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Touch Screens: NYTimes Approved

NYTimes has confirmed what a lot of smartphone and iDevice users have know for ages[in Gadget-speak that is more than a year] – touch screens work very, Very, VERY effectively, thank you. This blog has been saying so for a long time that touch screen plus gestures is the magic UI ingredient which will unleash a new level of productivity in computing.

Touch screens operations are intuitive and natural. They are easy to remember making program operations easy to learn and, most importantly remember how to use later. The NYTimes story emphasizes this point. Touch screen operations are not as intrusive or broadcast-like revealing as voice commands which had a spell of popularity in the late 1990s. Touch screens are much more efficient than mice in getting GUI based work done.

Mice are GUI rodents for 4 reasons: First, they force time consuming hand-eye co-ordination – true, only a second or less of extra work per operation but measurably more over the course of a compute session. Second, mice force extra GUI operations. Take zooming in and out:
1)Select the tool
2)select the zoom direction – in or out;
3)do the operation.
With touch screen + gestures, it is one pinch in or out motion. Third, mice for precision placement and drawing are just not as good as touch screen operations. Wacom has made a profitable business out of this. Fourth and last, touch screen are not subject to miss-clicks and inadvertent errors that take chunks of time to reverse.

If Touchscreen is So Good why has it taken so long to Take OFF ?

I wish I could say it was technology; but HP had touchscreen operations with a stylus back in the early 1980′ and later for Windows 3.1 and 95 in the early 1990′s. Again in 1999, with the Jornada PDA [or iPad of its era] HP again had stylus based touch screen operations. And HP is rumored to have been working for 2 years with Microsoft on a touch screen Windows 7 device. No wonder HP finally threw in the towel and bought Palm for its WebOS multi-touch operating system and are working overtime to bring it to market on tablets as well as smartphones.

There are a lot of iPhone-like patents and prior art in the records stretching through the 1980s to the present. Here is one from 1995. And the technology around touchscreen operations has been quite vibrant. But there have been a lot of problems with the various touch technologies including picking up the touch consistently, scratches and damages to the screen, oil and other “human” grease obscuring the screen, fatfingers not being precise enough, stylus detection but requiring a pick-up operation, etc. However, every time a problem pops up on touchscreen operations it gets whack-a-mole-downed again by some clever coating or detection technology.

Summary

The markets have spoken – 50% growth for multi-touch enabled smartphones so far this year. And just touchscreen is not good enough. Windows 7 has been offering simple touchscreens through Acer and HP for the last 2 years or so but they have seen only slow sales gains. For some strange reason, Apple has not seen fit to bring touchscreen operations [and certainly not multi-touch screens] to the Mac desktop and laptop scene. Yet, Multi-touch with gestures as in the Android and iPad is the new standard which is really pulling customers in. And so expect a flood of multi-touch devices – smartphones, tablets, and PCs in the coming months. And if the Swedish Gui Gurus, the Astonishing Tribe, are right again -> the new forms of multi-touch screen operations will be absolutely amazing. See you around Christmas time to check back on what touching goodies have arrived.

Linux Wins on the Desktop

Linux is poised to win big market share on the desktop with Google Android Linux. The proof is the spectacular success of Android smartphones in the market place where it has passed Apple in the latest quarterly sales numbers. There is a tidal wave of Android and Chrome Os[ also based on Linux] devices coming to market over the next year. Certainly a few of these machines will be designed with robust docking stations to create the DOCking personal computer which is guaranteed to be a big hit in school and business settings. Now the only question is how big a chunk of the PC market Google Android Linux will take. Here is our plus and minus assessment:
+++if two or more vendors deliver an Android tablet with strong docking station and connections to mouse, keyboard, external SSD drive etc;
++if the above happens the excellent Ubuntu and Xandros Linux distributions will gain credence for ease of use, price, security, reliability and very good UI delivery;
++if one or more vendors delivers an Android tablet with 8-10 inch display with high resolution screen = 250DPI or better and keyboard plus USB3 docking connections;
++if Apple continues to delay Mac multi-touch screen machines and supplies only barebones iPad docking station;
++if Android continues rapid delivery of new features to the Android OS;
—if no Android or Chrome OS vendor delivers a good docking station and Display Only Computer that is detachable, portable, multi-touch, and has full working day [8 hours between battery charges];
–the Oracle suit against Google for misuse of Java patents in Android becomes nasty;
-if the WebOs/Palm tablets from HP are a resounding success in early 2011;
-if Microsoft ever gets its smartphone and desktop OS plans coordinated.

Linux on the desktop has made sense for a longtime on a number of performance factors. Now it has both the legitimacy and development power of Google on its side plus a host of harware suppliers keen on expanding their market share. And what Linux has to offer are key in the rapidly evolving personal gadget/computing market:
1)much more efficiency requiring a fraction of the memory and diskspace required by either Windows or MacOS;
2)uses less CPU and memory making long battery life easier to attain;
3)much more reliable with less crashes nor the slow degradation of performance so debilitating in Windows;
4)fewer security problems with often faster patch times;
5)solid GUI capabilities both on desktop and in available Web Browsers;
6)solid set of drivers to peripherals relieved by the new WiFi driven connectors, etc.
As well, Linux distributors are starting to recognize they can make money by delivering great server side bulk administration services for their organizational customers. Android Linux will not replace PCs [too much good native software and inherent recalcitrance ] but likely will gain Apple Mac sized marketshare [about 7%] first and then watch out.

Falls PC Hopes

Every year around August early September your Keep an Open Eye editor gets requests from friends and family to make recommendations regarding back to school PC purchases. This year, instead of the usual recommendations, PC Prospects looked different. First, Apple did with the iPad what Microsoft had failed to do with its tablets – deliver a highly portable and easy too use media computer. This Redmond de-innovation occurred despite Microsoft having the exclusive license to kill with a pen and stylus on the desktop for more than 10 years.

Apple created the DOC – Display Only Computer, a highly portable, light, full day of operation computer targeted for media replay, gaming and Web surfing. But the key innovation was no keyboard or mouse attached to this iBeauty – multi-touch and gestures would do thank you very much. In the process, Apple collected a hoard of pursing Android tablets and slates which hoped to also have “a wonderful, magic” touch to offer their customers. In sum DOC, smacked of change in the usual Falls PC Order:

If doing lots of artistic, web and/or graphics work pay the Cupertino Piper and get a Mac.
If porting a lot of previous PC work or doing a compute-intensive program [math, engineering, computer science, chemistry, biology], go with the Gypper and get a Windows PC laptop but hold the Office, hold the Outlook and definitely hold the loaded on “trial” games.

However, in Spring, Windows and HP were promising Couriers, touch screens, and the chance of my ideas actually being implemented in Windows.

Yeah Right! Whatever.

But the Courier is gone and HP’s purchase of Palm means a delay in game penalty in getting their WebOS-powered tablets/slates to market. Meanwhile, the Cupertino Magician did his prestidigitation and out popped the iPad without Flash and with only the barest of connectors to hook up an iPad up to . Steve also placed it and all his iDevices into a walled garden where everything you put on your iDevices a)required you paying the Cupertino Piper another tithing and b)only the anointed were allowed in to add more Apps to the Store and c)no Java, no Flash, no program generators are allowed to develop apps for iDevices. This restricted development dictum guarantees that iDevice App Goodness could not easily appear on other platforms. Just a wee constrictive. But give the Cupertino Magician credit – he knew very well that the idea of a highly portable, viewable, keyboard-less, mouse-less, multi-touch+gesture PC replacement had not a snowball’s chance in Hell of scratching the chrome dome surface of Mr. Developers, Developers, Developers.

However, the vision of being able to propose to friends and family a highly portable Display Only Computer did not vanish completely; but definitely was postponed because iPad lacks robust docking connections [just google "iPad docking stations" and see for yourself]. But consider the idea. This vision would have an iPad [or one of its Android impostors], being docked and acting like an ordinary PC with keyboard and mouse with Wifi and/or USB 3.0 connections to printers, ultrafast SSD hard drives, and other peripherals. But at a Batagong signal, this ordinary PC could drop its work day peripherals and be transformed into a Super DOC – Display Only Computer. Voila – you have an iPad, Slate or some other display primarily computer!

And these DOCs are versatile. One could take your iPad DOC-Display Only Computer to a day of lectures with all the class textbooks and material right on board. At the lecture one could could record the audio of the proceedings and later translate it into text [okay into Intermittent Professor Speakese]. Through Google Mail or Skype or FaceTime [but FaceTime requires another iPad on the other side] you could chat with friends. One could have App powered computing power on the go. – but only Apple approved apps.

Since Apple is not doing the docked iPad robustly, maybe one of the pursuing Android slate impostors will have intuited the opportunity and will come up with the equivalent in this Fall and Christmas Season of Slates. Consider the potential goldmine in the office workplace too. Now being the secretary recording the minutes of a meeting has not only computer help but the power of “what was said”. Instead of laptops, users take their multi-touch Androids everywhere – no power worries. But if they need to get work done, then pound away at your office or home docking station. And with Wifi+Touch one could pickup all the meeting materials in a touch. There are huge market opportunities here.

More Cupertino Mephisto-ing

But the Cupertino Magician continued with more bad-side blessings – the Magic Trackpad. For three years and counting, Apple has been delivering multi-touch+gestures but only on iDevices. For all those rabidly loyal Mac users the only sightings have been the multi-touch enabled MacBook touchpads and some multi-touch patent applications. However the graphics and design work that these Mac Loyalists do would really really really profit from direct multi-touch + gestures enabled screen operations. But then this summer the Magic Trackpad effectively made it official: Apple would not be delivering multi-touch+gestures to Mac screens anytime soon.

But hey Steve is on a disappointment roll, so why not test the adoring’s allegiance one more time. By rejecting Flash on all his iDevices, the Majestic Innovator forced a lot of Mac designers and other creatives to contemplate how they would design and develop in a future without Flash or with a lot of duplicated effort. Not Good!

But for Not-Goodness Sake, the Mad Magician has one more nasty up his sleeve. As it turns out in tests of his Apple machines in May of this year, running identically the same Apple hardware but just switching the OS on those Apple puppies- guess what? Running the same graphics software programs[ OpenGL, games, and Flash ] on both Windows7 and Mac OS/X 10.6, Windows 7 runs anywhere from 10 to 70% faster than MacOS. Windows is never bested by MacOS. And in fact, Linux loaded onto the same Apple computer always outperforms MacOS in the same battery of graphic tests too. So its not Flash that is slow on doing graphics and movies on MacOS, but Macs run most graphics software slower than Windows and Linux. Now Apple announced late in the Summer a new Mac refresh using the latest Intel i5 and i7 chips. This Man from Missouri is now waiting for new benchmarks using the latest Apple hardware which will demo whether or not the Apple Mac

Apple Deal at Best-Buy August 27, 2010

Windows 7 Deal at Best-Buy August 27, 2010

can deliver graphics performance at least equal to Windows and Linux. Why recommend buying a Mac if its going to cost $800 more for the slightly less hardware specs and poor graphics performance?

Security, Ease of Use, Better Browser

If you give up graphics performance and price by nearly 2 to 1 to Windows, what does Apple Macs have left? Well security for one. Windows has continued to have those wonderful monthly patch Tuesdays with the added zero day virus. Wait a second – Apple’s security record at Secunia, the respected PC security advisory service, is not much better. Secunia has shown that Mac OS has a comparable number of high alert advisories:

Secunia tallied 36 advisories on security issues with the [MacOS] software, many of them allowing attackers to remotely take over the system – comparable to figures on operating systems such as Windows XP Professional or Red Hat Enterprise Server.

Hmmmm – not good news for MacOS users.

So lets take ease of use – oops, MacOS does not have touch screens at all – only multi-touch Magic Trackpads. But Windows 7 has had touch screens [but not multi-touch + gestures] for nearly two years. And more PC vendors, particularly for high end desktops, are featuring touch screen operations. And touch screen alone even without multi-touch does make users more productive.

Okay , so concede a slight advantage to Windows 7 with touch screen. One has to say MacOS with Safari provides a much better Web Experience than Windows 7 and IE8. That would be true if IE8 were the only browser that runs in Windows. But Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera are all superior browsing experiences and they run on Windows 7 and all of the downloads are fast and dirt simple to do. Even, Safari, the latest 5.0.1 edition runs in Windows. And Microsoft has been working triple overtime this Summer to bring you IE9 which test versions show is right up with the other browsers on speed of operations and meeting the existing HTML, CSS, and DOM standards. But there are serious questions on how well IE9 meets the new HTML5 standards and IE9 is not available for the legion of Windows XP users [50% of all Windows users still]. A beta release of IE9 on September 15th will reveal all.

So is Windows 7 the way to go? It is much cheaper on the hardware side, has better graphics performance, touchscreen operations and a bevy of great browsers available. But on the downside there is always the security horror stories, speed often slower than Windows XP, less support for older Windows programs and peripherals, the slow decay of reliability and performance during the day as memory leaks and handles proliferation slowly do their nasties. But hey, for $800 off and all that great free, Open Source software [start with Open Office and Notepad++ and don't stop there but go here] – why not choose Windows?

Summary

Give Steve Jobs full credit – he has pioneered for the third time with his iDevices and its inspired contrarian blend:
1)less computing power for the sake of a full working day of battery life;
2)new simplified OS to force more efficient delivery of services like more GUI bang for the memory buck and a new take on computer security;
3)drop the keyboard and mouse to guarantee untethered portability;
4)use rich multi-touch+gestures to replace mouse and displaced keyboard while making operating iDevices easier to learn and remember how to use.
This is high level innovation and quite a legacy. But in order to promote his iPad and iDevices, it appears Steve has badly short-changed his Mac Users. The call it “Creative Destruction”.

Nonetheless, this was the Summer of PC False Hopes. I really had expected to be able to recommend Apple Macs whole heartedly. But the Cupertino MagicMan has shifted his focus to the iDevices and has really short-changed the Apple Mac line. And why not ? iDevices bring in more than double the revenues of the tired old Mac line:

Make up of Apple’s Stock price
Tired old Macs? Definitely so. Macs are consistently getting the short end of the Apple innovation stick – Macs are graphically hobbled relative to the competition, cost nearly double if not more, and still do not have touch screen operations. And security has slipped a notch. Meanwhile, the iPad also does not have a docking station with enough fixtures for a unqualified breakthrough. So here is what I am telling family and friends this year:

Take an old desktop PC or Mac to school, hunker down using lots of the free, Open Source software, and wait until next year when the DOCking computers should really hit the deck. If you must have a new computer and if you are in any compute intensive program of school studies [think arts and graphics {Macs have worst graphic performance on same hardware}, engineering, science, maths, physics, biosciences, economics]get a Window 7 laptop [ Compaq Presario Laptop / AMD Athlon™ II Processor / 15.6" Display / 3GB Memory / 250GB Hard Drive - $379 at Bestbuy]. If your school supports eBook textbooks and course notes get the docking station version of iPad [$679 at Bestbuy] but don’t expect to load up most Mac or Windows programs. Choose the iPad only if your courses are wordprocessing, spreadsheet, emails and Web browsing intensive.

Psst, businesses! Also hunker down with what you got and wait for the wave of Android and WebOS tablets and slates to arrive over this coming year period. Mac users – too bad, so sad, going out of chic rad.

Monster Review – HTML5 Up and Running

This review is taking advantage of the release of the book HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim from the O’Reilly Press to do not just a review of the book ; but also of the HTML5 standard itself. As a foreward, Keep an Open Eye must acknowledge that Mark’s HTML5 : Up and Running and also Diving into HTML5 have been invaluable resources into getting quickly up to speed into what has been a 12 year wait [and counting] for a major update to the Web’s key client side standard, HTML.

The other motivator is the fact that Microsoft, after 12 years of being remiss on delivering promised HTML, CSS, and DOM standards, will be releasing the beta of IE9 in September which will not only patch many of those 12 year old missing standards but also will show substantial improvements in its HTML5 implementation and overall speed and performance of its new beta, the IE9 browser. But as always with Redmond and the Web, there are some distinct downsides. Windows XP, despite having 50% plus of total Windows market share has been ruled out for IE9 [Redmond is forcing the customers choice- switch to one of four other great browsers or do the time and costly upgrade to Windows 7]. In addition, Microsoft is selectively implementing HTML5 [see chart below], has yet to commit to all of HTML5 and its associated features, and may have some direct hardware dependencies buried in the Web code. Much will be revealed with IE9 beta in September.

Mark Pilgrim has written another version of this book entitled Diving into HTML5 which is publicly available here. There are differences [particularly in styling and illustration]but the O’Reilly version is more complete. However Diving into HTML5 has a 5 point preface that is well worth repeating here because it forms the heart of our review of HTML5: Up and Running. Mark makes the following points-

1)HTML5 is not one big thing; but rather is broken down into 10-15 big feature sets which you can individually check for then augment and make extensions or substitutions based on tested availability of HTML5 features in the browser your web page is being displayed with. This is also indicative of the incremental approach taken with HTML5 which help win it acceptance after a shaky start.

2)You don’t need to throw anything away as HTML5 supports almost all of HTML4 with very few exceptions – largely deprecations of redundant or obsolete tags,events, and/or properties. See here.

3)HTML5 is easy to get started in. Given HTML5′s very high backward compatibility with HTML4, support of long developed extensions like SVG, MathML, XForms [and others], plus the work on many HTML5 feature sets by 4 of the 5 major browser vendors, some major features are nearly complete. But before diving into HTML5 as recommended by Steve Jobs, be aware that a)all browser vendors are barely 2/3 rds of the way complete towards implementing HTML5 [see the table immediately below]; b)there is not a great deal of uniformity in how the browser vendors have delivered their versions of HTML5 to date [also illustrated below]; c)some key features of HTML5 are missing or lacking completed/consensus standards specification such as multi-touch + gestures, devices or Web Database; as the importance of HTML5 and the broader web interface increases, fractious disputes among the standard setting parties is on the increase[see history below]. So HTML5 is easy to get started in but Web and mobile developers have to be very careful in how, where and in what way they will be planning to use HTML5.

4)HTML5 already works - again see the table and charts below for an overview of how well it already works.

5)HTML5 is here to stay – and clearly there is a lot of momentum and works towards improving their HTML5 support among all five major vendors [include Microsoft now]. Again, the table shows Firefox improving by 37% in one version update while Microsoft IE, though still trailling all other vendors in HTML5,has improved by 300% in the move from IE8 to IE9. But this web developers has plenty of wounds from past browser wars, so I am from Missouri waiting to see a)how quickly key new standards like multi-touch are approved and b)how quickly and uniformly HTML5 is implemented by all vendors. Many of HTML5′s key features are in the last 1/3rd unfinished state or the unspecified part of the standard.

Finally, Mark could have added explicitly [it is certainly implied in many of his topics] 3 more points regarding HTML5:

6)HTML5 is much more than declarative XML-like tags as it embraces scripting and closer integration with CSS and XML plus an even more powerful DOM API. This API has richer events, properties, and integration among HTML, CSS and the dominant scripting language, JavaScript. HTML5 adopts largely the reality and ways of Web 2.0, AJAX, and DHTML.

7)What is in and what is out of HTML5 is currently subject to a great deal of confusion, omission+overlap with other W3C Working Groups, plus politcal jockeying as the impact of W3C standards are critical for rapidly evolving PCs, mobile devices and smartphones with their market dominating innovations and product introductions.

HTML5 has a history that is tied into past Web development and W3C standards making. As seen below this history has not only shaped HTML5 in the recent past; but continues to drive HTML5 standardisation and development today. Read the rest of this entry »

HTML5 Hype

HTML is really getting hyped. This site is an example. But here is a very well crafted demo which makes the case. The demo uses exactly 5 statements in HTML5:

<!DOCTYPE html>

and

<audio id=”audio”>
Your browser does not support the <code>audio</code> element.
</audio>

while all of the rest of the work , and there is a lot of sophisticated Javascripting, is done in jQuery.

Click here and see for your self – CTL+U or find your browser’s View Source command and see the evidence.

Give 9elements.com top marks for a sophisticated integration of graphics, audio and offsite Twitter message retrieval in jQuery.

Google Android Scales Consumer OS Peak!?

Okay, a slight exaggeration; but the announcement this last Thursday that Google Android [a Linux variant] has won the top spot among smartphone OS may be a precursor of what is to come. This Fall, a wave of Android slates, netbooks, pads and tablets are going to arrive on the scene – and change the balance of power on the desktop. Linux through Android becomes not the marginal 1-2% desktop client player but more like a 5-9% player and growing. And the fundamental reasons that the Android version of Linux will do well is because it will deliver 4 things that Microsoft has failed to deliver:
1)a multi-touch user interface which like Web 2.0 is revolutionizing computer interaction as users demand much better user-computer interactions. UIs must now be simple, intuitive, easy to to learn and remember how to use. Gone except in Brobadingnangian apps are the huge 3-5 level deep menus and Mayan glyph-like icon-bars that demand big learning curves, slight hope for most mortals of knowing a fraction of an apps feature set, and/or demanding large swaths of “getting reacquainted” time.
2)a UI housed in a light, bright, and highly mobile form factor. Long battery life and easy to carry, and connected to the Web, other devices, and a broad set of peripherals by high performance connections including Bluetooth, Wifi, USB 3.0 etc.
3)a desktop UI that is open source. You don’t like the pace or direction that Google is taking Android Linux in – then fork it. Or add your own extensions, development software, and/or performance, security, and/or reliability fixes. As major users, hardware providers, corporate sponsors now know [a broad variety of stakeholders in Android], they have much more self-control over the direction and utility that Android provides them then has ever been possible with Microsoft Windows. The biggest advantage – stakeholders have access to the Android source code.
4)a desktop OS that is NOT constantly growing in price, size and becoming ever slower/less reliable. Microsoft used to announce with pride that “Windows is 50 million lines of code and growing”. No more as the sheer size of the code has made it impossible for Microsoft to carry its core Windows code into mobile and tablet markets quickly. For example Redmond has had to resurrect Windows XP for netbooks because Vista and a severely stripped down Windows 7 just don’t fit. Also problems like .DLL hell, persistent memory leaks, a constant supply of zero day hacks and gradual degradation over usage in a day forcing reboot persist as wicked problems which are very hard for Microsoft to fix. Read the rest of this entry »

HTML5: Implementation Status – Summer 2010

As one peers more closely at HTML5 standards and developments, three conclusions come to the forefront:

1)The revisions in HTML5 are broad and deep – Canvas, SVG, CSS3 and multi-touch gestures will change fundamentally how the Web is visualized, displayed and interacted with . The <audio> and <video> tags plus the Apple vs Adobe tussle will change how well these two important media codecs work and perform. Contenteditable , dragandrop, plus a slew of new HTML5 events and exception handling will bring solid desktop UI and customization to the Web [its been on the Web but dependent on varying JavaScript frameworks implementations]. Storage, Web SQL Database, and offline support will change how all apps are developed profoundly – unifying what has been two separate development worlds [now one can understand Google's Chrome OS and "its only a browser" approach]. But the DOM , JavaScript and other Web scripting will have to improve in speed and security to deliver that largely unified development world.

Desktop primarily/only apps will continue to coexist with the Dual Web+offline systems; but these desktop apps will be concentrated into math modeling, simulation , and creative design areas that need enormous memory, storage and/or processing speed. HTML5′s message, websocket and geolocation libraries will bring social-media-like facilities to all aspects of business, education, health and social welfare. Microdata, RDF, and the new named <div>s [think <header>, <footer>, <figure>, <aside>, etc] will make scanning, searching, recapturing/repurposing and therefore re-integrating Web data and pages into an organization’s total information management more efficient and/or practicable. Finally, HTML5′s workers will provide background links to the Cloud and/or enormous desktop computing resources ensuring again that those computing resources can be drawn upon from any Web enabled and permitted device. Clearly HTML5 , if allowed to mature and standardize openly, will change IT and computing profoundly.

2)HTML5 standards and also the browser implementations are far from complete – yes there are large islands of reasonably settled standards. But other HTML5 standard sections like multi-touch gestures, the audio and video codecs, Storage and Web Databases, plus microdata and RDF among others are far from settled. Now onto this confusion add the varying browser implementations of HTML5 [that is what this posting is all about - see below] and developing using HTML5 may be “magical … wonderful … and the emerging direction” to Apple’s CEO; but also dangerous and full of bleeding edge hazards to ordinary Web developers. “Danger, Danger Web Will Robinson!”

3)HTML5 officially marks the ascendancy of scripting into HTML – Web developers have enormous new scripting tools with <canvas> , SVG, MathML, huge new DOM API[everything new in HTML5 is in the DOM], plus Ruby and energized JavaScript. Its been said before but bears repeating: HTML5 === DHTML. One cannot do fullscale HTML5 Web development without having good scripting and DOM API skills. Graphic-oriented Web designers do get some powerful new design capabilities with CSS3, SVG, and <canvas>. But many will have to wait for a new generation of tools and IWebDEs [Integrated Web Design Environs] to truly tap and unleash their design skills. Consider that Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator have been two of the leading Web graphic design tools; but neither has been enhanced or extended by Adobe such that they effectively can deliver completed Web pages or even templates. Graphic Designers have to look for 3rd party plugins like Site Grinder 3 or adapt new approaches like Xara’s Web Designer 6 .

So clearly it bears repeating – HTML5 is a very big deal; but also HTML5 is far from ready for prime time. So without further to-do, here is the current status of HTML5 Implementations. Read the rest of this entry »

HTML5: Canvas Demo

The following is a demo of the HTML5 <canvas> tag in operation:

If you cannot see this nifty demo try any of the following: 1 2 3 or 4.
Now some other nifty Canvas demos and references:
HTML5 Canvas cheat sheets – very helpful for using <canvas> scripting.
BillMalone – detailed example of using canvas to create icons with browser compatibility info.
Google IExplorerCanvas addon – gets canvas tags to work in IE8.
DivingIntoHTML5 – the excellent tutorial on the canvas tag with Halma game example.
CanvasDemos – dozens of examples, games and tutorials for using HTML5 Canvas
HTML5Demos – has 2 dozen examples of HTML5 in action including 2 canvas demos – one gets a clearer idea of the status of HTML5 regarding the 5 major browser vendors. Guess who is lagging?
Thirteen Incredible Canvas Demos – some great canvas demos plus code
Ben Joffe – again some great examples of what can be done with canvas tag
Wikipedia Canvas – concise summary of what canvas can do; but still some great links/references
Canvas Tests – A rigorous set of tests for all key canvas functions and attributes [CTL+U to see the source]

Summary

Except for Microsoft [IE9 is still in test drive harness] , implementation of the canvas tag in the browsers is pretty good. This is a welcome trend. But there are still major hurdles – integrations with CSS3, 3D drawings, SVG and vector drawing integration, and most importantly link to touch+gestures control. Here is a sobering warning about browser standards: browser page tabs still cannot be controlled through HTML or even JavaScript [except if you are using your own within-the-page created tabs using a JavaScript framework like Dojo, DHTMLx, EXTjs, jQuery, etc]. Likewise except for Safari using Webkit and tentatively FireFox 4 using Gecko, multi-touch support in browsers is up in the air and has yet to appear in the standards. Yet clearly multi-touch and gestures is driving much interface design. Will this “touching” need be provided to Web developers in a timely fashion? And of course this raises questions about how future canvas capabilities will evolve.

HTML5: Web SQL Database

SQLite is one of the most popular databases that you may not know about. It is used in every Firefox, Skype, McAfee, and Solaris instance. It is also used on Apple Mac computers and iPhones. Adobe, Google and Mozilla use SQLite for Web related applications. Google’s local data storage engine, Google Gears, uses SQLite. But now SQLite may be too popular. Here is the announcement in the W3C Web SQL Database site:

This specification has reached an impasse: all interested implementors have used the same SQL backend (Sqlite), but we need multiple independent implementations to proceed along a standardisation path. Until another implementor is interested in implementing this spec, the description of the SQL dialect has been left as simply a reference to Sqlite, which isn’t acceptable for a standard. Should you be an implementor interested in implementing an independent SQL backend, please contact the editor so that he can write a specification for the dialect, thus allowing this specification to move forward.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google Outages II

Previously Keep an Open Eye reported persistent Google outages of several minutes. Some readers complained that the provider, Rogers.com in this case, was having DNS problems. Well the latest recurrence of a Google search outage would seem to belie that fact. First, note that the latest Chrome 5.0 browser is being used in all cases displayed. Here is the situation:

Read the rest of this entry »

Web Enabling Encryption

One of the major security problems is that data on the web often runs naked. This is due to two reasons – 1)the HTTPS protocol can be more difficult and costly to implement and 2)there is a notable performance hit to be taken in most situations. Network World is reporting work done at Stanford University that would embed encryption at the lowest TCP layer a)without incurring a large performance hit and b)without incurring huge development penalties. Well worth the intro read here at Network World and the surprisingly accessible Stanford-led original paper here.

Web Limits

Ye Keep an Open Eye editor just positively relishes what the Web allows – quick confirmation of facts and dips into expert knowledge through Google, Wikipedia, NewScientist, theEconomist, and just browsing the books at Barns and Noble or Amazon websites. But there is a growing word of caution about the effectiveness of the Web that David Brooks captures at the NYTimes:

Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter and Facebook took off.

These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.

Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.

The evidence and arguments on the deficiencies of the Web accumulate around two central ideas.

First, the Web and especially mobile devices do not foster acquiring good reading skills. Rather the opposite proficiency in the elements of reading including breadth of vocabulary, spelling skills, timbre or shades of meaning are less well developed. In her Proust and the Squid, Maryann Wolf explores the illuminating neuroscience of reading acquisition with emphasis on deficiencies [dyslexia, autism] and the basic retardants to reading development. She also sees the Web as short-changing the development of broader understanding skills that books and reading foster.

Second, the Web promotes bad habits that inhibit good analysis and dialog. This is the crux of the argument in Nicholas Carr’s book the Shallows. Ye Keep an Open Eye editor can testify to some of the shallows cited by Nicholas Carr. Some of the commentary sent to this blog is so short-sighted, missing either context [other postings and comments] or simply negligent of doing any fact checking. Also there can be attitude of belligerent disputation completely lacking in civility and control of language that is just offending and creates only emotional heat at best.

So Keep an Open Eye will do that about whether there is a shallows and limits to effective learning of real analytic and communication skills engendered by the Web. In effect, the question is – what are the effective Web limits to learning and understanding?

Exploring HTML5: Aside, Header, Footer, Section Tags

Following Steve Jobs hints, Keep an Open Eye has invested a lot more time in HTML5. Here is a curious discovery derived from sessions at W3schools and Quackit [try them you will like them]:

There is an explosion of what could be construed as structural tags in HTML5 – <article>, <aside>, <header>, <footer>, and others. One would expect them to position their content on the web page regardless of where they are inserted in the HTML file. Not exactly! Instead, they appear to be just alias names for <div> tags with no positioning smarts or savvy. This allows HTML files to be a little more meaningful. But you as HTML coder are still completely responsible for proper positioning and layout of the new HTML5 tags.

Now in contrast, the much maligned <table> tags do automatically provide savvy positioning as in this example:

Note that despite being put at the top of the table definition, the <tfoot> content is moved to the bottom of the table and likewise for the misplaced <thead> tag. It is the kind of service that was expected of the new HTML5 tags; but may be Steve and Ian will deliver this later. However, it is not mission improbable in Web development. See what the people at DHTMLx and Sencha[EXTjs] provide in their JavaScript frameworks and their Panel layout tools. Users can place the panel code in any order, the frameworks figure where to place the panels on the page. Now that is service!

The Kin is Dead, Long Live the Kin

Keep an Open Eye could not find the official announcement, but there were several hundred confirmations that Microsoft’s Kin is dead as a product. The best coverage to be found on the demise of Kin is from Engadget – What Killed the Kin. Here are some of the salient points:

It seems that after doing some initial work on these phones based around Danger’s proprietary Sidekick OS, Andy Lees — the SVP of Microsoft’s mobile division — instructed everyone to go back to the drawing board and rebuild the OS based on Windows CE. It appears the company didn’t want a project that wasn’t directly connected to its Windows kernel. This move allegedly set the release of the devices back 18 months, during which time Redmond’s carrier partner became increasingly frustrated with the delays. Apparently when it came time to actually bring the Kins to market, Big Red had soured on the deal altogether and was no longer planning to offer the bargain-basement pricing deals it first had tendered. The rest, as they say, is history …
But wait, there’s more — the Kin team is being refocused onto the WP7 project, but that’s not the only shakeup going on. Our source said there had been rumblings that Steven Sinofsky — president of the Windows and Windows Live groups — is making a play for the entire mobile division as well in an attempt to bring a unified, Windows-centric product line to market. If these rumors are true, the push inside the company could move to align all forthcoming projects with an overarching strategy that leads back to the introduction of a much more cloud- and mobile-centered Windows 8 release. This goes directly against what we heard reps preach at both WMC and MIX10 this year, where the mantra was “the phone is not a PC.” If things go according to this plan, like Ballmer said at D8, “They’re all PCs.”

This is indicative of the wrenching organzational and strategic changes going on at Redmond as light and mobile takes mindshare and increasing chunks of market share in consumer computing. Now the probability of Windows 7 Phone making a Christmas debut may be wavering.

But Microsoft is not alone. Consider the problems at Cupertino where the Apple Mac PC developers have had to endure high 2x and 3x price points just when Windows was so vulnerable; yet the Mac OS X developers are vulnerable since they have yet to match Windows on the graphics performance by a factor of 30% or more despite having identically the same hardware[CPU, GPU, RAM and hard disk] to work with. And the Palm people at HP with some of their ranks depleted will also be under the gun to deliver webOS on not just an HP Phone but also a tablet or printer interface as as well. And will RIM and Intel/Nokia be able to deliver timely touch+gesture OS updates to their product lines. Clearly, the light and mobile heat is on across the Tech industry.

Update July 06, 2010:NYTimes has a feature article on the demise of the Kin coming on the heels of the Courier termination, the Vista disaster, and the shortfall of a number of other consumer products. Tim O’Reilly is cited to support the argument that Microsoft software costs more and does not provide instant and complete availability, nor access to as many platforms as Open Source software lead by Google and others. In effect, Microsoft has lost and is losing a generation of software developers – tough argument and how completely true will determine how well Redmond recovers from its current innovation trough.

Original Story Published: July 1, 2010

Google Outages: Cloud Computing Implications

For the past half year at least, Google Search and often all of Google services have been “out” – just not available while other search engine and Web services such as Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Yahoo Mail and others are up and running. This has implications for Cloud Computing adoption. It also has to be of concern for potential organizations committing to Google Apps and other Google Cloud Services. Lets look at the outages problem first.

The Google Outages

The following is the most recent outage on July 4th 2010 Sunday:

This was the 5th time and 3rd browser [Firefox, IE, Chrome] – all failed to connect to Google.

So then I tried to connect to Yahoo Search – same search term a minute later:

Yahoo search in Firefox succeeded; so did Bing search in IE.

Finally I try a minute later to connect to Google again:

Still no connect with Google – in about ten minutes Google finally responds.

Now if this was an isolated incident – no problem. But it isn’t. This has occurred at least a half a dozen times in the past month. Keep an Open Eye plans to formally log these events, for Google or any other web service provider, and have written a small MySQL database app to do so.

Here is the reasoning on what is behind these Google ” outages”:
1)They are not Google outages, but rather my broadband service provider is dropping a critical connection to Google from time to time.
2)They are not Google outages but rather some contracted distributed data service provider that links Google’s millions of machines to key net ports – and they have gone down. This is still serious business depending on how frequently and how long those outages occur.
3)They are Google outages and the failover system is just not being responsive.

The Implications for Cloud Computing

In a nutshell, if Google cannot deliver reliable Cloud Computing services – who can ? Read the rest of this entry »

HTML 5 DevTools: Sencha Touch

EXTjs is now Sencha -and I am not sure the new moniker is much ahead of the old name. But EXT.js uhhhh.. Sencha really knows how to turn out good JavaScript code. If you are into Java web development, EXT.GWT is very strong, gets Java to JavaScript and is well worth the look. On the other hand if you are a committed AJAX web developer [with a touch of Adobe AIR on the side] then both the EXT.js Framework, Ext.Core and EXT.js Designer will be well worth your attention. And of course this blog uses a WordPress theme based on EXT.js Framework.

So Keep an Open Eye was not surpised to see the recent annoucement of Sensa Touch – a JavaScript framework that supports mobile web development with HTML5. Not only that, but Sensa Touch unites EXT.js data handling savvy [links to popular databases with JSON, YQL, andAJAX ]with the Touch+Gestures of iOS4 [think tap, swipe, pinch, etc]. The following shows Sensa Touch in action in a Chrome browser:

Keep an Open Eye was surprised that this demo does not run in IE, Firefox or Opera. The latter is surprising because Opera Mini does run on the iPhone. So both on mobile phones and PCs Sencha Touch generates code only for Webkit browsers which is primarily Apple Safari and Google Chrome [used in the screenshot above]. This is about 15% of all Web browsers in use Worldwide.

Sencha warned PC users in a posting that that Touch is a mobile browser oriented system with its roots in WebKit display technology. But Mozilla’s Fennec in the mobile space it was implied may be supported. So this is the downside to HTML5 Touch – 1)it runs completely only in Webkit on mobile browsers; 2)it runs partially [missing multi-touch gestures plus text copy and paste] in PC webkit browsers, and 3)does not support the complete set of options available in EXT.js JavaScript framework on the PC.

So clearly two different web development worlds are evolving – mobile with hot touch/gesture features but missing the full range of AJAX options and widgets that are available on the PC with JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, EXT.js, DHTMLx, and a host of others. As Moore’s law comes to bear on mobiles and PCs pick up full screen touch and gesture capabilities, this divergence may narrow and completely disappear. Meanwhile there is a growing gap for HTML5 between mobile and PC browser usage.

Sencha touch brings a host of goodies to HTML5 mobile web development. This includes a stable of well designed icons, some smooth predefined animation routines plus some of the key EXT.js widgets and JavaScript coding for menus, tabs, lists, carousels, and cards among others. In addition, Sencha Touch uses SASS [Ruby based]as a templating system to allow its CSS3 driven widget themes/styling to be changed straighforwardly [ a weakness in EXT.js PC framework]. However, there is a trade-off: developers have to come up to speed in the Ruby routines that drive SASS.

In sum, Sencha is one of the first vendors to bring full Touch+Gestures to HTML5 and specifically development for Apple iOS and Google Android on mobile devices. The routines work pretty well in PC Webkit browsers but not at all in Firefox, IE, and Opera PC browsers. Here is one Web Developer praying for rain – i.e. the quick convergence of Touch+Gestures and other mobile browser features with their PC counterparts.

1000th Post at Keep an Open Eye!

The previous Aptana Studio 3 post is our 1000th! Keep an Open Eye would like to pat itself on the back for its coverage of Web and Software Development for the past 5 years.

Okay, that done, get on with the Sencha story!

HTML5 DevTools: Aptana Studio 3 beta

Aptana Studio 3 beta is an HTML5 aware development tool. This means it has Intellisense with hinting capabilities for a broad range of HTML5 tags and syntax. In addition Aptana supports CSS3 and is capable of parsing mixed files of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript which are now the rule with Web 2.0, HTML5, PHP, and Ruby on Rails.

But the thrust of Aptana Studio 3 is really towards Ruby on Rails:
where Aptana has a debugger support plus automated deployment to Heroku for RRails apps plus some very nice RRails guides/wizards. However, Aptana 3 also has strong PHP support on tap as well. Perhaps the key to the Studio for developers is its integration of a number of strong editor functions.

Already noted is the HTML5 savvy Intellisense but there is also the ability of the parser to identify in a treelist all of the CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and PHP/Ruby objects/tags in a single command file. Developers can then search over a project for any links/definitions of those objects. These capabilities take Aptana 3 up to and some would argue beyond Dreamweaver CS5 for editing. In addition, Aptana 3 provides a Terminal Window, Gihub menu commands and the ability to edit/customize the Studio interface. These are the type of strong editing features that are going to be essential for HTML5 development where HTML cross CSS cross JavaSCript cross serverside scripting[all in one file], will be the norm not the exception

True there is no JavaScript debugger in sight nor any drag and drop Canvas/SVG designer. But for the hardcore HTML5 editing here is a tool that goes well beyond color coding and Intellisense only HTML5. Well worthy of the free download look-see at Aptana here.

Apple vs Adobe: Vetting Steve Jobs Flash Assertions

Apple and CEO Steve Jobs have at various time in the past 6 months complained about Adobe Flash performance on both OS4 iDevices [iPhone and iPad] and Mac OS X. This will post will vet those remarks with publicly available benchmarks and other reports. They will be confined to Mac OS X since results of Flash on iOS3 and 4 are rather hard to obtain. And in fact, it is hard to get good performance data across the board [speed benchmarks, bug/reliability reports, security assessments, battery drain results] as many software and hardware licenses prohibit users from doing benchmarks or simply reporting straight forward performance observations.

Nonetheless the checks on Steve Jobs assertions use comparative data wherever available. All of the sources cited are provided with links to the primary data and readers are encouraged to check up on the complete data to verify conclusions for themselves. The preferred benchmarks would use the same hardware and just change the OS on that hardware to conduct the tests. This is not trivial. Likewise lining up identical software versions on both OS can have one pulling at hairs. But surprisingly there have been a number of apples to apples test results which are cited here.

Speed/Performance of Flash

Keep an Open Eye has already cited a study that suggests that there is a pretty wide gap between Windows and Mac basic graphics performance with Windows beating Mac by hefty margins. So Keep an Open Eye sought to confirm these results and did find additional benchmarks which appear to confirm Windows superior graphics performance vis a vis Macs on identically the same hardware. All of these results show that Flash [and other graphics software as well] runs faster on Windows using identically the same hardware which measured First consider the result from ArsTechnica from a year and a half ago:

ArsTechnica Oct 2008
Mac OS X 10.5	Windows Vista
Flash 9 GUIMark-9.5fps, 104%cpu Flash 10 GUIMark-28fps, 140%cpu Flash 9Hulu-63%cpu Flash 10 Hulu-56%cpu Flash 9YouTube-45%cpu Flash 10 You Tube -40%cpu	Flash 9 GUIMark-45FPS, 54%cpu Flash 10 GUIMark-46fps, 54%cpu Flash 9 Hulu-9%cpu Flash 10 Hulu-7%cpu Flash 9YouTube-8%cpu Flash 10 You Tube6%cpu
Same Quad 2.66 MacPro 6GB of RAM

Now for the lastime, please note that these tests are conducted on the same Apple hardware, the only difference is the operating system being used. What is interesting about these results is that again the benchmarking has been done on Apple Hardware using Mac OS X and Windows Vista and therefore an opportunity for Mac to shine given Vista’s poor performance benchmarks.But the benchmarks indicate the opposite, Windows Vista outperforms Mac OS X in every case. Faster frame rate rate in Flash 9 and 10 by at least 100% and lower CPU usage by half again in the GUIMark tests and CPU usage is a factor of 7 better than Mac OS X for Hulu and YouTube tests. Also it is significant that the Flash 9 to 10 versions show a large improvement in the frame rate from 9.5fps to 28fps and at least 10% less cpu required with the notable exception of the GUIMark where cpu usage went up by 40%.
These results are confirmed by:
CNET - Windows 7 beats OSX Snow Leopard by 7% in Cinebench and 24% in gaming tests

In sum one can conclude that Adobe has been acting in good faith making notable improvements on Mac OS for at least 3 years as indicated in the change from Flash 9 to Flash 10 [and just shortly below more on 10.1 results]. Also one has to concede that even Windows Vista seems to easily outperform Mac OS X on these graphics tests. But the complaint about Flash consuming a lot of CPU power on Mac Graphics appears justified especially in the case of the GUIMarks. Read the rest of this entry »

The IE Boast

This advertisement that is appearing all over the Web is a dual edged sword. On one hand it is trying to encourage users to upgrade from IE7 and IE6 [the latter is particularly backward in features and more security-error prone]. But on the other hand the ad invites jaunty humor like “So far … and the 561 million viruses and spam that got through“. This puts even more emphasis on a)IE9 fully implementing HTML, DOM, CSS and JavaScript standards which all the other major browser vendors currently support and b)getting IE9 out sooner rather than later. Or you could just switch now to Apple Safari5 , Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera Opera 10.5. All can be done in 10 minutes or a lot less at any time.

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