Mozilla executives today took shots at Google for pitching its Chrome Frame plug-in as a solution to Internet Explorer's poor performance, with one arguing that Google's move will result in "browser soup."
The Mozilla reaction puts the company that builds Firefox on the same side of the debate as rival Microsoft, which has also blasted Googleover the plug-in.
Released last week , Chrome Frame lets Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), IE7 and IE8 utilize the Chrome browser's WebKit rendering engine, as well as its high-performance V8 JavaScript engine. Google pitched the plug-in as a way to instantly improve the performance of the notoriously slow IE , and as a way for Web developers to support standards IE can't handle, including HTML 5.
Specifically, said Google, it was pushing Chrome Frame because it decided it wasn't worth trying to make its new collaboration and communications tool, Google Wave, work with IE. Google developers spent "countless hours" on tweaking Wave for IE, but gave up.
"We could continue in this fashion, but using Google Chrome Frame instead lets us invest all that engineering time in more features for all our users, without leaving Internet Explorer users behind," argued Lars Rasmussen and Adam Schuck of Google's Wave team last week.
Mitchell Baker, the former CEO of Mozilla and currently the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, disagreed with Google's tactic to slip Chrome inside IE. Strongly.
"The overall effects of Chrome Frame are undesirable," she said in an entry to her personal blog late Monday. "I predict positive results will not be enduring and -- and to the extent it is adopted -- Chrome Frame will end in growing fragmentation and loss of control for most of us, including Web developers."
According to Baker, Chrome Frame's browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless. "Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it's very hard to manage information across Web sites. Some information will be manageable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame. This defeats one of the most important ways in which a browser can help people manage their [Web] experience."
But Chrome Frame's biggest problem, said Baker, is that it cedes control to the site, not the person surfing. And that will just confuse users.
Yahoo on Tuesday released version 3 of its Yahoo User Interface library, a software collection programmers can use to endow Web sites with fancy user interface elements written in JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets.
"YUI 3's core infrastructure and its utility suite are all considered production-ready with today's release," Yahoo's Eric Miraglia said in a blog post Tuesday. "The code we're shipping today in 3.0.0 is the same code that drives the new Yahoo Home Page, and it goes out with confidence that it has been exercised vigorously and at scale."
The YUI libraries are open-source, freely available, and used widely around the Internet for Web site tasks including animation, drag-and-drop, fetching data from various types of sources, and responding to events--chores that are more complicated but that often are useful as the Web moves from static Web pages toward interactive applications.
Compared with YUI 2, the new version is smaller, faster, easier to program with, and more secure, Yahoo said. It's easier to break code into minimum-size pieces through a dependency configurator or YUI's ability to download required components on its own. Also, Yahoo is working to add widget abilities for creating small programs.
A convenient YUI feature is that Yahoo is willing to host most of it on its own servers, saving hassle and Web server bandwidth.
The new version is the first ground-up reworking of the software since 2005. No doubt YUI will be the subject of discussion at Open Hack Day and YUIConf, both in October.
This chart illustrates the smaller file sizes of one YUI 3 libary that helps with retrieving data from various sources.
Intel and Microsoft have announced a new port of Silverlight to Linux, specifically for the Intel-sponsored Moblin operating system running on Atom-powered devices such as netbooks. The port enables Intel to include Silverlight as a supported runtime in the Atom Developer Program, which will feed an iPhone-like App Store.
Microsoft has already provided Intel with Silverlight source code and test suites. Intel will build an optimized Moblin version of Silverlight, which Microsoft will supply to OEMs.
There are a couple of surprising aspects to the announcement. One is that a Linux implementation of Silverlight already exists, the open source Moonlight project. We asked Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb, director of the Developer Platform Group, why Moonlight was not being used for Atom devices. Goldfarb replied by making a distinction between "broad Linux," which is targeted by Moonlight, and specific Linux-based devices where Microsoft might support other implementations.
"The effort with Intel has nothing to do with the developer community of broad Linux," he said. "It's specifically scoped to Atom-based devices and is really about customer experiences out of the box. I look at the two things as compatible. Intel and Microsoft working together to deliver these phone and MID [Mobile Internet Device] experiences, whereas Moonlight is focused on desktop Linux."
Goldfarb says the announcement is part of a high-level strategy in which Microsoft aims to bring Silverlight to "as many platforms and as many devices as possible," He adds that, in comparison to Moonlight, the work with Intel is "pretty far apart from a philosophical perspective, regardless of any technical similarities."
He expects Silverlight for Moblin to be completed round about Summer 2010 and promised more in-depth technical details no later than the Mix conference in mid-March.
The other supported runtimes in Intel's Atom program are native code, Java, and Adobe AIR. These differ from Silverlight in that they are desktop runtimes, whereas Silverlight mainly works in the browser, though version 3 adds the ability to run out of browser but still within a security sandbox. Will Intel add new ways to use Silverlight as a desktop runtime? "I don't have enough detail on that. I don't think it's completely worked out," said Goldfarb.
Intel's support is a useful boost for Silverlight. The announcement is also a PR effort that enables Microsoft's long-term partner to appear to put Silverlight on the same level as Adobe AIR, which currently looks better suited for devices like a Moblin netbook.
The awkward question: If it's that easy to port Microsoft Silverlight to Linux, why does the Moonlight project exist at all?
"I'm really clear about our commitment to Moonlight. I see the work we're doing with Miguel and Moonlight as core to our strategy for delivering implementations for Linux," says Goldfarb, protesting, perhaps, a little too much. ®
While thinking about UI changes for Firefox 3.7 we simultaneously thought about where we wanted to take 4.0. These designs are envisioned as evolutionary steps. This serves two purposes: easing the transition and allowing adequate development time for platform capabilities.
This is a tentative direction of things we would like to see happen in 4.0. These directions are still in early brainstorming and proposal phase, and broader suggestions and ideation is welcome.
Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn't use) the "keywords" meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob's site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her "keywords" meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words "AliceCo" to his "keywords" meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?
At least for Google's web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.
Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that's an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present.
Q: Why doesn't Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.
Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets, as this screenshot shows:
Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.
Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?
A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.
The GIMP is one of those applications that people either seem to love or hate. While it's always been a powerful and capable alternative to big commercial apps like Photoshop, GIMP's multiple floating window interface has been hard for some users to adapt to. Good news to those of you who love the program but just couldn't adapt to the UI: version 2.8 will feature a selectable single window mode. As you can see in the mock-up above, it's a much more Photoshop-like experience. Hardcore GIMP fans, don't despair. If you've been convinced that multi-window mode is a superior way to work, you won't have to change. GIMP developers have also been looking at ways of better handling multiple images in the editor. Tabs, of course, were added in Photoshop CS4. Don't expect to see them in GIMP 2.8, however. Peter Sikking offers three reasons in his blogs post that they have decided not to use tabs, instead opting for a movable thumbnail tray (image after the break).
UI customization has always been central to the GIMP. In keeping with that, Sikking anticipates that users will be able to place the strip on the top, bottom, left, or right. Another idea being considered are "Polaroids" - floating, independent windows that can be used as references while working on an image in the editor. Apart from full images, you'll also be able to select a region and copy it to its own Polaroid - useful for doing detail work.
What do you think about the new concepts for GIMP 2.8? Do you think the addition of a single window mode will attract new users? Share your take in the comments!
After Microsoft decided to ship and use jQuery library for its JavaScript needs in Visual Studio, hosting jQuery on Microsoft CDN servers is actually a logical and good decision. Yes, some of us might argue that Google already hosts jQuery, but Microsoft can not recommend to use its competitor’s services.
Anyway, intention of this post is not to discuss why Microsoft introduced its own jQuery hosted servers. The intentions is to share a link to Microsoft hosted jQuery library. Here we go:
Currently Microsoft AJAX CDN hosts only jQuery version 1.3.2, but they will add more releases in the future. To see a full list of the JavaScript libraries and their URLs that are already hosted on CDN cache go here:www.asp.net/ajax/cdn
Microsoft this week will shed some light on a planned upgrade to Silverlight, its browser-based rich Internet application technology, which will gain native multicast support capabilities as well as support for offline digital rights management.
Called Silverlight 4, the upgrade will be previewed at the International Broadcasting Convention, which begins Sept. 11 in Amsterdam. Microsoft, which shipped Silverlight 3 in July, has not revealed a ship date for Silverlight 4.
Multicast capabilities in version 4 will provide a way to stream video on bandwidth-constrained networks, thus reducing the burden on media servers while enabling broadcasters to reach more viewers, according to a Microsoft representative. Previously, a plug-in was required to enable this functionality.
Offline digital rights management in Silverlight 4 will be powered by Microsoft PlayReady technology. PlayReady is intended to enable the mobile industry to support online content services. With offline PlayReady DRM and out-of-browser capabilities in Silverlight 4, movie studios and retailers can offer the same rich interactive experiences via digital copy and Internet distribution as consumers get with DVD or Bluray, Microsoft said.
Silverlight 4 will enable movie studios to offer network-delivered updates, special offers, and live events.
The company this week also will announce plans to release IIS (Internet Information Services ) Media Services 3.0, enabling delivery of interactive "Live Smooth Streaming," which has been used to broadcast live events.
IIS Media Services, which is an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform that supports HD streaming, and Silverlight 3 provide a platform for delivering online media experiences for online consumers, Microsoft said.
Microsoft this week announced a beta version of its Smooth Streaming player development kit, which is intended to make it easier for developers to build custom players using templates. It will be offered with the release of IIS Media Services 3.0.
Microsoft this week also will publish the IIS (Internet Information Services) Smooth Streaming Transport Protocol and PIFF (Protected File Format) specification, for DRM interoperability, under the Microsoft Community Promise, thus allowing use of the technologies without Microsoft invoking any claims against users. With these moves, Microsoft hopes to promote industry adoption of a video format optimized for Internet delivery and interoperable among a range of consumer devices.
ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn reports today on a new open source navigation project launched by European GPS company TomTom that adds additional functionality to navigational devices, regardless of the make or model. The OpenLR project aims to put navigation data on top of a GPS unit's existing database so drivers can access local traffic, weather, and other useful information as they travel.
"This technological development is being introduced to the open source community to assist in delivering location based services to customers. TomTom will use this technology for its own services too, allowing us to transmit content like HD Traffic to connected devices and improve service quality and coverage," Mark Gretton, TomTom's Director of Product Engineering, said In a prepared statement.
TomTom says an open source model is critical to the success of this project in order for it to achieve wide-scale adoption by the industry at large." That's no doubt partially a dig at Microsoft, who recently sued the company for patent infringement and later settled out of court.
Though OpenLR's technical documentation is already available online, TomTom plans to present the specifics of the project at the ITS World Congress in Stockholm later this month.
Just i messaged about Microsoft’s Doloto and here we go, IBM brings something new as well.
Countering rivals Microsoft and Adobe Systems, IBM is offering a free tool to simplify development of JavaScript-based Web applications, featuring use of a modeling language, according to IBM sources.
Big Blue's EGL CE (Enterprise Generation Language Community Edition), released Tuesday, is an Eclipse-based tool geared to building Web 2.0 applications. It leverages IBM's EGL modeling language. Developers who code in PHP, Ruby on Rails, Groovy, JavaScript, and HTML can use the EGL tool to code, test, and debug Web 2.0 applications using one language.
EGL does not try to replace HTML or JavaScript, unlike Adobe Flash/Flex or Microsoft Silverlight technologies, said Will Smythe, EGL product line manager at IBM, in a slide presentation posted on the EGL Web page (PDF).
"EGL is a higher-level programming language designed for developing powerful, modern applications," Smythe said. "The goal is to shield developers from complexities typically associated with Web 2.0 application development."
"EGL CE is intended for anyone who wants to develop RIAs (rich Internet applications) quickly and efficiently. Since EGL syntax is easy for people to learn and can integrate across different business tiers, people from all development backgrounds (Java, PHP, Cobol, etc) find they are very productive using EGL," said Smythe.
EGL CE enables development of JavaScript-based user interfaces without having to write JavaScript. It also can be used to build Java-based Web services without the need to write Java code. Developers can build complex Web applications without coding in multiple different languages and patching pieces together for the end product, according to a statement from an IBM representative, and can spend less time deploying and more time coding.
AJAX web applications bring a variety of rich user experiences to the web, but often those experiences require downloading a lot of code. The result is applications that are frustratingly slow to load and taxing to web servers.
Today we are announcing the availability of Doloto on MSDN DevLabs. Doloto is a tool that makes pages more responsive by decreasing the initial download size of complex AJAX web applications.
Doloto analyzes AJAX application workloads and automatically performs code splitting of existing large web applications. Doloto enables applications to initially transfer only the portion of client-side JavaScript code necessary for application initialization. The rest of the application’s code is replaced by short stubs; their actual function code is transferred lazily in the background or on-demand on first execution. Since code download is interleaved with application execution, users can start interacting with your web application much sooner without waiting to download code that implements features they’re not currently using.
How it Works
Doloto is a standalone client-side tool. Its wizard guides you through the following three steps:
1. Doloto profiles your application. Doloto performs profiling by running a local proxy on your machine that intercepts JavaScript files and instruments them to capture timestamps at runtime for every JavaScript function in a browser-independent manner.
2. Profiling information is used to calculate code coverage and a clustering strategy. This determines which functions are stubbed out and which are not and groups functions into batches which are downloaded together, called clusters.
3. Doloto rewrites JavaScript code. It then saves it to disk so that you can upload it to the server. The entire process happens on your machine, without needing access to the server. This way, you can profile and optimize the JavaScript of a any third-party site without special access to their servers. When you are satisfied with Doloto’s results, you can deploy the rewritten files to the server.
Show Me Some Results!
In our experiments across a number of AJAX applications and network conditions, Doloto reduced the amount of initial downloaded JavaScript code by over 40%, resulting in startup often faster by 30-40%, depending on network conditions. The chart below shows savings in the amount of downloaded JavaScript code across a range of popular web sites required for the initial application loading phase.
Download and try Doloto today, and share your thoughts and experiences on the project’s forum.
Upcoming versions of Mozilla's Firefox browser will automatically warn users running versions of Adobe's Flash Media Player that contain known security bugs, according to a published report.
The check will be invoked each time the popular open-source browser is updated, according to the report which was published Thursday by The H. Users who have out-of-date versions of the Adobe application will be notified in the "What's New" browser page that automatically opens each time an update is installed.
The feature is already available in versions 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 versions of Firefox, which are in beta testing, according to the publication. Mozilla officials didn't respond to emails requesting comment.
The move makes perfect sense given the difficulty many computer users have installing Adobe updates in a timely fashion. A report (PDF) released last month by security firm Trusteer found that 80 percent of PCs users failed to install one or more critical updates more than two weeks after they were issued. An estimated 99 percent of internet users have Flash installed, making it one of the world's most ubiquitous programs.
Flaws in the program are routinely exploited by criminals to install keyloggers and other malicious software on end-user machines.
If the Firefox feature makes it into release versions, Flash laggards who install a new version of the browser will receive a warning that reads: "You should update Adobe Flash right now. Firefox is up to date, but your current version of Flash can cause security and stability issues. Please install the free update as soon as possible." A download link is included. ®
Webware development dedicated blog by Skitsanos R&D Labs. ASP.NET, XML, RIA, Adobe Flex, ActionScript 3, AIR, AJAX, Web 2.0, Backbase, CGI development with RealBasic and other web development issues.
