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  1. Bing has Silverlight and Google has HTML 5

    sujata on January 29th, 2010

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    Google is pulling the plug on Gears, its plug-in for all browsers, in favor of HTML 5, the web standard of the future. Adoption of HTML 5 by all should ensure that Internet works uniformly across all browsers, across all platforms. On the other hand, Microsoft has its Silverlight plug-in on the brain. The new Bing Maps that was announced earlier this week for example, needs Silverlight, and so will Internet Explorer 9, when it comes out. This completely fouls up Google’s plans for a plug-in free future. Having disparate standards on the Internet makes it very difficult for web developers to design pages that behave as expected across platforms. Browser designers use an application called Acid3, put out by the Web Standards Project to check a web browser for compatibility with web standards, not least relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript. All the major browsers pass it with flying colors; Internet Explorer, with its proprietary standards and plug-in happy architecture, barely gets 20% in the test. Microsoft argues that their choices are not about maintaining proprietary competition, but about using the latest and the best technology out there. Using AJAX as other web browsers do, would simply be using old technology they complain.

    HTML 5 would be truly cross-browser if adopted; it won’t even need Adobe Flash to play video. Certainly, Silverlight is more advanced; the trick that Bing Maps achieves with its seamless movement between map view and street-level view certainly is breathtaking. But getting people to install a plug-in is quite a headache for web developers. The effects achievable by plug-ins while very impressive, most often will not work at all because lots of people out there don’t even know how to install one. There is a video out on YouTube where a journalist goes about asking people in New York what browser they use; most of them reply “Yahoo” or “Google”. How do you get people like this to install a plug-in? The answer is, you don’t. You use an HTML 5 browser that does everything straight out of the box.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:06 am and is filed under Internet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. Local Twitter Use with Google and Bing

    sujata on January 27th, 2010

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    First there was Bing with its localized content, then Twitter Local, the app ( designed on Adobe Air by the way) that helps you find out who in your immediate geographical neighborhood is online and tweeting, and now there are Bing and Google Maps (and the iPhone) offering to pinpoint tweets on a map for you, to locate where exactly in your neighborhood a tweet you are interested in emanates from. Using this kind of locating with Bing requires Bing Maps Beta and Microsoft Silverlight. Google Maps makes it much easier on you: you can just use an RSS feed of the tweet stream, that includes the geolocation. The way it is implemented is pretty amusing in itself. You are just supposed to open Google Maps, and paste into the search box the URL of any Twitter feed that you are interested in. Right away, you get a bunch of blue location balloons on the map. Click on any one of them, and you should get the tweet itself. Google Maps will even remember all your favorite twitter streams for the next time you open it.

    The iPhone works just the same way; but Bing Maps, surprisingly, takes the lead in visual appeal, even compared to the iPhone. Next to Bing Maps, Google Maps clearly looks a decade old. The balloons contain little Twitter icons, and it displays tweeted pictures too. But Twitter is different on Bing (Bing calls that search engine Bing Twitter). What Bing calls a hot topic is not what Twitter calls one. Bing’s Beta version now allows Twitter results on the search page, and also a cloud of the most happening topics on Twitter, hot in Bing’s opinion, not Twitter. It may not seem like much if you don’t put stock in Twitter, but Bing’s Twitter search usually has a half minute lag to when tweets appear on Twitter. Microsoft ascribes this to the processing they have to do before they publish a search result: removing duplicates, flagging adult content, and so on. Things could improve – they are after all still in beta.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 2:58 am and is filed under internet, search engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. HTML 5 is the New Browser Standard After Gears

    sujata on January 17th, 2010

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    Google has demonstrated a new concept version of Gmail that they advertise to be HTML 5 enabled. The World Wide Web’s always been written in HTML. HTML while satisfactory, has had issues in an obscure area known as the Web Applications; this is something HTML 5 tries to fix. This is no ordinary upgrade on Gmail or some app in being given off-line abilities though. To begin with, the database definition on HTML 5 allows any web function to locally create and utilize a database; and App Cache allows local caching of its executable state: both spelling improved speed in addition to off-line ability. HTML 5 is able to work on any standard compatible device; with its geolocation ability that allows the browser to reliably estimate where the device is located, it makes for a handy portable device too. And better standardization allows webpages designed on HTML 5 to appear in the exact same way on all HTML 5 compatible devices – computers, mobiles, anything.

    Google used to have Gears, for its off-line ability. But HTML 5 is so promising that Google plans to phase out Gears now, and web developers are being encouraged to follow suit too. A part of Google’s reason for this current migration comes from the Chrome browser. While to support Gears the PC has the Chrome browser that is on version 3 yet, the Mac, will never have it. And it isn’t as simple as just designing a Gears version for Snow Leopard either – there are insurmountable technical hurdles, apparently. But all the functionality that Gears would bring, HTML 5 would do better, with an open standard to be supported on all browser platforms to boot. Support for Gears while it continues, is expected to not run forever: Google is asking developers to quickly make the shift to HTML 5.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Internet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. Chrome Frame: Injecting New Life into Internet Explorer

    sujata on December 28th, 2009

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    Most ordinary folk get by on the computer with a few seat-of-the-pants skills. When you don’t really know the difference between an operating system, a browser, a search engine and “The Internets”though, the first sign of a complication could spell trouble. Google estimates that more than half of all computer users have no idea what a browser is, and what kind it is they use. This is a big problem for Google; how are they to get people to upgrade their old IE5 and IE6 browsers to the latest versions that are capable of running the best new Google applications like Gmail and Google Maps, and more importantly, Google Wave , when users don’t even know what a browser is?

    The answer is a version of Google Chrome, a browser that has been out for more than a year now, and has seen no more than 3% in market acceptance. People may not aware of what a browser is, they all certainly know what a plug-in is, thanks to Adobe Flash, a plug-in that has achieved a 97% installed base on computers worldwide. Google’s idea in converting the vast numbers of browser upgrade holdouts is, to present their new browser Google Chrome not as a total browser they will need to upgrade to, but as a plug-in for their antique beat-up Internet Explorers.

    The thing that will achieve this, is Chrome Frame. Google is working with web developers around the world who are similarly frustrated with the resistance people have to upgrades. From now on, anytime a Web user looks up a page that has complex JavaScript and HTML tag needs that an old Internet Explorer can’t handle, the webpage will serve up a pop-up that will ask the user if they would like to install a Chrome Frame plug-in to better display the page with. When the user clicks Yes, the pop-up will proceed to delete the old Internet Explorer’s coding on the computer, and replace it with brand new Google Chrome innards. It will still look like the old Internet Explorer, but it will function like the brand-new Chrome.

    Google Wave is a particularly demanding Web application; it is supposed to work off the Internet, but work with the responsiveness of a desktop installation. This just would not happen with an older browser; and it makes it very important that a way be found to get everyone to upgrade. Google doesn’t actually profit from Chrome; donating its function to someone else’s name really doesn’t hurt Google.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 6:39 am and is filed under Social Media News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. A Cross Browser Twitter Extension for Firefox with a Cheerful Name

    sujata on November 2nd, 2009

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    lulyLu.ly ….. now that’s a funny random sound; but it is also a really great idea that all Facebook and Twitter devotees need to know about. Lu.ly basically, is a toolbar for all the major browsers that allows you to watch a crawl of all the relevant tweets and Facebook notifications out there, in real time, right there on your Lu.ly browser toolbar. There might be some people who might not find this useful, but to watch a crawl of all your chosen tweets like it was a news channel or something has to be fun.

    Twitter add-ons for Firefox are nothing new; but this one takes the idea a step along, and makes it possible on all major browsers, and lets you watch your Facebook and Twitter updates in the same place. The design of the toolbar is tasteful and restrained, you can even hit pause if you want to concentrate on something else.

    What does feel like to use Lu.ly then? New status messages constantly crawl into view; you can travel back and forth with the messages of the tweeter of your choice, right from within the toolbar too. There is a search bar on the toolbar in addition, that allows you to search within Twitter. The functionality offered by Lu.ly is right at par with the ones offered in competing Firefox extensions, like TwitterNotifier or Tweetbar; the implementation and the cross-platform compatibility is what sets Lu.ly apart. Of course, Lu.ly is now one more competitor for your already crowded toolbar space. Perhaps things could go the Ludicrous way; the Ludicrous Firefox add-on allows you to work in Twitter from your Firefox browser window using no other interface for its purposes other than Firefox’s own search box. Mac users should be able to use Lu.ly presently: a version is in the works.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Internet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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