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Firefox 3.5 is here!

via mozilla.com

a few hours before the official release, the new version is available for download! (careful with those addons!)

Q. HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight? A. Yes and IE too!

Continuing the discussion - HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight?, via http://blog.skitsanos.com/2009/06/html-5-could-it-kill-flash-and.html

HTML 5 won't only kill Flash or Silverlight but it could also kill IE's dominance in the browser market altogether and well ahead of the projected timeline if it continues to treat customers, developers, and more importantly web standards in general with indifference. As browser vendors such as Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Google continue to implement HTML 5 features seemingly quicker than WHATWG can make a recommendation for it, it clearly shows peoples desire for a more dynamic web experience. After all it's been well over a decade since the original HTML and we are still used to websites being mostly static pages.

Flash and Silverlight have several problems that new features of HTML 5 effectively solve. I won't get into the details here as they have been endlessly debated over the internet for the last year, you can Google it if you like but many will argue that Flash and Silverlight work just as well. Frankly most suggestions are complicated work-arounds and at the end of the day it's just not as simple or as integrated as doing it directly in HTML 5.

As these new experiences blossom on the web and word of mouth spreads (as Mozilla and the developer community have proven work so effectively) people will start asking why they can't do that on their IE browser. I get the sense there is a genuine ground swell of support for HTML 5 with more sophisticated demo's being produced on a nearly daily basis and eager developers who are looking to experience that excitement and passion they once felt for the web when they first started in the industry and when it wasn't "just a job".

I've been tracking development of HTML 5 via the WHATWG mailing list for sometime and if you want a say in the furture of HTML 5 or just want to keep abreast of developments I strongly suggest you join their mailing list. While I agree HTML 5 is definitely a step in the right direction I also believe it should not be overshadowing the efforts of XHTML 2 which is a another blog topic entirely. However the future of the web is indeed a bright one but it could also, as many have been predicting, be one without a dominant Microsoft.

KIDO'Z - Safe,easy and fun internet for kids

Secunia on Internet Explorer

Firefox had no issues

The importance of standards

I was going through some CMS and portal software implementations yesterday, and looked at them from a standards point of view. You might wonder, why are standards important ? Isn't it easier to build something minimal that will do just the job ? Well in terms of software engineering it probably seems to be, but you end up in a very proprietary system, but using standards don't necessarily mean that you will have to build more code.
 
One standard comparison that is often mentioned nowadays is the one between SQL and CMIS. Some call CMIS the "SQL for content", while others (like my good colleague Stéphane) view it more as the SQL for file systems :) But anyway, what do these standards really bring us, except for the hassle of implementing them and even harder testing interoperability ?
 
I think one of the best examples in this area is what has happened in the browser world. They would have never existed if it wasn't for standards. When Mozilla was started, there wasn't really a standard for HTML, it was written based on the implementation, but that's ok. When Mozilla became Netscape, it added a lot of extensions to HTML, like layers, that weren't part of the standard, and when Internet Explorer came to the market, it had a different implementation of layers. So basically for a while, people building web sites either had to do two versions of their websites, or just refrain from using layers until they were standardized.
 
So what did people gain from the standards ? Well on the end users part : choice. On the web developers side : less work. On the browser's side : a very good API to implement and especially to test against ! The last point is very important, it is one of the reasons that Java became such a success. The API was clearly a "standard", established through the Java Community Process process, to make sure that various implementations would comply to the same API. Sure there were some glitches here and there, but globally it was quite a success.
 
Giving customers choice is not necessarily something they will immediately understand, but it is good for them. When Internet Explorer became the dominant browser, the best way to attack it was through its less than compliant implementation of CSS. Suddenly web developers starting complaining about high development costs, were developing better looking layouts on other browsers, and Firefox became a very strong competitor.
 
In the CMS market, this need for standardization is still in the process of happening, but nonetheless important. Customers must understand that the investment they are doing into their content management system must imply the possibility to import and export the content easily, and especially interoperate between various content system. This is especially true when you go into the semantic web, where content systems will need to create semantic links across vendors, and that is still a bit of a pipe dream at this moment.
 
Some standards are de-facto standards. When these de-facto standards are actually owned and controlled by a single company, this is more of a problem. Look for example at Microsoft's Internet Explorer or the iPhone's AppStore. Both these de-facto standards are really creating frustration on both the user and developer's sides. In the iPhone's AppStore for example, the end-user cannot use applications that run in the background or fully interact with the phone, the applications only run on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and any complaints are completely ignored by the company because it cannot handle the sheer volume of customer requests. On the developer's side, the closed platform means that you can spend 6 months developing an application that will never be accepted. Again the fact that a standard is de-facto doesn't guarantee it's success.
 
But when the de-facto standard is established by an open-source foundation such as the Apache Foundation, things can be very different. Even in the case of SpringSource, fathers of the excellent Spring Framework, the de-facto standard can become a real strong force. So the combination of de-facto and open source is a really powerful one, especially if the implementation has a large public. But what is even better is a real standard and open-source implementations, like the Apache Jackrabbit or Apache Chemistry projects. Even if the project might still run out of steam one day, the standards on which they are based will still be there, and the legacy can be guaranteed to be understood and the interface still present to allow future developers to be able to interact with the systems.
 
In the aviation industry, they do the exact opposite to what most of the software industry does, they only use "old" bricks, that they know have been proven to work, and adhere very strictly to standards and specifications. This allows constructors to protect human lives from harm. This has an incidence on cost of course, but because they are doing this mostly within a single company and also because of the materials and manpower needed. But there is software running in airplanes and space shuttles, so the importance of standards and high reliability doesn't need to be incompatible with the business of building software.
 
The real hard part is building software quickly and reliably, without incurring too many costs, and this is where the open source community comes into play. Some projects in the Apache Foundation have been incredible in that regard. The Apache Jackrabbit project is such an example, the Spring Framework is another, and there are many such stories of high quality software, adhering to standards, that have been developed much quicker than ever before. But they wouldn't be interesting if they didn't adhere to a standard, be it de-facto (because of community size and open-source) or "real".
 
Jahia was born out of a proprietary content management system, and is moving all of it's sub-systems to be built on on top of both the "real" and de-facto standards. It builds value on top of bricks that have been proven to be reliable, modern and standard such as the JCR, the Portlet API 2.0, WebDAV, GWT, the Spring Framework, Log4J, and many more. We are working on integrating CMIS and possibly other new standards (such as the work being started in the IKS project). Of course the real value to the customer is not in the bricks, but in the building you have constructed using the bricks.

Only 8% of People Know What a Browser Is

Credit to InetEngineers for original post

Nice graphic of browser market share - in context of total market growth

via weblogs.mozillazine.org

Market share is not the whole story.

Digging Up The Past?

I thought we were past IE6 and how to deal with it but once again, upon catching up with feeds, I see new options and even more people paying it attention. Is that not partly to blame for why we are still altering our sites for it?

There are bound to projects where it must be accommodated for as the audience may be in the majority but besides those, how about we just get on with things?

Google Chrome: Another 30 Percent Faster?

A shift in our markup of choice?

I'm seeing more and more recently on HTML 5 and people jumping ship on XHTML entirely. When I read through the articles over at Ordered List, I was interested in how things would progress but thought nothing more of it. I presumed it would be at least a few years away before we could start using HTML 5 for our markup. Until the last couple of days that is.

Dave Shea recently made the announcement that he was moving to HTML 4.01 in preparation for HTML 5 and Matt Harris has already done so. So now I'm wondering if more people are going to join them and move over to HTML?

Personally, I'm not planning on a change any time soon. XHTML is working just fine and I'm into the thinking of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" so I don't see much point in changing until I can fully use HTML 5 without having to worry about a barrage of hacks and browser-dependant tweaks.