October 2011
7 posts
4 tags
What’s new in CSS3 Values and Units?
In CSS3 the values and units we can use in CSS properties are defined in the appropriately named CSS Values and Units specification, with the exception those relating to colour and images, and the pre-defined keywords specific to individual properties.
This spec gives us one new CSS wide keyword to play with (the initial keyword), five new relative units for lengths, five new functional...
4 tags
What’s new in Android 4.0 for Web Developers?
Google recently announced the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, along with a new version of the WebKit-based browser. Lets have a look at what is in there that’s of interest for web developers.
User agent switching, or a knock to the mobile specific site?
When I was working with web site compatibility at Opera, one of the biggest complaints we got time and time again was when a popular...
4 tags
Web Notifications
One of the traditional advantages of native apps over the Web is that they can access the platform’s built in notification system. Mobile operating systems generally have their own baked in, while desktop OS like Mac OS X have commonly found 3rd party notification systems such as Growl.
In the near future, we should be able to take advantage of this kind of functionality in our web apps as...
4 tags
8 tags
New standards support in Opera 12 alpha
I couldn’t find anywhere that lists the new standards support in Opera 12 alpha all in one place, so I thought I’d write it up here for my own benefit. You might also find it useful.
Opera 11.51 uses Presto 2.9, milestone 168, while while the alpha version of Opera 12 has been upgraded to milestone 220. The way Opera works is they have regular milestone releases of their core Presto rendering...
4 tags
HTML5 scoped attribute
The HTML5 spec adds the scoped attribute to style elements. What does this do, and how can it be useful?
The scoped attribute is used to limit the scope of the CSS rules inside the style element to that element’s parent and all the children of the parent. All other elements outside of the scope do not get styled, even if the selectors match. It is a boolean attribute, so you can use scoped for...
5 tags
What are CSS Shaders?
Adobe announced a proposal for CSS Shaders at Adobe Max two days ago. This was backed by both Opera and Apple, and the spec will be developed by the FX Task Force at the W3C. For those of you who are not aware, the FX task force is an elite band of ninjas’s chosen from the ranks of the CSS and SVG Working Groups to work on specs common to both technologies. Their most notable work so far is...
4 tags
What’s slated for CSS4 Selectors?
The CSS Working Group recently published the first working draft of CSS4 Selectors. “Wait…CSS 4? I thought CSS3 was still incomplete” you might ask. The spec process changed after CSS2.1. Instead of one monolithic spec, CSS3 was broken down into smaller bite sized chunks. Each chunk or module graduate to the Recommendation stage independently when they’re ready. As each module doesn’t depend on...
September 2011
13 posts
8 tags
The makeup of the Open Web stack
The Open Web has never had as many capabilities as it has today. We’re seeing an explosion in new or updated specifications, and prototype and stable implementations to go with them. This blog post will look back as the platform we have had available (Called Open Web 0 here) and then looks forward at what we are beginning to get now and into the short and medium term future (which I’ve labelled...
8 tags
What’s cooking on the Open Web?
There is so much movement with existing, new, and experimental specs that it is often difficult to keep up. Lets have a look at some of them that are being implemented in browsers right now or in the very near future.
Replacing Mutation Events
DOM Mutation Events were deprecated in DOM 3 Events. This was due to a number of known issues that cause real world performance problem. The three main...
3 tags
Windows 8 on tablets. Genius?
There has been a lot of debate on sites such as Daring Fireball about Microsoft’s strategy of putting Windows 8 on tablets, rather than a version of Windows Phone 7 optimised for tablets. As Gruber puts it:
I’m hung up on the question of how any OS that lets you do everything Windows does could compete with the iPad, because the iPad’s appeal and success is largely forged by the advantages that...
5 tags
6 tags
The Era of mobile dominance is beginning
We’re in the middle of a mobile web revolution. However, its not iPhone, smart phones or the west that is leading this revolution. No, if you want to go to the epicentre of where the mobile web is really changing the status quo and leap frogging the incumberants then you have to go to Africa.
Thousands of miles from the innovation centres of Silicon Valley and the legions of iPhones and...
4 tags
4 tags
4 tags
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
1 tag
Motorola Classics
Motorola is right up there with the best of them when you consider the seminal phone models that influenced the industry. They have never been as big outside the USA as inside, but those classics mostly had global appeal. As I am shortly joining Motorola Mobility to hopefully kick start a new successful chapter in its storied history, I thought it was worthwhile writing my fist post here on some...