Archive for the ‘Web Apps’ Category

File Under: Browsers, JavaScript, Web Apps
Mar
28
2013

Mozilla, Epic Bring Unreal 3 Gaming Engine to the Web

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Unreal 3 engine in Firefox.
Screenshot: Webmonkey.

Mozilla has partnered with Epic Games to bring the Unreal 3 gaming engine to the web. The result is a high-end gaming engine that could change the way you think of web-based games.

The Unreal 3 engine has previously been ported to Flash, but this is the first time a plugin-free (and therefore mobile-friendly) version has been built for the web.

Mozilla is hoping this project will help turn the web into a more serious gaming platform capable of running top-tier console titles.

Combining WebGL, Emscripten, a tool for compiling C++ apps into JavaScript, and the brand new asm.js, Unreal 3 for the web can, according to Mozilla, “rival native performance.”

While the Unreal 3 port is incredibly cool, there are still some stumbling blocks on the path to the web as a top-tier gaming platform, not the least of which is that load times for most games would be massive. Think hours, not minutes, to stream the complex graphics from a server to your mobile device — probably not something anyone particularly wants to sit through.

In other words, while Mozilla and Epic have made some impressive progress bringing Unreal 3 to JavaScript, it’s still going to be a while before you’re playing your favorite console games on the web.

However, Mozilla says it is “working with premium game publishers such as Disney, EA and ZeptoLab who are using the same technology to bring performance optimizations to their top-rated games.” The company is also hoping other browsers will make it possible to run the Unreal engine in their own JavaScript engines. The Chromium project is already discussing just how to do it.

For more on the project and to catch a glimpse of Unreal 3 running in the browser, check out the video below.

File Under: Web Apps, Web Services
Dec
6
2012

Gmail’s ‘Send and Archive’ Graduates From Gmail Labs

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Google has graduated three popular Gmail Labs tools to proper Gmail features: reply to all, quote selected text and, the most useful of the bunch, the “Send and Archive” button.

Unlike some new features for Google Apps, these are available right now in Gmail, though all three remain off by default.

To enable the popular “Send and Archive,” which turns the Send button into a dual-function button that sends your reply and then archives the conversation, head to settings and look for the new “Show ‘Send & Archive’ button in reply” option. While you’re in Gmail’s settings you can also change the default reply mode to reply all, though frankly that seems like asking for trouble.

The quote selected text feature is not a setting, it’s just the new behavior for replying to messages. Select a block of text in an e-mail, click reply and only the selected text will be included in your reply.

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File Under: Web Apps
Oct
25
2012

Google Docs Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

Google has renamed its Google Docs applications and made them available as apps in the Chrome Web Store.

To make things a bit clearer — and perhaps to differentiate them from other office suites — the apps formerly known as Google Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations are now called simply Docs, Sheets, and Slides and can be installed as shortcuts in Chrome.

If you’d like to install them, head over to the Chrome Web Store and grab the new Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps. Once they’re installed you’ll see the icon links every time you open a new tab in Chrome.

The change helps bring together the Chrome browser and Chrome OS, making both just another way to connect to Google Drive, the company’s cloud storage service that forms the basis of Google’s take on cloud computing.

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File Under: Responsive Design, Web Apps
Oct
15
2012

Easily Preview Responsive Designs With ‘Responsivator’

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Preview your website in Responsivator. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

Showing off responsive designs to clients can be tricky. Do you arrive with a bag full of devices in tow? Or open dozens of browser tabs running emulators? Resize a browser window and hope that the stuttering, @media-induced reflows don’t make clients question your sanity?

How about using just one browser tab that gives a quick preview of what a site looks like at any screen size you’d like?

That’s exactly what Responsivator does. Plug in a URL and Responsivator will load it up in a series of iframes set to whichever screen dimensions you specify. The default sizes cover common devices like the iPhone, iPad, Nexus 7 and desktop, though it’s easy to add anything you’d like to the list.

Responsivator is the work of developer John Polacek from Draftfcb, which also made the BigVideo jQuery plugin we featured previously. Responsivator builds on some similar, earlier efforts like Matt Kersley’s responsive web design testing tool and Benjamin Keen’s responsive design bookmarklet, but has some nice added features, like the ability to navigate your site within the various iframes.

Like Responsivator, but want to run your own custom instance? No problem, Responsivator is an open source project available on GitHub; just grab the code and fire up your server.

File Under: Visual Design, Web Apps
May
4
2012

Flickr: When It Comes to Photos, Bigger Is Better

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Size matters: Flickr's lightbox view now offers much larger images.

Yahoo is once again lavishing some attention on Flickr. Flickr has already launched a new photo uploader and a new photo editor in recent weeks, and now the site is making your images look even better with new, higher-resolution photo displays.

It’s been nearly two years since Flickr last redesigned its photo pages to display larger images. Since then screen resolutions have only improved, and when it comes to viewing photos you don’t have to be a pro photographer to know that bigger is better.

To make your uploaded images look better — especially when you’re browsing in fullscreen mode — Flickr is introducing two new photo sizes, 2048 and 1600 pixels.

Right now you’ll only see the new larger images when you enter Flickr’s “lightbox” view with its darker, photo-friendly interface (just click an image to enter lightbox view). At the moment the regular photo pages remain unchanged. However, the Flickr blog reports that the larger images will soon be available through Flickr’s API and “a few other places over the next couple of weeks.” While the new image sizes are probably too large for the default photo pages, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Flickr refresh the photo page layout with larger images in the near future.

The larger of the two new photo sizes also seems like a future-friendly choice since it works well with very high-res screens like what you’ll find on Apple’s latest iPad. Although Flickr does not appear to be doing so just yet, serving the larger images to the iPad would make for sharper photos on the iPad’s high-resolution screen. [Update: The Flickr team tells Webmonkey that it "just enabled hi-res photo sharing to the new iPad this morning."]

Naturally, to take advantage of the new larger image sizes Flickr is now creating, you’ll need to be uploading photos at least that large. But given that most phone cameras produce images in that pixel range these days, there’s a good chance you already are.

Flickr Pro members can control how large their images are displayed; just head to the new image size settings page. By default Flickr sets this to “best display size,” though if you want to stop people from downloading high-res copies of your images you can limit the display size to 1024 pixels. The new image size setting doesn’t affect who can download your original files, just those created by Flickr. But since the sizes Flickr creates are larger than what most original images would have been back when Flickr first launched, the new setting makes sense.

One thing to note with the new image sizes: they only apply to photos uploaded since Mar. 1, 2012; older images won’t be resized. The other thing to know is that if you upload something with a long edge of less than 2048 pixels, Flickr won’t upsize it so there’s no need to worry about small images being pixelated.

The new image sizes may not win over fans of filter-happy, low-res image sharing websites, but for Flickr aficionados it offers a compelling reason to stick around.

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