Web Technology Archive
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 12:15 PM/EST
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When looking at the current version of the Apple Safari Web browser, the description that comes to mind is "stripped down." The current Safari lacks many of the interface features found in competing browsers and seems to focus on simplicity and speed.
But based on tests of the recently released beta of Safari 4, stripped down won't be the main description of the next Apple browser.
With the beta of Safari 4, Apple has clearly focused on upgrading the interface of the Web browser, playing catch-up with other browsers in some areas and adding some unique and welcome capabilities of its own.
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Monday, February 23, 2009 4:38 PM/EST
Ahhh. It's just a few weeks until the start of spring. I can't wait for all of the changes this brings, especially the return of all the green and growing things.
Of course, other, less welcome things also seem to be returning with spring. Among these unwelcome things is the return of incredibly stupid, shortsighted and dangerous laws from representatives in Congress.
The latest doozy to be put forth by our legislative representatives is the Internet SAFETY Act, aka, the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act. (Speaking of which, who comes up with these acronyms?).
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Monday, February 09, 2009 3:40 PM/EST
Given the current "25 things you might not know about me" craze, there are a lot of people out there who have to tell you all kinds of things about themselves. This whole thing seems a bit nuts to me, after all, if there are things about me that people don't know, it's probably because I don't want them to know these things.
While I've tended to ignore these lists as they've ended up in my mail or Facebook updates, the one's I have read tended to be pretty positive and good natured. Again, this seems nuts to me. In my opinion, if you really want to know someone, you should find out the things that they hate, the things that really drive them nuts.
So to put my money where my mouth is, I've done just that. Without further ado, here is my list (in no particular order) of the Twenty Things about Technology that Drive Me Nuts.
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Tuesday, February 03, 2009 1:08 PM/EST
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In this special eWEEK video, I take a look at the new JavaFX RIA platform from Sun.
While one can easily make the argument that Sun's Java was one of the first examples of a rich internet application platform, Sun hasn't been a big player in the recent rise of RIAs.
But with the release of JavaFX 1.0, Sun hopes to change that. JavaFX takes advantage of many of the benefits of Java while adding the ease of development and deployment common to most RIAs.
In this video I walk through some of the key components and features of JavaFX. Click here to watch my video walkthrough of JavaFX.
And click here to read my full review of JavaFX 1.0.
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Friday, January 30, 2009 12:48 PM/EST
This week Google finally enabled offline capabilities for their popular Gmail service. For many of us this has been something we'd been waiting on for quite a while.
While many people rely on Gmail more and more for both their private and work communications, it really couldn't be considered a serious mail option until it could work on airplanes or other situations where an internet connection is unavailable or poor.
So when offline support became an option in Gmail Labs, I quickly enabled it for my Gmail account. And while I was happy with some of the offline functionality of Gmail, in many ways it was a big disappointment.
In fact, while the term beta is somewhat of joke when it comes to Google services (Gmail itself is still called beta), this offline capability should definitely be considered beta, if not alpha. In my tests the offline capability proved to be very flaky, when it worked at all.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 3:13 PM/EST
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With the release of Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, we are finally in the home stretch of the long trip to the latest version of the Microsoft Web browser.
And since this is a release candidate, this means that, unless there is a major problem found, this version of Internet Explorer 8 is pretty much the version that will be officially released. So, how will IE 8 stack up?
Well, if compared solely with earlier versions of Internet Explorer, IE 8 is a massive improvement that boosts the usability, security and flexibility of the Microsoft browser.
However, this won't be the case. IE 8 will instead be compared with the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera. And based on these comparisons, IE 8 RC 1 only looks so-so.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 1:48 PM/EST
Click here to see screenshots of JavaFX
It was a little less than a year ago that rich Internet application technology finally matured enough to become a usable tool, although it was still very much in the early stages of development.
At the time, eWEEK Labs took a look at the RIA sector and reviewed four RIA platforms, coming to the conclusion that the technology had reached the point where it could be called RIA 1.0.
Now, I'm taking another look at RIAs, evaluating the maturation of the platforms reviewed last year and testing out a new--and old--player.
The RIA platforms I looked at last year were Adobe Systems' AIR, Microsoft's Silverlight, Mozilla's Prism, and Curl. The new/old player I'm reviewing in this package is Sun Microsystems' JavaFX 1.0.
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Thursday, January 22, 2009 10:01 AM/EST
Like many of you out there, I unfortunately have more than my fair share of friends who are trying their best to find a job in this bad economy. And while these friends are working hard to find a job, they also don't want to jump to companies that might not be in the best of shape.
This means that these friends often ask my opinion of businesses they are looking to join. They ask about the health of the companies and their potential for growth. The one piece of advice that I pretty much always have is, if the company you're interviewing at relies 100 percent on online advertising for its revenue, it may not have the brightest future.
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Monday, January 12, 2009 3:31 PM/EST
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Less than one month after Google released Version 1.0 of its Google Chrome Web browser, the company is providing an early peek at what Version 2.0 of Chrome will offer.
On. Jan. 8 a developer's release (which is basically pre-beta) of Chrome 2.0 became available from Google. Most of the new features and changes are fairly modest and in many cases simply add capabilities that are already found in other browsers. If this is all that the final version of Chrome 2.0 will offer, then it will be more in line with point releases from competing browsers rather than a big, full new version release. However, I expect that when Google Chrome 2.0 is eventually fully released there will be more new features and capabilities than are showcased in the current release.
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Monday, January 05, 2009 4:56 PM/EST
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The National Hockey League has performed a hat trick: scoring new video, content management and analytics capabilities at NHL.com.
Just about a year ago, video on NHL.com was, by the organization's own admission, not thoughtfully implemented, and user information was widely dispersed and not well-leveraged. In a very short time, using a homegrown content management system and a video player built by NeuLion, and with the assistance of design company AQKA, the NHL.com site is running as smooth as, well, ice.
According to many pundits, one of the keys to the future of the Web is video. However, based on much of the current use of video on the Web, this future seems to be a ways off.
True, many businesses today are using video on their sites, for everything from spreading news and company information to handling product demos and walk-throughs. But, typically, there is little or no integration with these videos. They basically live in their own siloed areas of a site, with no connection to other content or online commerce.
This was the situation the National Hockey League found itself in more than a year ago. At that time, the NHL.com Web site had plenty of video content, and intrepid fans could search for videos of their favorite teams and players, but the content wasn't very well-structured.
Indeed, most video was just thrown onto the site, according to André Mika, NHL senior vice president and executive in charge of programming new media.
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