Internet Archive

"W3C today published an early draft of HTML 5, a major revision of the markup language for the Web. The HTML Working Group is creating HTML 5 to be the open, royalty-free specification for rich Web content and Web applications. The group operates entirely in public with nearly five hundred participants, including representatives from W3C Members ACCESS, AOL, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, and Opera. Some of the most interesting new features for authors are APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling audio and video content, maintaining persistent client-side data storage, and for enabling users to edit documents and parts of documents interactively. Authors write HTML 5 using either a 'classic' HTML syntax or an XML syntax, according to application demands. See a list of changes from HTML 4."

"The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users. Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said. In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%. In particular, the browser has faced competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which is now used by nearly 80% of all web users."

"The web is constantly evolving. New and innovative websites are being created every day, pushing the boundaries of HTML in every direction. HTML 4 has been around for nearly a decade now, and publishers seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers. To give authors more flexibility and interoperability, and enable more interactive and exciting websites and applications, HTML 5 introduces and enhances a wide range of features including form controls, APIs, multimedia, structure, and semantics."

"Lately we've been talking about a lot of great new features in the latest development trunk of WebKit - features like web fonts, client-side database storage, CSS transforms and CSS animation. These features will likely make it to an official release someday. But I'd like to take a step back and talk about some older features, namely all the great stuff in our recent stable release. Apple recently released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, including Safari 3. The latest Safari is also included in Mac OS X 10.4.11, the latest update to Tiger. A corresponding version is available as the latest Safari for Windows Beta, including the new features and lots of stability and usability improvements. Apple's site can tell you a lot about the new end-user features of Safari 3. But a lot of the goodness is on the inside, in the WebKit engine that powers Safari. Here's a list of ten of the most exciting engine enhancements since the Safari 2 version of WebKit, with lots of details and demos. These features are all included in the WebKit that comes with Safari 3 - you don't have to download nightlies or anything else to get them."

The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic. The agency said it was opposed to 'network neutrality', the idea that all data on the net is treated equally. The comments put the agency at odds with companies such as Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to guarantee equal access to the net.

The BBC has interviewed Vint Cerf. "Vint Cerf is known as one of the founder fathers of the internet and played a key role in the development of the protocols which underpin the global net. He was a founding member of the Internet Society and is Google's Chief Internet Evangelist."

Has Apple succeeded in setting a new mobile Web-browsing paradigm? InformationWeek examines how the Palm Treo, BlackBerry Curve, and HTC Wing stack up against the iPhone. Unfortunately, this article completely snobs the UIQ and S60 Symbian smartphones.

Two preview articles give a taste of the new proof-of-concept desktop environment Pyro. Based on Firefox, used in conjunction with X's compositing extensions, Pyro allows web applications to behave like full-fledged ones running alongside traditional Linux apps. Perhaps most tantalizing of all, Pyro is a simple Firefox-extension-install away. Ars Technica has a backgrounder on the project, while Desktoplinux spotlights potential security concerns.

From Netcraft's latest web survey: "Microsoft adds 2.4 million sites this month, pushing the total number of sites running on Windows servers past 40 million, and helping Microsoft improve its market share by 1.01% to 32.8%. The open source Apache server has an increase of 556k, and slips back 1.11% to 52.65%. Google gains 592k sites this month, and now has 4.35% share. In active sites, Apache is now at 49.98% share, less than 14.5% ahead of Microsoft. While that's still a considerable lead, Apache had a 33.4% advantage at this time last July, meaning MS has cut its deficit in half in the past 12 months."

Mozilla's Firefox web browser has made dramatic gains on Microsoft's Internet Explorer throughout Europe in the past year with a marked upturn in FF use compared to IE over the past four months, according to French web monitoring service XiTiMonitor. A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that FF had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe, IE had 66.5%, with other browsers including Safari and Opera making up the remaining 5.7%. The July market share represents a massive 3.7% rise since a similar survey in March.

"For the purpose of this article, just like the first one, a WebOS is defined as virtual operating system that runs in a web browser environement. Don’t like WebOS? Well, call it OnlineOS, or WebTop if you like. So, here is a review of another 10 functional WebOS', as well as some additional similar services which show promise but aren't launched or fully realized yet." More here.

For companies like Microsoft and Mozilla, Safari coming to Windows means that one more competitor will be thrown into the Windows browser battlefield. While neither company has expressed dismay with Apple's decision to put Safari on Windows, on Monday executives from both Microsoft and Mozilla expressed a lack of concern for their new (Windows) foe.

"Netscape is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Netscape Navigator 9.0 Beta 1. The release is now available for download from browser.netscape.com for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Some of Navigator 9's new features are listed here; for a complete list, see What's New in Netscape Navigator 9? at browser.netscape.com."

Most of my readers know that I love cellphones, PDAs and gadgets. Many of these gadgets do not have WiFi in them, but they do support the PAN-client Bluetooth profile which allows them to get wireless internet connectivity (e.g. the Palm Treo). To achieve this, you need to have a PAN-server. And this what Anycom's EDR-AP Bluetooth Access Point is all about.