html5

Now that the Web-standards bug has bitten Adobe Systems, the company is starting to produce some very interesting new technology.

The newest example, revealed at the Adobe Max show this week, are CSS shaders.

This newly proposed standard, developed in cooperation with CSS pioneers Opera and Apple, brings a common 3D graphics ability to the Cascading Style Sheets technology for controlling Web page formatting.

Shaders are small programs run by computers' graphics chips for games and other graphics-intensive applications. Shaders come in two varieties: vertex shaders, which control the geometry of the vertices used to construct the 3D surface meshes, … Read more

After dipping its toes in the water with some limited-scope mobile apps, Adobe Systems is taking the plunge today with six programs for Android Honeycomb tablets, including the company's flagship brand, Photoshop.

The programs, each to debut in November with a $10 introductory price, fall under the new Adobe Touch Apps brand. And they tie in with the new Adobe Creative Cloud, a service for sharing files, finding services, and transferring works from the tablet apps to Adobe's Creative Suite apps running on traditional computers.

Along with Photoshop Touch, the other apps are Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler, and … Read more

Using a tried and true method to make up for lost time, Adobe is acquiring two companies, Nitobi and TypeKit, to give it more strength in a fast-moving area where it's playing catch-up.

For years Adobe advocated its Flash Player technology for advanced Web design, but now it's wholeheartedly on board with the biggest alternative, Web standards including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Today, in conjunction with its Adobe Max developer and designer conference populated with the very people wrestling with that transition, the company announced the two acquisitions.

Overall, both acquisitions make sense strategically. Each gives Adobe a solid new starting point for aspects of new-age technology. Terms weren't disclosed, though, so it's not clear whether Adobe had to pay a premium for the companies. The TypeKit acquisition is complete, but the Nitobi buy is subject to closing conditions that should be met this month, Adobe said.

Nitobi makes PhoneGap, an open-source programming tool for creating Web apps that run on a variety of mobile phones. That aligns well with the cross-platform approach Adobe has favored with Flash: give programmers the ability to create what they want, and let the tools worry about the differences from one system to another. … Read more

The mobile world moves at a breakneck pace, and it's difficult to keep up--even without the technical jargon most industry insiders throw around. And they do love to toss those terms about.

This week, I explain what a geo-fence is, why a feature phone is really just a dumb phone with a niftier marketing title, and why companies love rebates.

So for some light reading, here are a few terms (and definitions) commonly used by telecommunications experts who assume everyone understands them.

Alignment: Look, it's another code word for layoffs. While not exactly the best example of telecom jargon, it's a relevant term given Nokia's decision to "align" its workforce, which means shedding 3,500 jobs on top of a prior plan to cut thousands of other jobs. It's in the same vein as synergy and redundancy, fancy words that mask the ugly truth that a lot of people are getting canned.

Feature phone: This is the industry's term for any phone that isn't a smartphone, which runs on a more complex operating system that can run applications. You have to admire the marketing spin on what is essentially a dumb phone.

I, for one, hate using the term, and have largely stuck to calling them basic phones.

Feature phones are in a phase of gradual decline as people jump to smartphones, which are getting more affordable. Leap Wireless CEO Doug Hutcheson said he expects smartphones to cost $100 or less without a contract by the holidays, just slightly more expensive than a feature phone.

HTC's global marketing chief, Jason MacKenzie, boldly said he sees his Rhyme smartphone as a better upgrade for feature phone users than the iPhone.

Geo-fence: It's a virtual perimeter you can set up anywhere to ensure your child or pet stays in a certain zone. If they leave the designated area, an alert is sent to your phone. … Read more

In just a few short years, Pandora's apps for iOS and Android have become an ever-present part of the smartphone experience. But as the company's growth in mobile exploded, its Web-based player was stuck in the past with a design that no longer matched the look of its apps or standalone Pandora One desktop software.

Today, Pandora unveiled a dramatically overhauled site design. Beyond a welcome new look, the code behind the site now uses HTML5 in favor of Adobe Flash. In its own press release, Pandora credits the switch to HTML5 for opening up creative new cross-platform … Read more

Long gone are the days when Adobe Systems could take its Flash Player's position on the Web for granted.

But Adobe, to counter a strong combination of opposition and alternatives to the browser plug-in, plans to ship Flash Player 11 in two weeks. The debut at its Max developer conference early next month is geared to send a message to programmers: Flash is still relevant, and Adobe is still investing in it.

Flash 11's highlight, an interface called Molehill for hardware-accelerated 3D and 2D graphics, won't change the minds of those who would like to see Flash … Read more

A small piece of the next-generation Google Chrome guts called Native Client arrives in Chrome stable about a month after it landed on the beta channel, as new audio technology also gains a footing. Google Chrome 14 stable for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), also makes a spate of security fixes for all platforms, and some useful changes to the Mac version.

Chrome 14 is the first version of the browser to support Native Client (NaCl), an open-source technology that allows C and C++ code to be securely run in the browser. It basically lets software run within … Read more

Microsoft just declared that browser plug-ins' best days are behind them, but Adobe is working hard to disprove the notion with its Flash Player.

Flash, the most widely used browser plug-in, will be barred from the new "Metro" version of Internet Explorer 10 that will ship with Windows 8, IE team leader Dean Hachamovitch announced last night during the company's Build conference. In response, Adobe pointed out that Flash will still work with the more traditional "desktop" interface--but also that the company has other plans for staying relevant.

"If you look a year out, … Read more

IE9 left no doubt that Microsoft understood the importance of supporting modern Web standards. But IE10, updated yesterday with the third platform preview, is the vehicle delivering much of that support.

Microsoft fleshed out IE10's impressive list of new technologies at Microsoft's Build conference for developers. New items on the list such as Web Workers, Web Sockets, 3D Transforms, Application Cache, and IndexedDB are music to the ears of many Web developers who want to make rich, interactive Web sites.

But it's important for a much larger developer group, too: IE10 also is a key foundation for Windows 8 applications. … Read more