Firefox 3.5 now available

FYI,  Firefox 3.5 now available. It seems like a pretty cool release. There’s a good overview of the new features here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/video/firefox-3.5.html

HTML 5, Flash, and Silverlight

I was just reading the blog entry below by Evgenios Skitsanos. The article’s title is probably overstating the case, but it’s still interesting to consider the possibilities that HTML 5 may one day bring to the browser world:

HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight?

 “HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX.”

Outlook's broken-Let's fix it

Anyone use Twitter? Here’s an issue that’s close to our Multimedia hearts. According to the site below, Microsoft has confirmed they will be using Word as the rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. The site below suggests using Twitter to send your disdain to Microsoft. (Heh, it’s also a nice way to get a lot of hits on the fixoutlook.org site and in Twitter.)

http://fixoutlook.org/

“Join 19,330 others asking Microsoft to improve standards support and make sure you include fixoutlook.org in your tweet. We’ll pull together every tweet that includes the link here to give Microsoft a unified message from the community.”

 

Flash 10 Coming Soon to Most Smartphones...But Not the iPhone

I just ran across this sad (to me) post on Mashable.

Flash 10 Coming Soon to Most Smartphones…But Not the iPhone

It appears most of the other smartphone players will have Flash 10 on their phone in October or November….

Hunch

A fun/interesting “decision engine.”

http://www.hunch.com/

“In 10 questions or less, Hunch will offer you a great solution to your problem, concern or dilemma, on hundreds of topics. Hunch's answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room. Hunch is designed so that every time it's used, it learns something new. That means Hunch's hunches are always getting better.”

Google Search and Flash Indexing With External Resources

Here’s an interesting development: Google search now not only attempts to index text in Flash files, but also any external content a SWF file may load. Something for us to consider when we name our xml nodes or text file headings. J

“We just added external resource loading to our Flash indexing capabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it's text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too, and associate it with the parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.”

PickySite

I was just looking at “PickySite.”  I haven’t read enough to know how useful it is yet, but the concept is certainly specific to our profession:

http://www.pickysite.com/

PickySite is a social networking site for webmasters and internet marketers. This is also a community of people sharing the same professional interests and discussing their life and work on its pages.

PickySite is based on the concept of online collaboration. The content of PickySite is defined solely by its members: web designers, web developers, SEO experts, internet marketers and other interesting people. Along with PickySite’s editors, they fill the site with life and purpose: write group and individual blogs and communicate with other members having the same values and goals.

What is a browser?

Wow, I found this very surprising. According to this survey, only 8% of people asked knew what a browser was. I wonder if there were any other extenuating circumstances (events happening that day, incentive to speak on the video, confusion because they were being interviewed by a Google employee, etc.).

 “What is a browser? was the question we asked over 50 passersby of different ages and backgrounds in the Times Square in New York. Watch the many responses people came up with.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

ActionScript 3: Detecting Click Events on Individual Cells in a Datagrid

A user named “betamakz” on the Kirupa forum has posted a very useful example of how to detect for click events on individual cells in a data grid. I’m going to repost here, just to make it easier for myself to find again.

 

import fl.data.DataProvider;

import fl.controls.DataGrid;

import fl.events.ListEvent;

 

// DUMMY DATA

var dp:DataProvider = new DataProvider();

for(var i:uint=0; i<10; i++) {

    dp.addItem( {id:i, title:"Title"+i, price:"$"+i } );           

}

 

// CREATE DATAGRID

var dg:DataGrid = new DataGrid();

dg.dataProvider = dp;

dg.setSize(300,200);

addChild(dg);

 

// EVENT LISTENER

dg.addEventListener(ListEvent.ITEM_CLICK, gridItemSelected);

 

// EVENT HANDLER

function gridItemSelected(e:ListEvent):void {

      trace( "Row Index: " + e.rowIndex);

      trace( "Column Index: " + e.columnIndex);

      var colName:String  =  e.target.columns[e.columnIndex].dataField;

      trace( "Column Field Name: " +colName);

      trace( "Cell data: " +e.item[colName]);

}

TweetDeck

Useful utility and a great example of an AIR application!

http://tweetdeck.com/beta/

 

Optoma Pica Mini Projector Demo

I haven’t read reviews about this, but it seems like it might be a fairly decent projector that is only 1.97" x 0.59" x 4.06" (W x H x D)! “Introducing the amazingly versatile Optoma Pico, the smallest projector you’ve ever seen!  Its compact size and durability make it a must have for travel and on-the-spot presentations.”

http://www.optomausa.com/pico.asp

I read about this on a blog that also points to this amateur demonstration:

http://vimeo.com/4967846?pg=embed&sec=

Google Wave

Have you already read about “Google Wave?” It seems interesting – sort of like OneNote/EverNote meets instant messaging.

“… In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication.”