IE9 vs. Firefox 4
8:00 am
Paul Rouget has a nice clean collection of infographics comparing the new IE9 against the upcoming FireFox4, showing that as “modern” as IE9 is, FireFox had those features long ago.
Visualizing Historic Browser Statistics with Axiis
10:00 am
Michael VanDaniker has created an interesting visualization of web traffic to W3Schools.com using a soon-to-be-released visualization product called Axiis.
Each of the concentric rings are essentially pie charts showing the percentage of visitors using each browser for a particular time slice, starting with January 2002 in the center and working out to August 2009. The numbers on W3schools.com don’t quite add up to 100% because they don’t report on browsers that make up less than 0.5% of their visitors. This results in a gap at the end of each ring.
In the chart, Blue is IE, Orange is FireFox, Green is first Netscape then Chrome, Grey is Safari, and red is Opera. It’s fully interactive, hovering over any bar gives the actual percentage number. However, it still suffers from the same problem of almost all circular charts, it’s difficult to compare the lines. With the high density of the chart, you can get a “feel” for trends (like FireFox grows fast, as does Chrome), but actual comparisons are difficult.
Visualizing Historic Browser Statistics with Axiis. via CoolInfographics
Build Shaders in your Browser with Shader Toy
10:30 am
If you’re running a WebGL compliant web browser, you can head on over to Shader Toy and interactively build Pixel Shaders in your browser and see the results. This is all possible thanks to the new WebGL support and enables an incredible level of experimentation and interactivity, directly in the browser.
Unfortunately I’m not near a WebGL browser at the moment. Someone take a Pic and send it to us, and I’ll be happy to include it!
Video, Freedom, h264 And Mozilla
9:00 am
Both YouTube and Vimeo announced last week that they would begin to support (on a limited basis) the new HTML5 ‘Video’ tag that allows video playback without relying on Flash. The technology is impressive, but users quickly noticed that it didn’t work with FireFox. Odd, since FireFox is 3.5 compliant, but it seemed to only work with Safari and Chrome? Mozilla has finally come out with a response, and the big problem is that while YouTube and Vimeo are supporting a public standard (the HTML5 Video tag), they’re using it with a non-public proprietary codec, the classic H264. Mozilla believes that using this proprietary codec is a bad idea for both providers and consumers, and is instead pushing something more open like the OggTheora codecs.
Apart from the issues with H.264 support in clients, there are also huge issues around H.264 for Web authors and content providers. Currently providing H.264 content on the Internet is zero-cost, but after 2010 that will almost certainly change. (…) We won/t know much about the terms until the end of this month. The key issue is not exactly how much it will cost, but that if you want to publish H.264 you will probably have to hire lawyers and negotiate a license with the MPEG-LA. If you just want to put a few videos on your Web site, or add a help video to your Web application, or put a video cut-scene in your Web game, that is probably not something you want to do.
I particularly love this comment from Robert O’Callahan:
But the MPEG-LA won’t bother suing me or my project, we’re not worth bothering with. Perhaps true, but I hope “remain irrelevant” is not the favoured strategy for most free software projects.
via Well, I’m Back: Video, Freedom And Mozilla. and Shaver: HTML5 Video and Codecs
Microsoft’s IE9 to use GPU Acceleration
10:30 am
Microsoft is joining the GPGPU bandwagon with the next version of their flagship browser Internet Explorer by moving all of the rendering routines of the future IE9 from the existing GDI systems to Direct2D and DirectWrite, allowing it to take full advantage of the existing GPU.
Although Hachamovitch declined to peg a goal for IE9's hardware-based acceleration, he said early results have been encouraging. “On top of GDI, we were seeing IE render at 5-10 frames per second. Users don't know whether that's [caused by] the network, or a site script, but it just seems kind of slow to them. Using [Direct2D], we're seeing 40, 50 or 60 frames per second. That's game-like responsiveness.”
Of course they won’t be alone, as Opera & Mozilla have announced similar projects to integrate GPGPU acceleration into the browsers, however they will do it in a cross-platform manner.
Apple’s CSS 3D Visual Effect “Snow Stack”
12:58 pm
A new video has surfaced on Youtube showing new features, called “Snow Stack”, that Apple has built into their newest Webkit browser engine. It’s 3D, Hardware Accelerated CSS effects and JavaScript Features.
This video shows “Snow Stack”, a 3D CSS Visual Effects demo built with HTML, CSS Effects and JavaScript in the latest WebKit nightly on Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. You can try this out yourself by reading the details on www.satine.org.
Apple is currently trying to get these features as part of the CSS & HTML standard. Between this & the new HTML5 “video” tag, could technologies like Silverlight & Flash find themselves pushed to the side?
See the video after the break.
Google Welds Native Client to O3D (UPDATED)
2:07 pm
Update: Look at the bottom for a response from Google.
If you’ve been anxiously awaiting O3D to come to the masses, making hardware-accelerated 3D Rendering in the browser a reality, then you might be waiting a while longer. According to a new article from CNet, Google is now pushing “Native Client”, a technology for running x86 software in the browser, into Chromium and intends to pair it with O3D.
Native Client, called NaCl for short, is a mechanism to run software downloaded over the Web directly on x86 processors such as Intel’s Core line. The key motivation is to attain the speed of regular “native” software installed on a computer rather than the much slower JavaScript environment that sophisticated Web sites use today. It’s one part of Google’s broad effort to evolve the Web from a collection of relatively static sites into foundation for more powerful applications.
What does this mean? Well, it could mean that a standard for O3D has to wait on a standard for Native Client execution to materialize first. If O3D only works via Native Client execution, it might be a while..
A rebuttal: Henry Bridge, a Native Client developer, responded with the following information.
Using O3D does not and will not require using Native Client, and conversely, using Native Client does not and will not require using O3D. We think the two technologies will be very powerful together, however, we intend to make O3D usable from both Javascript scripts and Native Client binaries.
Google Native Client grows out of research phase | Webware – CNET.
Google shows 3D Web standard with new plugin, API
1:00 pm
Google has thrown it’s massive multi-billion dollar hat into the ring for a Web 3D Standard with a new browser plugin that allows 3D Rendering on the browser, completely via JavaScript. While Mozilla & Kronos announced an attempt to create a standard for this back at GDC09, Google has gone off on it’s own and released a separate plugin that is incompatible with the Kronos implementation. The plugin is available and open-source, so this seems to be an extend-and-embrace procedure on the part of Google, hoping that getting something out early will make their offering the de-facto standard.
The plugin is currently available for Windows and Mac, and all major browsers. It can be downlaoded from the Google O3D page
See their example video after the break.
Google, Mozilla Back 3-D Acceleration Web Standard
9:42 pm
The Kronos Group, with assistance from Google & Mozilla, are looking to develop a standard for 3D visualization & rendering within the browser, probably based on their existing OpenES standard (OpenGL for embedded systems).
Prompted by a proposal from Mozilla the Khronos Group said it has created a working group called “Accelerated 3D on the Web.” Mozilla has offered to chair the group which is open to any interested company that joins Khronos.
…
Chris Blizzard, Mozilla’s director of evangelism, said that he expects the new graphics capabilities would be integrated into the Firefox browser that follows the release of Firefox 3.5, which is what the current Firefox 3.1 beta 3 should become. Firefox 3.5 is expected to be officially released in the second quarter of this year.
They’ve already helped build the standards for OpenGL, OpenCL, OpenVG, Collada, and others, so if there’s a group that could pull this off, they’re it.
via Google, Mozilla Back 3-D Acceleration Web Standard — 3-D Graphics — InformationWeek.
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