans to keep updated as each one progresses on its way to becoming a stable part of the standard.

In a phone interview with CNET last week, Jean Paoli, general manager of Microsoft's Interoperability Strategy Team … Read more

The Internet Explorer browser that's built into Windows Phone 7 devices could be getting two very important additions next year: support for HTML5 and Microsoft's Silverlight runtime.

A ZDNet report this morning says the extra functionality may come in the form of a major update codenamed "Mango" that is set for release in August or September. That's well after a rumored January or February release of a phone update that would bring long-awaited copy and paste functionality.

While the two extra Web features may not seem like game-changers, they move Microsoft's mobile browser into … Read more

Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support.

The Web Sockets technology, which opens up a live communication link between a browser and a server, remains an important part of plans to make the Web a home for more dynamic, interactive sites. It could, for example, speed up Google Instant searching and multiplayer games. But Mozilla and Opera put their Web Socket plans on hold this week until the wrinkles are ironed out.

The reversal is only the latest difficulty, … Read more

Two significant features are coming to Opera Mobile for Android, the Oslo company's higher-end smartphone browser: playing HTML5 video and accommodating Adobe Systems' Flash Player plug-in.

"New Web technologies aim to replace it, but Flash will be around for some time. If you have Flash player installed on your phone, Opera will support it," mobile team member Pavel Studeny said in a blog post on Saturday.

HTML5 video, one of those technologies that encroaches on Flash's turf, lets developers embed video directly into a Web page, as happens with images. It's also en route Studeny … Read more

Strobe, a start-up focusing on publishing tools that employ a new generation of Web standards, has secured first-round funding.

Chief Executive and co-founder Charles Jolley announced the move today but declined to share exactly how much Hummer-Winblad and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures bestowed upon his company. The company's technology is based on a project called SproutCore that Jolley has been working on for years, including several while at Apple. Jolley left Apple in July.

SproutCore uses JavaScript and other Web tools to endow Web pages with user interfaces more like what one would expect of a native application. It … Read more

With the rise of HTML5 vying for video supremacy on the Web, workarounds for disabling Flash Player continue to pop up, allowing users to get a smoother, faster video-viewing experience online.

John Gruber (Daring Fireball) provides a great tip for disabling Flash Player in Safari (edited by crarko on macosxhints.com), which forces Web sites to serve HTML5 videos (when available). Keep in mind that not all sites that serve videos have an HTML5 version. If you apply this hack, you may lose some functionality.

Another possible side effect of this process is sites that think your browser is Mobile … Read more

One consequence of the steady increase in computer power is that newer machines can emulate the behavior of older ones, with software running fast enough to simulate operations that formerly required hardware.

Now, in an illustration of just how far Web programming has come, one coder has begun a project called jsGB that lets a Web browser emulate Nintendo's original Game Boy handheld game console.

Imran Nazar, a 26-year-old programmer from Manchester, U.K., has begun work to emulate the Game Boy in JavaScript, the Web programming language whose performance has become a top priority of browser makers today. JavaScript is used for everything from pop-up dialog boxes on Facebook to the Google Docs online productivity applications, but Nazar is busy adding 1989-era Tetris and similar games to the list.

"New JavaScript engines such as [Firefox 4's JaegerMonkey] mean much higher speeds for the core processing, more than enough to cover emulation of a basic system," Nazar said in a blog post on Mozilla's gaming site. In addition, HTML5 now offers the Canvas element for easily controlling a two-dimensional graphical display, he said.

"Why write a console emulator? It's a good way to learn the ins and outs of a particular console, and excellent for bringing together the lowest and highest levels of development," Nazar said. "And why build a console emulator in the browser, using JavaScript and HTML5? I say: why not?"

The work spotlights the growing capability of Web-based programs. JavaScript performance increases, though hard to measure, are opening new horizons for Web programmers. The cloud computing philosophy, which can let people get access to information and use online tools wherever they have a browser, is gaining credibility. New Web standards and browser features such as offline storage, advanced graphics, and hardware acceleration improve what browsers can do.

It's not all easy going, though. Perhaps the most advanced embodiment of the Web-app future, Google's Chrome OS, is stumbling on its way to market. Its troubles aside, however, it's clear more and more gets done in a browser window. … Read more