Developer tools

One of the big criticisms of Google's Chromebooks is that they're significantly less useful when you don't have an Internet connection or are paying by the megabyte for a wireless data plan. That drawback is particularly glaring when it comes to Google Docs.

And unfortunately for Google, the company missed the Chrome OS launch window with one important upgrade coming to Google Docs, the ability to use the word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software while not connected to the Net.

Offline Google Docs was slated to arrive early this year, but Google pushed it back. In May, … Read more

Mozilla has answered Microsoft's concern that WebGL raises too many security risks with the observation that Microsoft itself has accepted the same risks with 3D interface technology coming with its own Silverlight browser plug-in.

WebGL, a new standard from Khronos Group, lets Web programmers add hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web with an interface that mirrors the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard used among other places in Android and iOS devices. WebGL opens up online possibilities such as virtual worlds and graphically rich games, and it's built into Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome today.

Microsoft, though, … Read more

Forget being limited to .com, .net, and .org.

The Internet's overseers today approved a plan to dramatically expand the number "generic top-level domains," or GTLDs, as soon as the end of 2012. There are only 22 such GTLDs today--others include .edu, .mil, and .biz--but the expansion could add dozens or potentially even hundreds more.

Among other implications, that means new opportunities and new complications for trademark holders.

"It opens up [what's] the right of the dot," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, speaking at … Read more

Apparently happy with its test drive effort to promote the combination of advanced Web programming and its new IE9 browser for Windows PCs, Microsoft is trying the same formula with its mobile browser.

The company unveiled its Mobile Test Drive site yesterday as a showcase for what can be done with mobile browsers.

"It's organized essentially the same way as the original, except laid out to be easily read and used on the mobile form factor," said Joe Marini, principal program manager for Internet Explorer on Windows Phone, in a blog post. "We've ported over … Read more

Concluding that its priorities should be on iOS and Android, Adobe Systems has stopped releasing its own version of its AIR programming foundation for Linux.

AIR combines Flash and a Web browser to let programmers build standalone software that runs on any system with the underlying AIR "runtime" that executes the software. It's cross-platform technology, meaning for example that separate versions of TweetDeck--a prominent AIR app--don't need to be rewritten for Mac OS and Windows.

But starting with AIR 2.7, released this week, Adobe won't build a Linux version of AIR anymore, making the … Read more

SPDY, a would-be standard with which Google hopes to speed up the Web, has taken a baby step outside its founding company's walls.

Strangeloop Networks, a Vancouver company that sells technology and services for hosting content on the Web, now includes SPDY in its products, the company announced yesterday.

SPDY is basically a new and improved HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the standard that Web browsers and Web servers use to communicate. To develop and test such a technology, a company needs to control both ends of a communication channel, and that's just what Google has done. Google's … Read more

Barely a day goes by that some company doesn't pitch me on its mobile application developer tools. It shows just how hot the market has become.

I'm not a programmer, but when I got the announcement that iBuildApp now supports Android as well as iOS, I thought I'd dabble a bit. The sales pitch is that anybody can create an app with their tools for free, after all. The company asserts that 10,000 people have already used it.

Not every app is necessarily great, though, and unfortunately, I found iBuildApp's tool unsatisfying. It was workable … Read more

Google users interested in the work of a particular author or writer should now find it easier to track down that person's articles, stories, and bio.

Starting yesterday, the search giant started supporting a feature in HTML5 that allows Web sites to link content from a particular writer to that writer's bio or other relevant pages.

As one example cited by Google engineer Othar Hansson in a blog posted yesterday, The New York Times could use the special authorship markup tag to link every story by a particular reporter to that reporter's bio page, which could then … Read more

Much of the Web world has moved on to CSS 3, but today the World Wide Web Consortium has declared the CSS 2.1 standard for Web page formatting to be done.

In W3C standards lingo, CSS 2.1 has reached "recommendation" stage. Phillipe Le Hegaret, leader of the HTML working at the W3C group, announced the milestone on Twitter today.

Browser makers, even longtime laggard Microsoft, have turned much of their attention to CSS 3, which offers glamorous new features such as animating the transition from one page to another, endowing boxes with rounded corners, and if … Read more