Kelson - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google Phasing Out Gears for HTML5 (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Kelson on Friday February 19, 2010 @09:40PM

Kelson writes: Have you noticed that there haven't been many updates to Gears in a while? That's because Google has decided to focus instead on similar capabilities in the emerging HTML5 standard: local storage, database, workers and location cover similar functionality, but natively in the web browser. Of course, since Gears and HTML APIs aren't exactly the same, it's not a simple drop-in replacement, so they'll continue supporting the current version of Gears in Firefox and Internet Explorer. I guess this means the long-anticipated Gears support for 64-bit Firefox on Linux and Opera are moot.

Submission + - Releasing the Chromium OS open source project (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Kelson on Thursday November 19, 2009 @03:15PM

Kelson writes: Google has released the source to what will eventually become Chrome OS, and will begin developing it as an open source project like Chromium. The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps (2) sandboxing everything and (3) removing anything unnecessary, to focus on speed.

Submission + - Google Mows (with) Goats (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Friday May 01, 2009 @01:38PM

Kelson writes: "Google's Mountain View headquarters has fields that need to be kept clear of fire hazards. This year instead of mowing them, they took a low-carbon approach: they hired a herd of goats to eat the grass for a week. "It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.""

Submission + - Comic Sans, Font of Ill Will (wsj.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Friday April 17, 2009 @02:02PM

Kelson writes: "the Wall Street Journal profiles Vincent Connare, designer of the web's most-hated font, Comic Sans. Not surprisingly, the font's origins go back to Microsoft Bob, where he saw a talking dog speaking in Times New Roman. Connare pulled out Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns for reference, and created the comic book-style font over the next week."

Submission + - Apple patent claim threatens to block or delay W3C (opera.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @12:38PM

Kelson writes: "The W3C Widget specification is running into a problem: Apple claims a patent on automatic updates and is unwilling to license it royalty-free in the event that it impacts the spec. The W3C is investigating to determine whether the spec includes anything covered by the patent, and decide what to do."

Submission + - Site Compatibility and IE8 (msdn.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:21PM

Kelson writes: "As the release of Internet Explorer 8 approaches, Microsoft's IE Team has published a list of differences between IE7 and IE8, and how to fix code so that it will work on both. Most of the page focuses on IE8 Standards mode, but it also turns out that IE7 compatibility mode isn't quite the same as IE7 itself."

Submission + - Bored? Try Doodling To Keep The Brain On Task (npr.org)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Thursday March 12, 2009 @12:43PM

Kelson writes: "The next time you see someone doodling during a meeting, don't criticize them for drifting off. It turns out that doodling is the mind's way of keeping itself just busy enough to avoid checking out entirely and slipping off into a daydream, and doodlers actually remember more of that boring talk. (Judging by my college notes, this probably helped me remember a lot of otherwise-boring lectures.)"

Submission + - Opera 9.60 Released (opera.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @12:07PM

Kelson writes: "Opera Software has released Opera 9.60, the latest version of their web browser & internet suite. It's an evolutionary release, focused on performance optimization, improving the email client and adding more items to the Opera Link synchronization service. The Opera Developer Network, ODIN, has posted an "under the hood" article on the release."

Submission + - Firefox Goes for World Download Record (spreadfirefox.com) 1

Submitted by

Kelson

on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @07:19PM

Kelson writes: "For the upcoming release of Firefox 3, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."

Submission + - AOL to shut down Netscape support

Submitted by

Kelson

on Friday December 28, 2007 @03:47PM

Kelson writes: "After years of trying to figure out what to do with it, AOL is officially discontinuing the Netscape browser. In the four and a half years after they dismantled the development team and spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a lost cause, only to see Firefox take off, AOL has tried twice to reinvent Netscape. There was the chimera-like Netscape 8, which used both Mozilla's and IE's rendering engines, and just months ago they released Netscape 9, trying to ride the social networking wave. AOL will release security fixes through February 1, 2008, after which the browser will officially be dead. For the "nostalgic," they suggest using Firefox and installing a Netscape theme."

Submission + - Mozilla to Develop Mobile Firefox (mozillazine.org)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @01:50PM

Kelson writes: "Mozilla has announced a new initiative to bring Mozilla to the mobile web, including a fully functional mobile version of Firefox (yes, with extensions). The focus will be part of Mozilla 2, the big revision coming after Gecko 1.9 and Firefox 3. Minimo, the previous attempt to port Mozilla to mobile platforms, is apparently dead, but "has already provided us with valuable information about how Gecko operates in mobile environments, has helped us reduce footprint, and has given us a platform for initial experimentation in user experience.""

Submission + - Internet Explorer Drops WGA Requirement (msdn.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Thursday October 04, 2007 @08:46PM

Kelson writes: "The Internet Explorer team has updated the installer for IE7. Mostly they've adjusted a few defaults and updated their tutorials, but one change stands out: The installer no longer requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Almost a year after its release, IE7 has yet to overtake its predecessor. Was WGA holding back a tide of potential upgrades, or did it just send people over to alternative browsers?"

Submission + - Bossie Awards Honor Open Source Software (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

The Alliance

on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:22PM

The Alliance writes: "InfoWorld has announced the 2007 Bossie Awards for the Best of Open-Source Software. Awards were given to 36 winners across 6 categories. Honorees include (among others) SpamAssassin, ClamAV and Nessus in security, Wireshark and Azureus Vuze in networking, and ZFS for storage. Interestingly, they split the operating system winners across two distributions, with CentOS winning for server OS and Ubuntu for desktop."

Submission + - Typing Patterns for Authentication

Submitted by

Kelson

on Thursday April 19, 2007 @12:17PM

Kelson writes: "NPR's Marketplace is reporting on a new authentication scheme. BioPassword tracks the way you type your password: how long each key is depressed, the time between keystrokes, overall speed. When someone tries to log into your account, it compares the pattern to what it has on file. It only allows you in if both the password and patterns match. The technique has been around a while: World War II morse code operators used it to determine whether a message was sent by an ally or an impostor."

Submission + - Browser Wars Declared Over

Submitted by

Kelson

on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @03:07PM

Kelson writes: "Opera Watch reports that Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google declared the Browser Wars to be over at a panel at Web 2.0 Expo yesterday. "Instead of trying to trump one another by adding features in point releases, the companies that developed these browsers are instead intent on advancing their use as platforms for a new generation of rich Internet applications and for tackling the hurdles that will come along with that shift in strategy." ComputerWorld and eWeek have more details. Apple, the remaining major browser manufacturer, was not represented at the panel."

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