Developer tools

Google today announced a new feature for Android applications offered through the Google Play store. Available immediately for Android developers, in-app subscriptions will allow users to pay for monthly or annual subscriptions directly inside of apps. And as detailed by Google, the feature is set to auto-renew by default with transactions managed by the Google Play store.

In addition to adding a new level of convenience, the move opens the door to added revenue streams and even new types of content through Google Play. Looking forward, today's announcement could entice magazines and news journals to offer subscriptions to consumers … Read more

Google has released version 1 of its Go programming language, an ambitious attempt to improve upon giants of the lower-level programming world such as C and C++.

Graduation to Go 1, which happened this week, makes the project less academic and more real in several ways. For one thing, Google has declared it mature enough to use. For another, it's available for use on Google App Engine, a foundation for cloud-computing applications.

And last, there's a bit of validation for Go readiness: it's being used today on one of the Internet's highest-profile sites.

Go is used … Read more

PARIS--Engineers have begun taking the first big steps in overhauling Hypertext Transfer Protocol, a seminal standard at the most foundational level of the Web.

At a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) here yesterday, the working group overseeing HTTP formally opened a dicussion about how to make the technology faster. That discussion included presentations about four specific proposals for HTTP 2.0, including SPDY, developed at Google and already used in the real world, and HTTP Speed+Mobility, developed at Microsoft and revealed Wednesday.

There are some differences in the HTTP 2.0 proposals that have emerged so … Read more

Monotype Imaging acquired the font business of rival Bitstream for about $50 million in cash, a move that gives it greater clout in the world of digital typography.

Through the acquisition, announced yesterday, Monotype Imaging gets Bitstream's typeface library, its MyFont site for browsing 89,000 fonts and licensing them for use on Web sites, the WhatTheFont service for identifying typefaces, its Font Fusion and Panorama software for font rendering and layout, and 10 patents. It's also hiring 50 Bitstream employees and taking over its research and development site in India.

The move gives Monotype Imaging more heft … Read more

Android is gradually slipping down mobile programmers' priority list, with Web apps stepping in to as an answer to development difficulties, a survey released today concludes.

Appcelerator, maker of cross-platform programming tools used by 280,000 programmers to create 35,000 apps, tallied the changes in its quarterly survey. In it, the number of programmers who said they were "very interested" in programming for Android phones declined for a second quarter in a row, this time from about 83.3 percent to 78.6 percent. Android tablet interest also continued a decline for a second quarter, from about … Read more

BARCELONA--Facebook would like to build more mobile Web apps and fewer mobile native apps. Really, it would -- but browsers just aren't up to it, the company has concluded.

Web apps naturally span the multitudes of mobile devices that Facebook loves to run on, but they support Web standards so inconsistently that it's a developer's nightmare, said Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor, speaking here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. So Facebook is trying to do something about it: "We're taking on mobile web standards," Taylor said.

It's a two-pronged effort. … Read more

Mozilla plans to release a concept version of Firefox for Windows 8's new Metro interface in the second quarter with alpha and beta versions to follow in the second half of 2012.

Mozilla announced the Firefox for Metro project in conjunction with its 2012 strategy documentation deluge.

Metro is a new user interface that replaces the Windows start button and menu with a grid of tiles. Those tiles launch software, but when they're on people's home screens they also can display anything from photos to message notifications. Deeper down, Metro comes with an entirely new set of … Read more

Mozilla is best known as the developer of Firefox, but it's reaching well beyond the browser with a 2012 strategy that strives to use the open Web to counteract ecosystem lock-in.

Firefox embodied Mozilla's effort to counter the damage that Microsoft's browser dominance caused on the Web. But now, as revealed in Mozilla 2012 plans published Sunday, the non-profit organization is putting the crosshairs on other big competitors, too: Apple, Google, and Amazon.

Those companies, along with Microsoft, each are building an ecosystem encompassing devices, operating systems, app stores, and apps. People should be worried about getting … Read more

In the battle between native apps and Web sites, an Italian startup called Apps Builder wants to help those on the Web side defect to the enemy.

The company offers a subscription-based Web service that converts Web sites into mobile applications. Last month it added Windows Phone app support to its earlier options--iOS, Android, HTML-based Web apps, and Chrome Web apps. And it's seeing some significant usage of its service.

Specifically, the company just passed the milestone of 20,000 apps developed through Apps Builder, and those apps have been downloaded a million times from their various app stores, … Read more