A narrative on the future of web browsers and web browsing

Apple Ramps Up Its iPhone RIA Platform

Monday, March 31st, 2008

While industry observers focus on AIR and Silverlight, efforts by Adobe and Microsoft respectively to implement their vision of a more compelling web experience, Apple is slowly slipping in through the backdoor. The other day I hypothesized that Apple's aggressive tactics for pushing Safari on Windows users were all about ...

Steve Jobs Says Flash Sucks

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Well, actually he didn't. When CNet initially reported on the last Apple shareholder meeting, his comments about Flash on the iPhone, buried in a list of bullet points, seemed innocent enough: Turning back to the iPhone, don't expect support for Adobe's Flash technology anytime soon. The full-blown PC Flash version "performs ...

Flash on the iPhone?… Probably Not

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

There's a reason that they call them rumors. The other day, a lot of sources (including Just Browsing) were pointing to a Gear Live article claiming that Flash support for the iPhone web browser is just around the corner. Ryan Stewart, who works for Adobe, doesn't rule out the possibility ...

Flash Coming to the iPhone

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

Support for Adobe Flash is high on the list of iPhone browser improvements I've been yearning for. According to Gear Live, the wait is nearly over. As rumors go, this one is pretty plausible, as is the author's speculation that the launch will be timed to coincide with the release ...

Apple Edges Towards RIA Viability

Friday, February 8th, 2008

MacRumors is reporting that Apple has shipped a new Safari beta to developers with a number of HTML5 features: audio/video tags, SQL storage, downloadable fonts, CSS transforms/animations and a new DOM function (getElementsByClassName). This puts Apple in pole position among browser vendors with respect to HTML5 support, although Mozilla is ...

Browser Trends: Web-Enabled TVs

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Is the television next in line for a big technology-driven overhaul as the transformation of mobile phones into miniature computers continues apace? A panoply of set-top boxes are vying to serve as the brains of the humble boob tube, from PVRs (TiVo and company) through game consoles (XBox, Playstation, Wii) ...

Ten iPhone Browser Improvements Steve Jobs Could Have Announced… But Didn’t

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Since I'm now a total iPhone fan boy, I'm officially allowed to say that I was a little disappointed by the 1.1.3 firmware update announced on Tuesday at Macworld. I'm actually still running the 1.1.1 firmware, since I couldn't find a freely available hack to unlock 1.1.2 for use here ...

Mobile Devices and the Browser Wars

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

Michael Calore of Wired delved more deeply into the Opera video that I mentioned yesterday. In particular, he took the logical step of contacting Opera PR to ask about David Rosen's off-the-cuff assertion that they are planning an iPhone port. Opera communications honcho Michelle Valdivia Lien's response is a PR ...

Candid Interview with Opera Developer

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Uberpulse has posted a interview at CES with David Rosen, a developer at Opera Software. The interview is entitled "Opera Browser Coming To The iPhone", but the first 99% of the video have nothing to do with the iPhone, proving yet again that like sex, the iPhone sells. David isn't ...

Browser Trends: Offline Storage

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

I'll start my exploration of the future of web browser technology by discussing some key trends that will come to the fore in 2008. The first is the addition of local storage capabilities to web browsers. This is an area that kicked into high gear last year with Mozilla's work ...