Web Standards Project was extremely important in helping competing browsers to successfully evolve without fragmenting into quite disparate user experiences.

The statement and its implications might well surprise many people, so I think it’s quite a major event in the life of the web.

Reason for closing WaSP.

In essence, the general gist is that the main ideals have resulted in a stable enough environment for the organisation to wind down. That being said, there is also recognizing that there is always more to be done however and that members of the WebStandards.org will continue to work with various existing groups working towards similar goals. These include: W3C of course, A List Apart (founded by Jeffrey Zeldman, founder of WaSP), WebPlatform.org and other. Please see the posting at WebStandards.org for a full list and more information.

I, for one am extremely grateful for all of the good work these people have done since the late 90′s when I first “clicked” with the CSS way of designing websites. Now, all these years later, it feels like a brave call to make, to shut down WaSP. I really wish the best for everyone there who have made the web a better place for us all and hope that readers get on over to the linked article and get into the linked websites – these are great for any web developer, as well as interesting for anyone who surfs the web.

Review: It may be viewed as a handy addition for many Firefox users who will enjoy the convenience, whereas some may see it as unnecessary. What do you think? I’ve notice quite a lot of discussion about this feature online. I’m wondering if it’s something that appeals more to mainstream tastes. Given that Firefox has been losing some ground it could be a sign that it intends to fight that trend. I think that’s a good thing in balance.

In a Linux test, it took some trouble-shooting to get it to work at all and even then Firefox still doesn’t auto-update the new tab page thumbnails in real time. In short, I still have to close and restart the browser to see new thumbnails. In that box, I’ve decided to pin sites there and forget about it showing most visited sites. This ‘last resort’ set up comes after hours of searching for solutions whilst tweaking settings and starting over. I wonder how many others have had to put time aside to get it to work. There don’t seem to be too many complaints like mine in the wild, but they are out there. I do use OpenJDK rather than Java7.. I couldn’t confirm if that’s the problem at this time.

Personally, I like the feature but wish it didn’t come at the expense of lessening my control over deleting the cache without that interfering with the thumbnails.

Is it necessary? Not at all. Is it something new? Yes and no. Other browsers have had similar features for some time, Opera perhaps being the earliest to offer a polished speed dial. The main differentiator for Firefox is that it displays thumbnails based upon the frequency of your visits.

The new tab page is definitely the most controversial inclusion in the Firefox 13 update. There are however other features well worth mentioning.

SPDY is now on by default. It allows certain websites to download more items at once to the browser resulting in improved page loads. I see only reference to Twitter and Google as the main implementers of SPDF at this time which accounts for a lot of visitor traffic – so that’s a decent improvement.

Also, a list of improvements which stabilise the browser, including better handling of sessions with multiple tabs. Theoretically, the browser should reopen with saved session tabs but only reloading them one at a time (as viewed). In the past, it was a problem for me, when the browser crashed with multiple tabs open, sometimes it was impossible to stop the culprit tab from reloading on restart. Crashing had become a definite concern to me in recent months, so I can only hope to see that improve too at this stage.

Another new addition is the new home page layout with large button links at the bottom of the page. I have chosen to use a blank page but I may give this a try to see if it becomes routine on start-up for me. It does seem handy to have links to settings and add-ons right there. In the past however, it could be argued that those were once in easy reach on the menu which is now obfuscated. I like that they include a “reload last session” button – but it makes me remember all the crashing that became all too common recently.

Other improvements are concerned developer tools, CSS and CSS3 rendering etc.

The last thing to mention, which is not quite as flamy as the new tab page, is that smooth scrolling is now on by default. I for one, have tended to turn that off on every single set-up because it really is just too jerky to be helpful. It really is less enjoyable (to me) to read down a page with smooth scrolling on. Maybe it’s better on tablets and phones? I have not yet tried the new Firefox on a tablet.

If I have overlooked something or if you’d like to share your experience, let me know in comments what you think.

You may notice the site is populated with sample posts and comments. These will be replaced when posting of new content begins this week.

More to come soon.

BTW. If you have any pointers, scoops or inside lines you’d like to pass on, please contact via the contact form – I’d love to hear from you.

Cheers,
Ben Kross
theBrowser

The uniquely efficient FLAT lithium-polymer batteries allows much longer run times without increasing the size or weight of Apple s laptop.

Advanced chemistry and Adaptive Charging in Apple s MacBook Pro notebooks is said to allows the battery to maintain charging capabilities longer. The battery in the MacBook Pro is designed and built with additional Apple technology to last five years or 1000 recharges, multiple times typical PC battery life span

Beside free transportation, Google is doing the best to keep the employees: free cafeteria, free GYM, free rock climbing facilities, free swimming pool, free car wash, and free spa I need to forward this to my Microsoft friends

There are number of solutions for bloggers for both WordPress & Blogger platforms and I have personally tried a few of them, but I have not been too satisfied Either they are too complex to setup or they are not exactly mobile-friendly.Here at trak.in, we had been using custom mobile blogger solution for past couple of months from Mobstac and were quite satisfied with what they had to offer. However, now Mobstac has gone ahead and launched a platform which allows bloggers to create mobile version of their blog. I got trak.in s mobile version up and running on the new platform in under 5 minutes.

Our first task was to prove we could wrap Nystrom s existing educationally focused maps and globes onto Google Earth while retaining the same high quality resolution delivered in their print products.

Achieving acceptable image resolution resulted in file sizes which were much too large. In addition, we needed to deliver an increased level of map content and granularity of images as the user zoomed into the earth. To address these two issues, we created a custom process that takes an Adobe Illustrator file and outputs Superoverlays in accordance with KML 2.1 standards. Using open source Python frameworks, we created a customized solution that outputs Superoverlays with various levels of content.

Our next challenge was to provide support for authoring and maintaining content, in the browser using the Google Earth plugin. All content is authored and maintained in a content management system CMS in much the same way as any dynamic website. One unique difference is that some of the content elements are geo-referenced coordinates that specify the location of content on earth. In the case of placemark balloons, the geo-referenced coordinates identify hotspots on the Nystrom maps which become clickable when the user turns on a setting. The placemark balloons provide supplementary audio, image, video and descriptive content such as the example shown above for the Appalachian Mountains.

Segue: I am really excited to have Brad Neuberg of Dojo, Rojo, and other non-ojo projects fame, working with me at Google. It is a real pleasure to see the group growing, with great new hires such as Joe Gregorio, and others that haven t made it official yet

I was having a chat about Gears with Brad, and he was talking about how he saw it as a way to update the Web in place. He got it.

Let

Anyhoo, it looks pretty useful. Packed with demos of how developers are creating Filemaker solutions for the iPhone/iPad combo, tips, videos, links, and of course, updates.