SBala

I was considering purchasing Opera's Wii Internet Channel the other day. Considering, until some web surfing revealed that the browser could not access Hulu. At first I was rather perplexed as to why Opera of all software makers would bundle an outdated version of Flash with their browser. I was furious for a while because it is absolutely unacceptable to advertise yourself so heavily as a feature-rich software package and be outdated. Until I realized Opera wasn't at fault.

The problem lies in Adobe's policies regarding the use of Flash on platforms other than the standard Windows, OS X, and Linux. In order to run Flash on a platform such as the Wii, the Flash SDK is needed. Adobe for some odd reason decided to keep their Flash SDK at version 7, which is poor judgement especially considering the rich content delivered through Flash on very popular web sites such as Youtube cannot be accessed on increasingly popular platforms such as game consoles and mobile devices.

When will a true open platform arise that delivers content on multiple platforms without locking users into version discrepancies? The answer is rather ambiguous because of the lack of a true open medium of rich content delivery. JavaScript is great, but the limits to JavaScript are within the boundaries of user and browser interactions. The medium of video delivery is still Flash. Microsoft's attempt at a walled garden, Silverlight, will not fix any issues with regards to platform independence. Adobe and Microsoft have different goals. Adobe wants more people using Flash, while Microsoft wants more people using Windows. Silverlight is treated as an addition to Windows rather than a standalone medium. For now, Flash is the winner; and in all righteousness Flash should be the winner.

The problems with Flash are also numerous when considering the fact that it simply requires a download. The primary reason Adobe received such high market penetration on their latest Flash version (97%) is the constant hassle of multiple websites presisting that a visitor downloads Flash. By no means is Flash a bad technology, but if it were more open, browsers would be able to ship with innate Flash functionality. If it works for Six Apart and Google, it should work for Adobe.

Flock is a browser I have tried, used, and stopped using. Although it does feature some of the greatest social network integrations - Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, etc. I never really liked it. Why? It is bloated. The features are a great addition, and the integration is as seamless as possible; however, something about the browser itself seemed bloated. Maybe it is because the renderring engine is based off of the monstrosity that is Firefox 2. After realizing that the Flock development team keeps up with Firefox renderring updates, I realized that there must be a version of Flock that uses the slimmer and faster Gecko 1.9 renderring engine. I found it. It's Flock's nightly builds of the 2.0 version dubbed Sulfur.

I immediately noticed the performance increase. How so? It's so fast compared to its previous version that they removed the splash screen. The cold start times were improved by almost 3 seconds. Its start times rival that of Firefox 3, but are obviously slightly slower due to the alpha stage of development and a rather boastful featureset.

Its blog features do not compare on an even level when taking into consideration the massive amount of free desktop blogging tools available. However, the small and lightweight blogging tool does serve its purpose as a way of quicly quoting a web page and including a small snippet of text or rich media through its intuitive Web Clipboard feature. The Web Clipboard functions similar to its name. It is a small sidebar which allows you to drag and drop highlighted parts of a page and saves them automatically for future use. This feature also integrates with the blogging editor sidebar for convenience. The blogging features support Blogger, Typepad, Blogsome, Livejournal, Wordpress.com, Xanga, and any self-hosted blog engine using ATOM, MetaWeblog, MovableType, or WordPress.

The integration with Youtube, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Photobucket, and a few other photo/video services is a great addition. Although I don't really enjoy using its rather limited Web Streams interface, the photo uploader that supports dragging and dropping to multiple services such as Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook shows Flock's tight integration and versatility.

Flock's "People" section is arguably the best feature in the browser. Why? Because it allows you to access data from many popular social networks in a single sidebar. The icon used to open the sidebar turns orange if you have new messages or updates. The sidebar integrates with Digg, Facebook, Pownce, and Twitter. It also allows you to quickly update the status of your Facebook profile, Pownce messages, and Twitter updates. Although I don't use social networks too often, my Facebook usage has greatly increased after using Flock for a few weeks.

Favorites are added in a single click. Favorites can automagically be added to Ma.gnolia or Del.icio.us and also stored locally as well.  The browser also integrates with GMail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail - a small icon turns orange when new messages are in the inbox.

Another great feature of Flock is its amazing RSS functionality. The RSS reader is a solid addition to the browser, and makes reading and subscribing to articles a breeze. The layout of the reader is much to my liking. Many RSS readers style themselves similar to a email inbox, but Flock is styled to look like a webpage with a compilation of content from a user's favorite sites. This styling makes it more enjoyable to read.

Flock also automatically detects when you log into one of its supported browsers, and imports bookmarks from Firefox or Internet Explorer. Any configurations are automatically made, so a person can simply dive into Flock without fiddling with the options dialog.

Flock always had a great first impression on me personally, but I tend to use it for more general browsing. If I need to complete a task or do serious development I still prefer Firefox 3 (which happened to release today). So if you are interested, go ahead and download.

That's right, Mootools 1.2 is out and about. It was released three days ago, but I wanted to have some time to play with it before I really made any comments about it.

One of the new features of Mootools that is receiving a bit of attention lately is Swiff. Swiff lets you combine Flash and JavaScript to do things MooTools can't do itself. The interaction between JavaScript and Flash is a great medium of user interaction with rich media. Variables can be passed onto Flash and then they can receive manipulation through a possible system of user interaction; then, the values can be returned back to the JavaScript and further manipulated. Swiff also allows for JavaScript to select and recognize the loading of Flash files, and base its interactions with the Flash file on the loading status.

Another feature of Mootools 1.2 is Hash. It allows for a sort of translation (hashing) from one string to another, and it supports practically every Array method. Hashes are now used as a data type throughout the Mootools framework. Hash itself resembles Abstract from Mootools 1.1, but it is designed in a more powerful-yet-streamlined fashion.

var hash = new Hash({ 'a': 'one'});
hash.get('a');
//this snippet of code associates the string "one" with "a"; and when "a" is passed as an argument, the function returns "one"

Element Storage was also introduced into Mootools, and allows for the introduction of various properties associated with a specific element. These properties are also recallable after being associated. Element Storage is basically an external Hash that stores all the custom properties and events for every element that is interacted with. Every element that Mootools interacts with or traverse over receives a unique ID. This id is actually attached to the element and then serves as it's key in the Element.Storage Hash. This is a major performance boost because it acts as a sort of caching mechanism.

var element = $('someElement');
element.store('effectInstance', new Fx.Tween(element, 'color'));
//this code example associates and retrieves an effect instance to the element with an id of "someElement"
element.retrieve('effectInstance');

Apart from the changes stated above, some of the functions are being renamed, and the addition of pseudo or CSS3 selectors makes Mootools take advantage of newer browser capabilities. Of course, the CSS3 selectors themselves cannot be used for production - so they are more of an experimental step into the abyss for now.

$$('p:contains("find me")');
//this code shows the magic of CSS selectors by scanning all elements and selects those containing the text "find me"

One of the function renames that I originally groaned upon hearing the news was Fx.Style and Fx.Styles - these two effects were going to be renamed to Fx.Tween and Fx.Morph. This seemed rather pointless, but apart from the rename of the functions, they added some useful features. The chainability of the effects has been simplified and enhanced, and the effects can be spontaneously paused and resumed throughout their duration with the call of a simple function. Another advantage of the new effects is that an element can be Morphed to match the CSS properties of another element or CSS declaration.

var morphMe = new Fx.Morph('someElement', { 'duration': 400 });
//transition someElement to a text color of black and a width of 600
morphMe.start({ 'color': '#000', 'width': 600});
//transition someElement to the properties defined in the .warning rule in a stylesheet
morphMe.start('.content');
//transition someElement to look the same as a paragraph that has the content class inside the element whose id is container
morphMe.start('#container p.content');

MooTools MooTools 1.2: It's Official!

There is some news bubbling about Firefox and Safari duking it out on performance enhancement and quickening the pace of Javascript interpretation. Apple claims that Safari has significant performance increases.

Safari 4 has just been seeded to the developers at Apple's developer conference. The manufacturer claims that the software has a 53% faster JavaScript engine than the preceding and current version 3.1 (based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test conducted on iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.8 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM and running under Mac OS X Snow Leopard.) Although Firefox 3 RC3 was the first to deliver significant JavaScript performance improvement, Apple apparently is exceeding those gains with Safari 4.

As always, Microsoft manages to do exactly what is expected of them, and provide another piece of bloated software. According to the TG Daily article, the responsiveness of Internet Explorer 8 is slower than that of Internet Explorer 7. This is a huge step backwards as most people are still going to continue using the browser bundled with their operating system. And again, the Microsoft engineers are still incapable of making a product that both functions the way developers want it to function, and perform in a way the user experience is enhanced. If Internet Explorer is unable to keep up with the rapid rate of growth displayed by Firefox and Opera (my two favorite browsers), their market share will slowly decrease until a majority stop using Internet Explorer.

Gladly however, this only means the amount of simultaneous Javascript is limited to that of which allows the user to continue navigating the page with ease. Unlike previous internet Explorer releases, Internet Explorer 8 claims to fix many of the display issues particularly when dealing with unsupported CSS, or incorrectly coded pages. The only fear I have of Internet Explorer 8 is the introduction of more bugs that create further complications when coding and generating valid XHTML documents that do not display properly in the invalid browser.

TG Daily - Firefox 3 and Safari 4 in browser speed race

Recently, I fell in love with PivotX - the new beta version of the Pivot blogging platform (CMS). However, as soon as I tried to really experiment with the platform, its beta nature truly surfaced. After tweaking the configuration, much of the administrator interface was instantly nuked due to a bug of some sorts. It wasn't a PHP error, but rather the ingenious system of only-necessary Javascript inclusion malfunctioned, causing none of the Javascript to be inserted onto the page. This was a fatal injury for the PivotX interface, since it is built almost entirely off jQuery's amazing utilities. This sort of unusable administrator interface occurred multiple times. After some futile attempts to figure out what was the cause of the issue in the first place, since I had changed multiple configuration options at once, I was frustrated with the system. I am glad to say, however, that I have not lost hope for the amazing system. In fact, I had some great experiences with the beta before it went sour. Its caching and data handling is amazing, and the interface is much to my liking - and a lot more fluid than the Wordpress interface. Although I have switched back to Wordpress for now, I am awaiting the time I can run the converter script for good.