Gentium & Bitstream Vera

Through CSS @font-face Firefox 3.5 adds the ability to download a TrueType font from the webserver. All web designers shall henceforth therefore incorporate all redistributable fonts into their library! :-)

Unfortunately, very few creators of fonts have been so generous to license their intellectual property as open source; blessed are Gentium and Bitstream Vera.

Giving preference and favor to using fonts in web design which are free for redistribution through the @font-face means can lighten the download weight of a webpage, and bring increased flexibility, by enabling your CSS/HTML builder to put copy directly in the HTML instead of only in raster image formats.

Google Chrome

This week Google went public with its secret Chrome gBrowser desktop application for Windows. Long incubated in hiding, it was born slightly premature - allegedly because the comic ad seeped out early.

We have all seen its CSS rendering before in Safari; the Chrome browser is built on Webkit (Apple's fork of the KDE's "KHTML" rendering engine used originally in the KDE Konqueror).  But its Javascript virtual machine, dubbed "V8," is brand new! Developed internally by Google team including Lars Bak (VM pioneer and former technical lead of Sun's Java VM HotSpot project) and Kasper Lund, it was opensourced under the BSD license. Google plans to port V8 to every major desktop OS, including Mac and Linux, and also of course to Android, which is launching soon on the T-Mobile/HTC Dream phone, just in time for the holiday sales.

The V8 VM competes directly with Microsoft Silverlight, Apple's SquirrelFish, Mozilla's TraceMonkey and Tamarin,  and indirectly with Sun's Java Virtual Machine (the granddaddy!), and Perl Parrot (incubating for a decade?).

Although the 800lb gorilla in the room is not innovating with these little guys, Internet Explorer is following close enough behind to keep market share. The Rest Of The World is competing for performance increases and technical advancement (and yes, for paltry market percentage points) in a way that will open up new possibilities for cloud-based web apps.

Everyone knows a paradigm shift will throw down the reigning king of the hill, and that one of those comes every now and again. Until then, the arts & sciences are advancing, which is a win for consumers, developers, and the American dream. Carpe diem.

Mozilla Prism

Mozilla Prism (formerly known by names xulrunner or webrunner) is useful to web application developers who wish to create a site specific browser lacking all the menus, toolbars, and the usual chrome of a web browser. Prism will allow a webapp to more tightly integrate with the native OS and desktop user interface.

Mozilla Prism should become mature and useful in the Firefox 3.1 launch around January 2009, but there is a Firefox add-on you can try today (be forewarned: it is intended for developers not users at this point).

Mozilla Prism will compete with Adobe AIR. For a comparison read John Eckman.

Tamarin cometh

While Microsoft focuses on an 3.1 incremental improvement for ECMAScript in IE 8, Brendan Eich (CTO of Mozilla and father of JavaScript) is developing the Tamarin ECMAScript engine from Flash (donated to open source by Adobe) for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, to ensure the world goes to the ECMA4 level with JavaScript 2.0 before 2009.

Clever, commissioning the same ActiveState developer whom Microsoft did (for Perl and Python engines) to wire their JavaScript into IE. Only the code is not just Mozilla's; it was born of Adobe, owner of Photoshop and Flash, who has motive & means for its worldwide distribution.

Addendum: See the difference.

iPhone basics

Although iPhone wallpapers are 320x480, its WebKit-based browser's viewing resolution is 320x396 (navigation buttons occupy the bottom, and address etc controls are on the top). The iPhone has no java (unlike Android) and no real Adobe Flash plugin, but Safari now has HTML5's offline storage support.

Offline Web Apps

Gears is Google's open source browser extension for developers to adapt web applications to run offline, providing

1. local http server to cache and deliver resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.)


2. local database, to store and access data from within the browser


3. a worker thread pool, to make JS code more responsive (by performing expensive operations in the background)

Although offline support will be built-in to Firefox 3.1, Firefox 3 and IE 7 (on XP or Vista or Windows Mobile) need the Gears add-on to run offline applications.

Why should Google fund the development of this offline app code development in the browser or add-on? Obviously, Google Apps in browsers will then compete with desktop applications like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, etc. It brings the Netscape threat & promise of the web as the a platform (and Software as a Service SaaS) closer to reality, enabling web apps to run on a computer which is "undocked" from the network.

Why pay an IT department $250,000 per year to maintain an infrastructure, when Google costs alot less? This first consumer target is SOHO, micro capitalization companies, and small businesses. Google is giving away the client in order to dominate on the server.

I'd also like to see blogging websites be able to compose, spell check and save blog drafts offline (for upload on connect). Why not also photo gallery software, audio blogs, and even social network sites?

The flood is coming; the web is invading our offline world.

Why stop with offline; extend the paradigm to barely online (low bandwidth) caching, so the computer can catch up in the background. Mom will love that on her country modem dial up connection! Could this drive broadband ISP prices lower?

RIP Netscape

AOL will let Netscape the browser rest in peace after this month; they're officially ending support for their product and helping customers to migrate to Flock or Firefox.