Archive for July, 2010

File Under: Browsers
Jul
23
2010

Chrome Team Sets Six-Week Cadence for New Major Versions

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Google announced via the Chromium Blog that it plans to release new stable versions of Chrome every six weeks. Though the team has managed to ship five major revisions in less than two years, the new accelerated pace means we could see Chrome 9.0 by the end of this year.

According to program manager Anthony Laforge, the increased pace is designed to address three main goals. One is to get new features out to users faster. The second is make the release schedule predictable and therefore easier to plan which features will be included and which features will be targeted for later releases. Third, and most counterintuitive, is to cut the level of stress for Chrome developers.

Laforge explains that the shorter, predictable time periods between releases are more like “trains leaving Grand Central Station.” New features that are ready don’t have to wait for others that are taking longer to complete—they can just hop on the current release “train.” This can in turn take the pressure off developers to rush to get other features done, since another release train will be coming in six weeks. And they can rest easy knowing their work isn’t holding the train from leaving the station.

Mass transit metaphors aside, Chrome will be revving the major version number with each stable release, with 6.0 expected pretty soon, and then shortly followed by 7.0. 8.0. and 9.0. However, warns Laforge, “please don’t read too much into the pace of version number changes—they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!”

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news. For more from Ars Technica, follow the links below.

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File Under: Browsers
Jul
22
2010

Google Chrome 6 Beta Is Right Around the Corner

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The beta version of Google’s next browser is expected to ship soon, as the developer-channel release of Chrome 6 has just seen a code freeze. This is the point at which new features stop being added, and everything that’s already in the browser gets inspected, tested and tightened. We should expect Chrome 6 Beta within a few weeks.

Google’s browser is in an enviable position right now. It recently passed Safari in user share (according to StatsCounter) and it’s gaining on Firefox and IE. Also, in a market where raw speed is the most important metric, Chrome is enjoying a solid reputation as the one of the fastest — if not the fastest — browser on the scene.

Let’s take a look at what’s coming in Google Chrome 6 Beta. We downloaded the most recent dev-channel release of Chrome (6.0.466.4 on a Mac) to test all these new features.

New checkboxes in the syncing panel

Extension syncing — Google Chrome already lets you sync bookmarks and themes across multiple installations. Likewise, you can set up two or more instances of Chrome to run the same extensions. Read our previous coverage of this new feature. [An earlier version of this post inaccurately stated that history syncing was coming to Chrome 6, and it is not -- apologies for the oversight, and thanks to reader Martey for pointing it out]

New menu button — Chrome has consolidated the menu button to the right of the URL bar. There used to be a Tool button and a Page button, but now it’s just a Tool button, and it contains the browser’s most-used menu functions. It exhibits similarities — functionally, not visually — to Firefox 4′s new Firefox Button.

Native PDF integration — Chrome 5 added built-in support for Adobe Flash, and version 6 adds similar support for PDFs. An in-browser PDF viewer will ship with the next browser. PDFs can be viewed, searched and navigated in a tab, just like a web page. The PDF experience is also sandboxed like any other app, keeping things secure. Printing isn’t quite there yet. If you’re running the dev-channel release, type about:plugins into the URL field to enable the Chrome PDF viewer.

UI changes — Aside from the new menu button, some additional polish has been applied to Chrome’s chrome. There’s a new green padlock icon in the URL bar to indicate a secure HTTPS connection, slight changes to default skin, and a less cluttered new tab page.

New menu button

Some much-awaited features were left on the drawing board, such as full-screen HTML5 video playback and a tabs-on-the-side option.

The current dev-channel release also shows no sign of Google’s Native Client technology, or its Web App Store — the mechanisms you’ll eventually be able to use to find and install popular apps — and those created by third parties — in your browser.

Install a web app? Google explains: “An installed web app could be separated visually from other tabs, could integrate better with the OS, and could be granted increased permissions.” Installed apps would be able to discern your location, store data on your local machine and use your camera, among other things. The installed apps would sit in your tab bar at the top of Chrome, where they’d look and behave like bookmarked web pages. Firefox has seen this coming, too: The next version of Mozilla’s browser will move the tabs to the top.

This app-friendly shift is a natural progression for the browser. App stores for our iPads and smartphones are leading us towards a more app-centric world, and advances in HTML5 and JavaScript have led to web apps that look and behave more like single-serving native applications. As the internet becomes a full-blown operating system — flush with APIs, storage clouds, public databases, connected sensors and ubiquitous Wi-Fi access points– the web browser is in a position to become the desktop for that operating system.

To get an early peek at installable Google apps, you’ll have to jump through some hoops of fire. Google Operating System has some instructions for the brave.

[Hat tip to Stephen Shankland, who noted the version 6 code freeze on CNET's Deep Tech blog. There you'll also find a comprehensive list of what Google left out of this beta cycle].

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File Under: Browsers, UI/UX
Jul
22
2010

An Alternate Version of Firefox’s Home Button

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Back at the beginning of July, we saw the release of Firefox 4 beta 1. The first beta version of Mozilla’s next browser shipped with some important user interface changes — most notably, Windows users got tabs-on-top and the new Firefox Button. It’s a button that sits at the top of the browser window and contains all of the most-used menu options, neatly nested in hierarchical menus and accessible via one click.

The final browser isn’t expected until October, but the team is still experimenting. The picture above is one such experiment, a rough first draft at “flattening” the new Firefox Button, which turns it into something less of a “Greatest Hits” menu and more of a browser dashboard.

Firefox creative lead Aza Raskin, who really did this to satisfy his own curiosity, writes:

Hierarchical menus are almost always slower to use than flattened menus. This is a first-draft pass at flattening the Firefox Button’s menu. For things like accessing bookmarks, I’ve left the menu as a secondary action. In truth, I ran out of time while doing the bottom left hand corner of the mockup and so it is still very raw and not right. I’ve also moved more rich interactions to the right side pane. Letting us bubble up interesting add-ons and extension points inside the Firefox menu, as well as give real indication and controls to Sync.

Keep in mind that this design is just an idea and most likely will not be part of the next Firefox. But Raskin’s design could push the button in interesting directions.

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File Under: JavaScript
Jul
22
2010

Video: jQuery Gurus Talk About Mobile, the Future

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Here’s a short video about the future of jQuery, our favorite JavaScript library for creating rich, animated site interactions.

The interviewees are Mike Hostelter and Jonathan Stark, co-founders of appendTo, a consulting company that trains and supports jQuery programmers. The video was shot this week at O’Reilly OSCON 2010, taking place in Portland, Oregon through Friday.

In the interview, they talk a little bit about what’s next for the jQuery Core group — currently, jQuery creator John Resig is auditing mobile browsers to build more mobile features into jQuery, making it easier for JavaScript developers to make HTML5 iPad and smartphone web apps that are more “appy.” Also, there ultimately won’t be a separate pack for mobiles and desktops — the future of jQuery is one code library that works on all browsers and all devices.

See other OSCON 2010 videos on O’Reilly’s YouTube channel.

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File Under: Social
Jul
21
2010

Lots of Hubbub About Flipboard

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It’s the iPad app everyone’s talking about. It’s free and available for download.

Flipboard is a social networking aggregator. While we’d argue that the flexibility of the open web experience is still more desirable than the closed-off app experience, Flipboard does a decent job of simplifying and “cleansing” the most important social web activities. You still get most of the functionality — tweeting, sharing, browsing — but without the clutter that web-based aggregators can’t seem to shake.

Give it a spin. And tell us: Where do you do your social networking? In the browser or on your touchy-shiny?

Nice bit of Aphex Twin on the video soundtrack, BTW.

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File Under: Ajax, UI/UX
Jul
21
2010

Beautify Broken Links With Catch404

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The 404 error is one of the bitter realities of the web.

“The page you’ve requested does not exist.” So cold and unforgiving. Unlike a bad database connection or an unresponsive server, the 404 Page Not Found error has a finality to it — this link is dead and it’s never coming back.

But now we have Catch404 by Addy Osmani, a jQuery plug in that handles broken links with style. Deploy Catch404 on your site, and instead of seeing a page reporting a broken link, the user is presented with an Ajax modal window (also called a hop-up, or a lightbox) informing them the linked page isn’t there. The windows also offers some alternate destinations they might want to check out.

We’ve been trying to make 404s go down a little easier for years now. The custom 404 page is a popular solution. It’s available on just about every web CMS out there. You can do it yourself, too. Browsers are also taking it upon themselves to beautify the broken link with custom pages, offering suggestions or inviting users to search for the page using a built-in search box.

Catch404 takes both of those ideas — the custom alert and the suggestions of what to do next — and places them into the user experience before the link is even loaded. The plugin, which requires the jQuery framework, sends the link off to Yahoo’s YQL engine to check to make sure it’s alive. It only performs this check for external URLs; local URLs don’t require the check. The check is performed behind the scenes, using an Ajax request. If all is good, the user goes about his or her way. If the check results in a 404, the user sees the modal window.

Here’s a demo.

You’ll notice one obvious downside, which is that your users will have to wait an extra half-second or so while the YQL call completes. So why use it?

When a user is browsing your site and clicks on a link you’ve provided, then sees a 404 error, it’s your problem whether you’re responsible or not. Linking to dead pages makes you look like a sloppy curator, and the user will place some, if not all, of the blame for that error on you. Catch404 is more helpful than an impersonal error.

If the speed hit from the cross-site link checking bothers you, consider adding Catch404 only to legacy content — those years-old pages filled with links that may or may not still be alive.

Activating Catch404 is simply a matter of assigning a class to the link, so you can invoke it only where it makes sense.

[via Delicious]

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File Under: Fonts
Jul
20
2010

FontFonter: Test Web Fonts on Any Website

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Want to start using web fonts, but you’re not really sold on the benefits? Head over to FontFonter, a neat little tool that lets you try web fonts on any website out there. I did the deed on Webmonkey in the screenshot — as you can see, the headline and the post body text are now styled in beautiful Meta.

It was created by Tim Ahrens and the folks at FontShop, a font foundry and storefront that’s also providing simple fonts optimized for use on the web, plus the tools to implement them. Check out their collection of Web FontFonts you can include in your designs.

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File Under: CSS, Web Standards
Jul
20
2010

CSS3 Pie Lets You Have Your CSS and IE It, Too

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When it arrives later this year, Internet Explorer 9 will support most of the latest decorations and behaviors in CSS3. But until then, you’re stuck with the same old workarounds for IE users.

Here’s something that might make your life as a designer a little bit easier: CSS3 Pie is a new library written by Jason Johnston that lets you use several of the latest CSS3 enhancements and still have them show up in Internet Explorer versions 6 through 8.

It creates DHTML behaviors that IE can understand, and then it controls how they’re presented. The library can be used to translate a few CSS decorations: border-radius, border-image, box-shadow, multiple background images and gradient backgrounds.

Right now, it’s just a demo, and since it uses .htc files for DHTML behaviors, it causes a serious performance hit on some versions of IE. It will likely become more useful in the future as Johnston builds it out. Follow Pie’s progress on Twitter.

Is it a good idea? On one hand, it’s just another life support mechanism for IE6. But it also gives us an easy enough fix where we can continue creating modern designs without having to worry as much about alienating those visitors stuck using browsers that don’t have proper CSS3 support.

Hat tip to Rey Bango at Ajaxian, who notes that CSS3 Pie deserves a spot on your shelf next to those other two libraries that perform similar magic tricks, Modernizr and html5shiv.

Also, A List Apart recently ran an excellent tutorial on using Modernizr to smooth the transition to HTML5 and CSS3.

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File Under: UI/UX, Visual Design
Jul
20
2010

Get Free Design Advice From Not Pixel Perfect Yet

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The web is long on opinion, but short on informed, constructive criticism.

Thank goodness then for Not Pixel Perfect Yet, a group of web experts who will critique your website’s design in public for free, offering helpful suggestions and advice on improving your site’s design, readability and usability.

The group is made up of 10 or so Czech web designers who are skilled in graphic design, UI/UX and search optimization.

You submit a link to the group by
e-mail (feedback@divdesign.cz) telling them what areas you’d like them to critique. If your site is chosen, they’ll post a screenshot of your design to their Facebook page. The different members of the group will all chip in and provide comments about your font choices, your use of CSS, the way you use images, your logo — anything you want to improve. They pick one site per week.

All of the discussion happens in the open on Facebook, and since the group is public, anyone can join the group and participate in the discussion. Even better, everyone on the web can view the Not Pixel Perfect Yet critiques, making the group a valuable learning tool for budding web designers or anyone struggling with basic design challenges.

A couple of caveats — first, the designers are all Czech, so the responses are usually written in Czech. But the team members speak English and can comment on your site in English if you ask. For the critiques that are written in Czech, Google Translate does a decent enough job of getting the point across. If you’re using Chrome, the browser will offer to translate the page automatically.

Second, if you just look at the Wall posts, you won’t see much beyond a few sentences about each design. You need to click over to the “Discussions” tab to get to the meatier comments.

Facebook is probably not the best forum for the NPPY mission. The public flow of comments is nice, but you have to be a Facebook member to comment, and the tabbed interface is wonky. Some folks on Twitter are asking the group members to move it somewhere other than Facebook, and NPPY leader Nikol Kokesova says she is considering starting a blog.

You can see a full list of the members at A Digital Moleskine, where blogger Milan Cermak has posted links to NPPY’s Twitter feeds, and where I originally learned about the project. There’s also a NPPY Twitter list you can follow.

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File Under: APIs, Social, Web Services
Jul
20
2010

Google Buzz Turns on the Firehose

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Google has added a feature to its Buzz API that publishes every activity as it happens in a single feed.

On the social web, this is commonly called a “Firehose” — a syndication feed that publishes all public activities as they happen in one big, fat stream. It’s a lot to sift through, but app developers consider a firehose essential for incorporating real-time search results and real-time “trending” lists from a particular social service into their creations.

Google Buzz, the company’s answer to Twitter and other real-time social sharing services, launched in February, and the API was opened up to the public in May. The firehose was made available late Monday, and it publishes everything Buzz users are sharing (except for Twitter tweets). Google says it’s Buzz developers’ most-requested feature. Previously, you could run searches on Google Buzz activity, but there was no way to subscribe to a feed that publishes what everyone on Buzz is talking about or sharing at any given moment with very low latency.

Some Google partners were involved in the launch, and they’ve prepped some apps to show off what the firehose can do. Have a look at Buzz Mood, an app (obviously inspired by our old Twitter favorite Twistori) that tracks emotional keywords like “love,” “hate,” “believe,” and “hope,” showing you the most recent posts containing those words in a constantly refreshing stream.

Also check out Gnip, the social aggregation service that collects user activities from Twitter, MySpace, Buzz, Facebook, Digg and over 100 social sites. Gnip republishes all these feeds in multiple formats and combinations, and it makes everything — now including the Buzz firehose — available to its customers via its own API.

All of the public activities in Google Buzz are published through the firehose using PubSubHubbub, a protocol that’s being widely adopted on the social web. PubSubHubbub, which was created inside Google and is now being developed into an open standard, pushes out updates to apps as they happen. It replaces the old model — one that’s been the standard for many years — where an application repeatedly asks the publishing server if there’s anything new.

PubSubHubbub is more efficient and provides the app with notifications the instant they happen. It’s not the only data format for real-time publishing: also have a look at RSSCloud.

Google is turning on some other API features as well, including a comments feed for comments left by each user, and a similar feed for “likes” made by each user.

Google is using Activity Streams, another emerging standard on the social web, to wrap all of the activity data. The AML-based Activity Streams format allows for notifications of things like comments, likes, and favorites. So, subscribe to the Google Buzz feed for so-and-so, and you’ll not only be notified that so-and-so posted a video, but also that his friend liked that video, or that an hour later, somebody else left a comment about it.

Everything is outlined in the Google Buzz API docs. You can also ask a question or search for answers in the Buzz developer forum.

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