Winding road of open-source webOS 2 Feb 2012, 11:21 pm

HP continues to divulge bits and pieces of a road map for the ill-starred and nearly-orphaned webOS. The company has followed up its December plan to release webOS mobile platform and development tools with a proposed timeline, with a full release set before year’s end.  Some people see a life for the associated Enyo JavaScript framework aside from any success or failure webOS ultimately achieves.

Shim uses node.js to test sites on multiple browsers 15 Jan 2012, 5:01 am

Shim was developed within the Boston Globe’s media lab as a way to study how Web sites look on various devices and browsers. A laptop intercepts all wifi traffic – this is redirected to a custom node.js server – which inserts a javascript, or “shim,” at the head of each web page that is visited.

The shim, once loaded in a device’s browser, opens and maintains a socket connection to the server, according to to Shim’s developers. Shim was written in 2011 by Chris Marstall, Creative Technologist at the Boston Globe. The software has been open sourced. Write the Shim originators on git.hub:

Whenever a new page is requested, the page’s URL is broadcast to all connected browsers, which then redirect themselves to that URL, keeping all devices in sync. Shim info is available on git.hub.

HipHop Virtual Machine for PHP 11 Dec 2011, 3:15 am

Facebook Software Engineer and HipHop for PHP team member Jason Evans provides details on Facebook’s move to a new high-performance PHP virtual machine. Described by Evans is ”a new PHP execution engine based on the HipHop language runtime that we call the HipHop Virtual Machine (hhvm).” He sees it as replacement for the HipHop PHP interpreter (hphpi). He continues:

We have long been keenly aware of the limitations to static analysis imposed by such a dynamic language as PHP, not to mention the risks inherent in developing software with hphpi and deploying with hphpc. Our experiences with hphpc led us to start experimenting with dynamic translation to native machine code, also known as just-in-time (JIT) compilation … we developed a high-level stack-based virtual machine specifically tailored to PHP that executes HipHop bytecode (HHBC). hhvm uses hphpc’s PHP>AST implementation and extends the pipeline to PHP>AST>HHBC.

He estimates the hhvm bytecode interpreter is approximately 1.6X faster for certain Facebook-specific benchmarks, with still better performance in the offing. But, as described in his blog post on the PHP compilation innovations, there is still work ahead. You can view HipHop-related information at GitHub.

Adobe to forgo Flash plug-in for mobile devices 13 Nov 2011, 1:04 am

Earlier this week, Adobe VP and General Manager Danny Winokur disclosed that the company has concluded that HTML5 is ”the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” The company said it would stop building Flash to run on mobile browsers. In a blog post on the new focus of Flash strategy, Winokur wrote:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.  We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.

While Flash 12 work is said to be underway, many observers have wondered if this potentially marks the beginning of the end for Flash, which has been reeling since Apple refused to support it on iPhone and similar of its mobile devices.

Adobe’s Michael Chambers, principal product manager for developer relations, has responded to the general concern with a clarifying blog post, that includes a discussions of reasons for the move to quit the Flash-on-mobile-browser tact. In a post yesterday Chambers writes:

… given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops.

Also, it seems, the task of porting the plug in to innumerable mobile OSes and device types put a lot of pressure on Adobe development t efforts. ”For each new device, browser and operating system released, the resources required to develop, test and maintain the Flash Player also increases. This is something that we realized is simply not scalable or sustainable,” wrote Chambers.

Intel’s Parallel Extensions for JavaScript 8 Oct 2011, 7:38 pm

Intel’s Parallel Extensions for JavaScript, code named River Trail, hooks into on-chip vector extensions to improve performance of Web applications. Details of Intel’s attempt to get on the JavaScript juggernaut emerged last month at its developer event.

The prototype JavaScript extension offered by Intel is intended to allow JavaScript apps to take advantage of modern parallel chip capabilities. Sequential gives way to parallel, at least in theory.

In-browser games and image editing are pitched as examples of application elements that would take advantage of new eight-core processors, blogs Intel’s Stephan Herhut.The software is said to ”play nicely” with the WebGL JavaScript API to OpenGL for 3D visualization in the browser. Intel has a beta Firefox extension for interested developers. Says Herhut:

You can download a prebuilt version for Windows and 64 Bit MacOS [from github] or build it yourself. For the latter, we have written a README that explains the process. Once you have the extension installed, take a look at our demos to see what is possible.

Why should the browser be a second fiddle to the operating system? As browsers, JavaScript, and HTML5 gain more influence, top-tier chip makers will start to adapt their libraries to Web application demands. More, including material on API design or the beginnings of  API documentation, is on a RiverTrail wiki.

Adobe buys Nitobi 5 Oct 2011, 3:52 am

As it kicked off its yearly developer event, Adobe announced that it had acquired Nitobi Software, maker of PhoneGap open source software for cross-platform mobile application building with HTML5 and JavaScript. In a blog, Nitobi CEO Andre Charland pledged to pursue donation of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation ”to ensure open stewardship of the project over the long term.” In a statement, he said Nitobi and Adobe shared the same philosophy about enabling mobile and Web applications. Dave Johnson, Nitobi CTO said: Adobe was fully supportive of the decision to take PhoneGap to the Apache Software Foundation.

A simple random bit on var selector 10 Aug 2011, 2:26 am

Isobar’s Rob Larsen suggests that there is often a need to build CSS selectors dynamically when building applications. ”This is typically some existing pattern paired with a loop counter or something pulled from a data attribute,” he writes on his blog. His choice is to create a variable called ”selector” and ”to craft the selector on its own line.” This is then passed into jQuery. He shows a simple example.

The power of intent tag discussed 11 Jul 2011, 2:09 am

Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan has detailed his recent work on a lightweight sharing facility using a very simple intent share protocol. Web Intents began life in 2010. Now, Kinlan and company are looking for feedback. Basically, his intent tag is intended to allow users to more easily mix and match favorite plug-in capabilities, freeing up developer effort in the meantime.

Resembling in some ways intent attributes in the Android framework, the Intent tag works by signaling to a browser the intent to handle a number of URIs. The tag is meant for spidering.

A user chooses a favored service – say, a ”red-eye remover” for photo editing. The service loads; Intent data gets passed. The system takes care of service resources.

While somewhat reserved in promoting the power of the intent tag, Kinlan still readily suggests that the Google project could ”fundamentally change and improve the way we build applications on the Web today…”

Behind the effort has been a determined push to keep the API very simple. Kinlan describes the effort in a recent blog entitled ”Web Intents: A Fresh Look” and points you to a prototype API on Github. Further details are on http://webintents.org/share.

Code injection, error throwing 11 Jun 2011, 5:01 am

In a blog, Opera Software Developer Relations team member Tiffany B. Brown looks at code injection, error throwing and handling and mobile debugging. She notes Opera Dragonfly and its remote debug features provide a way to debug mobile sites from their desktop. Brown mentions WebKit’s recently added remote debugging capabilities, folded into Google Chrome developer tools. Pointed to as well are Bugaboo, an iOS app for Safari-based debugging; JS Console which is available on the Web or as an iOS app; and Weinre for WebKit-based browsers. In this entry, Brown looks more closely at Dragonfly remote debug and JSConsole.

The State – Sort of – of HTML5 Audio 10 Jun 2011, 4:17 am

The State – Sort of – of HTML5 Audio

Scott Schiller discusses the high level of hype around HTML5 and CSS3. The two specs render ”many years of feature hacks redundant by replacing them with native features,” he writes in an insightful blog.

Blogging, he says:

CSS3’s border-radius, box-shadow, text-shadow and gradients, and HTML5’s <canvas>, <audio> and <video> are some of the most anticipated features we’ll see put to creative (ab)use as adoption of the ‘new shiny’ grows. Developers jumping on the cutting edge are using subsets of these features to little detriment, in most cases. The more popular CSS features are design flourishes that can degrade nicely, but the current audio and video implementations in particular suffer from a number of annoyances.

He begs the question: Are we going to see a common format across the major browsers for both audio and video?

Check it out!

Maqetta to the Dojo Foundation 23 Apr 2011, 3:14 am

IBM recently announced the open source contribution of Maqetta to the Dojo Foundation. Maqetta provides WYSIWYG authoring of HTML5 user interfaces using drag/drop assembly, and supports both desktop and mobile user interfaces.

Maqetta is said to target user experience designers working in teams focused on  HTML5 application development.

The Maqetta application runs in the browser. Features include: a visual page editor for drawing out user interfaces; drag/drop mobile UI authoring within an ”exact-dimension” device silhouette (e.g., the silhouette of an iPhone)
simultaneous editing in either design or source views ; and  a Web-based review and commenting feature where the author can submit a live UI mockup for review by team members.

Maqetta is intended to fill a major hole in the HTML5 ”ecosystem” around visual tooling. “Maqetta is a great complement to other initiatives at the Dojo Foundation, particularly our mobile initiatives such as dojox.mobile, Wink Toolkit, EmbedJS, and integration of these with PhoneGap” said Dylan Schiemann, President at the Dojo Foundation and CEO at SitePen, in a statement.

The Preview 1 release of the Maqetta application is available for the community to use for free at the open source project’s Web site, http://maqetta.org

Best Practices for test revisited 8 Apr 2011, 7:08 pm

With Google and their apps like Search, Docs or GMail only a very small time is actually spent in the initial page load, writes Andreas Grabner in a recent blog post. Of course, much time is spent in JavaScript, XHR Calls and DOM Manipulations triggered by user actions. Grabner writes:

It is very important to speed up Page Load Time – don’t get me wrong. It is the initial perceived performance by a user who interacts with your site. But it is not all we need to focus on. Most of the time in modern web applications is spent in JavaScript, DOM Manipulations, XHR Calls and Rendering that happen after the initial page load. Automatic verification against Best Practices won’t work here anymore because we have to analyze individual user actions that do totally different things. The way this will work is to analyze the individual user actions, track performance metrics and automate regression detection based on these measured values.

Searching for public Orion beta? 22 Mar 2011, 12:09 am

The Eclipse Foundation now offers sign-up access to a beta version of the OrionHub service, a hosted implementation of Orion tools. Orion is an Eclipse initiative to define a browser-based platform for building and integrating web development tools. Key features of Orion include: a fast editor for JavaScript, HTML and CSS development;  a  client-side plugin architecture, using HTML5, that allows tools written in JavaScript to be integrated into the Orion client, with JSLint and jsbeautify; and git integration that includes a new git comparison tool. Orion will be discussed at several sessions at this week’s EclipseCon in San Jose, Calif.

jQuery Mobile Alpha 3 released 5 Mar 2011, 3:13 am

jQuery Mobile Alpha 3 increases browser support to include Firefox Mobile, Opera Mobile / Mini. Improvements reported on support for iOS, Android, BlackBerry 6, and Palm WebOS. Moreover, the Ajax navigation system has been …

deeply re-factored to improve performance and handle more edge cases. This includes event handling for click, submit, and hashchange, all of the base tag management, path management, active link class handling, etc. and better support for dialogs.

Individuals have noted some breaking changes  relative to early revs.

Jdrop – JSON in the cloud 18 Feb 2011, 4:21 am

Performance Wonk Steve Souders has announced Jdrop – described as a JSON repository in the cloud. It builds on his work with Mobile Perf javaScript meta-bookmarklets that can work as profilers for mobile devices. Bookmarklets gather data and display data. The data can be saved to Jdrop. For analysis. Souders blogs:

It was pretty simple to insert a step to save the data to Jdrop. The bookmarklet’s display code is easily re-used by wrapping the data in JSON and passing it back to the display code inside Jdrop’s web page. That, in a nutshell, is Jdrop.

Meanwhile, Thomas Fuchs has added Jdrop to his DOM Monster bookmarklet. JDrop is alpha mode, reminds Souders.

Using HTML5 sensibly and multimedia on the web 12 Feb 2011, 4:29 am

It is high time developers take back HTML5 from the marketing people, says Chrisian Heilmann. “HTML5 is the evolution of our web technologies, not another flashy add-on to already badly used outdated practices,” he writes in a blog posting that includes illuminating slides.

http://www.wait-till-i.com/2011/02/09/using-html5-sensibly-and-multimedia-on-the-web-speaking-at-the-london-ajax-meetup/

Prism work makes way for Chromeless effort 2 Feb 2011, 3:50 am

Mozilla Labs announced it will no longer maintain the Prism project. Attention instead will focus on the more general Chromeless project, which also is a ”task-focused layer” running on top of Mozilla’s XULRunner runtime environment. In a blog entitled “Prism is now Chromeless,” Lloyd Hilaiel wrote: “The final change we’re announcing today takes the form of widening of the goal of the Chromeless project, that is specifically, we now want to make it possible to build desktop applications with Web technologies. “

HTML5 Gets a New Logo 18 Jan 2011, 4:07 pm

That’s all we needed, really, a new logo. Does anyone else feel the need to have this stitched onto a leotard with a cape? ;-)

Smart GWT 2.4 Released 13 Jan 2011, 6:12 pm

Smart GWT 2.4 has been released and, as expected, they are jumping on the HTML5 and iOS/Touch bandwagon. The fact that the touch support doesn’t require code changes for existing apps is most welcome. Also, the mention of the upcoming Smart GWT Mobile with “pixel perfect iOS look and feel” sounds intriguing. Many have tried, few have succeeded.

From the release announcement:

• GWT 2.1.1 Compatible
• Smart GWT QuickStart Guide
• Touch & Mobile support : Support for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices with no code changes required.
• Offline support : The Offline subsystem provides features for storing and retrieving values in persistent browser storage. It is also seamlessly integrated into the normal DataSource request/response cycle. With a single property DataSource.useOfflineStorage you can enable automatic offline caching of recently fetched data so that if a user goes offline they still have access to last data they viewed.
• User Defined data highlighting allows users to highlight important or unusual data values in a ListGrid or TreeGrid based on dynamic user defined rules instead of hard coding such logic for background and foreground cell colors within code. A Highlight Editor allows end users to fully configure such highlight rules to customize their view of the data.
• Advanced Hover components allows any UI component to be added as a hover, such as a grid, chart or even a layout combining several components when hovering over a ListGrid or TreeGrid row.
• Simplicity theme : A new ultralight skin that is easily customizable and virtually image free. This can be viewed by selecting the “Simplicity” theme from the dropdown in the Showcase explorer.
• IE Performance improvements : Performance improvements have been made across the board but some IE specific performance enhancements have been made and users can expect a significant improvement in responsiveness in IE.
• 24 hour Calendar support : The Calendar component now supports 24 hour time formatting.

People of HTML5 – Bruce Lawson 7 Jan 2011, 10:44 pm

The Mozilla folks including Mozilla Evangelist Chris Heilmann thought it a good idea to introduce some “People of HTML5,” starting with Bruce Lawson of Opera, co-author of “Introducing HTML5″ and one of the curators of HTML5 Doctor.  Among the most vivid new technologies of the moment Lawson cites:

…DAP (“Device APIs and Policy Working Group”). This thrillingly-named set of specifications is further extending the capabilities of the Web by specifying APIs that allow access to device features like camera, contact books and calendar — much like Geolocation gives browsers access to the device’s GPS capabilities.

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/01/people-of-html5-bruce-lawson/