The Mozilla folks are wrapping up discussion on how Firefox 2 user interface will change. Some of the things I like, but I still don't see my biggest pet peeve about the Firefox User Interface (UI) addressed: I absolutely hate the way that Firefox 1.5 squeezes the Search Bar next to the Address Bar like some inconsequential widget. For me, it's one of most heavily-used things in the user interface. This entry will show you how to tweak the user interface (sometimes called "chrome"). You don't need any heavy programming skills for this. Basically you need to be comfortable renaming files, unzipping and zipping up directories and editing text files. Read the rest of this entry ...
This may be slightly stale news to folks who keep their ear to the wire, but the Laszlo folks announced last month that they are planning on supporting DHTML as a compilation target some time this year. The current release of their Laszlo Presentation Server 3.2 supports compilation to Flash SWF6, SWF7 and SWF8. The next version (code-named "Legals", likely 4.0) will support compilation to DHTML and SWF9. You can also read their wikified current plan. If nothing else, you should check out the DHTML demo application to see what Laszlo will be capable of. Read the rest of this entry ...
The W3C has released the first draft of a new specification today, XML for Binary Streams (XBS). The basic idea seems to revolve around taking a binary stream and encoding it as XML. Read the rest of this entry ...
Check it out. Glen, Erik and Emil have been working on implementing Canvas in Internet Explorer. Looks like that's done and now up on SourceForge: Download here. An open-source project from Google... Brilliant! I only hope it's not a cruel April Fool's Joke.
Now that all 4 major browsers (IE, Firefox 1.5, Opera 9 and Safari) can do the Canvas thing, this should lead to some really interesting times. I hope they join forces with Mark Finkle and use the same cross-browser drawing API to get SVG fully implemented in IE. Me? I'll just sit back and watch the magic happen.