Linked List: June 4, 2010

Friday, 4 June 2010

One More Link Regarding Apple’s ‘HTML5’ Demo Gallery ★

It just occurred to me what Apple should have called these demos: “Look at the Cool Shit You Can Make Without Flash”.

Anyway, I agree with most of what Scott Gilbertson writes here, but not this:

Naturally, everything works without issue in Chromium, because it uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. Apple is being disingenuous by making its browser seem more compelling than others.

Chrome does render most of Apple’s examples (as you can see visiting this URL using it), but it doesn’t render all of them. Google’s branch of WebKit does not support all of the 3D transform features that Apple’s does.

Brandon Walkin’s Xcode UI Suggestions ★

Some clever ideas regarding auto-completion and inline documentation.

Deagol: iPad Web Usage Passes iPod Touch ★

If you believe Net Market Share’s numbers, the iPad has surpassed both the iPod Touch and all Android devices combined in web traffic.

Gizmodo Denied Press Passes for WWDC Keynote ★

Brian Lam:

It’s no surprise: Apple has not responded to our requests to attend the WWDC keynote on Monday at 10am PST. But we’ll still cover the news. Want to help?

WWDC attendees, be warned: guard your conference badges Sunday night if you’re at a bar.

(If Gizmodo’s editors were smart, they’d have purchased WWDC conference badges if they wanted to attend the keynote. But of course, that’s a big “if”.)

Getting Out While the Going Is Good ★

Matthew Yglesias offers another explanation for Microsoft’s stock price stagnation under Ballmer: that Gates left when he was out of ideas, and Microsoft wouldn’t have fared better this decade if he’d stayed on the job. It’s also the case that the entire stock market was booming in the ’90s and wasn’t in the ’00s.

But whether Gates would have done a better job than Ballmer is a different question than whether Ballmer has done a good job. Apple’s growth this past decade can largely be accounted for with two words: iPod and iPhone. Microsoft wanted in on both those markets, and got smoked. That’s on Ballmer.

How to Take a Screenshot ★

“That’s it!”

1Password and Knox ★

My thanks to Agile Web Solutions for sponsoring the DF RSS feed this week to promote 1Password and Knox. 1Password is their terrific, clever tool for password management, with clients for Mac, Windows, iPhone, and iPad. Knox is a great file encryption utility for the Mac, with convenient features like Spotlight support.

Here’s the best part: use this link and you’ll save 50 percent off all Agile’s software.

Steven Berlin Johnson on Where Apple Went Wrong in the ’80s ★

Steven Berlin Johnson:

I’m sure somewhere in Jobs’ head he thinks that if he had been running Apple instead of John Sculley, the Mac could have out-innovated and out-marketed Microsoft through the late eighties and early nineties, and kept Windows from dominating the planet. In other words, it wasn’t that Apple erred in following the closed platform strategy. They erred in that they had the wrong guy running the company.

Miguel De Icaza’s First iPhone Web App ★

If you want a non-joke example, try Brainium Studios’ web app demo of Hand of Greed their new iPhone game.

‘I Wish Microsoft Had Their Evil Genius Back’ ★

David Heinemeier Hansson on Steve Ballmer:

Jobs is lucid and reasoned. Ballmer is… Hell, I don’t even know how to describe it. He’s all over the place. No clear definitions, just randomly running his mouth. Compared to Jobs, I think it’s charitable to call him pathetic.

His chart comparing Microsoft’s stock price under Bill Gates vs. Ballmer is devastating. How much longer can Ballmer last? Is the problem that Gates doesn’t want to return? That Gates doesn’t want to concede that it was a terrible error to hand the company to Ballmer? That he doesn’t want to fire his friend?

DF Criticism and Meta-Criticism Thread on Hacker News ★

Some insightful comments responding to Hank Williams’s example-free argument that I’ve “jumped the shark”.

Feature-Sniffing Rather Than Browser-Sniffing ★

I’ve linked to Modernizr before, but it’s worth a re-link in light of Apple’s Safari-only “HTML5” demos. Rather than sniffing for specific browsers, they’d have been better served sniffing for specific browser features on a per-demo basis. I don’t have a problem with the fact that some of their demos take advantage of Safari-only features — why not show off Safari’s leading edge capabilities? But it’s wrong that a site promoting “standards” blocks browsers that are capable of rendering certain of the demos.

I.e., instead of “Use Safari to view these demos”, the site could serve as a “Safari can render all of these demos, see which ones work in your browser” example.

‘HTML5 Showcase’, or ‘Safari Showcase’? ★

Haavard at Opera:

Apple claim to promote HTML5 and an open Web, but the page uses browser sniffing to block other browsers, vendor prefixes for the CSS3 stuff they are using (even if other browsers support border-radius it won’t work because it’s coded using -webkit-border-radius), and the patent-encumbered H.264 for video.

Can Opera do equivalent things? Is the problem that Apple has written Safari-specific demos, or is it that Apple is showing off things only Safari can do? There’s a big difference.

Update: If you go to http://developer.apple.com/safaridemos/ instead of http://www.apple.com/html5/, you can use Chrome to try the demos. Some work, but the 3D ones don’t. It still browser-sniffs to block other browsers. If you diddle with the current version of Firefox to masquerade its user agent string as Safari, two of the demos work: “Audio” and “360°”.

Apple: HTML5 ★

New section of Apple’s website devoted to cutting edge HTML5 techniques and examples:

Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web.