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OK, this article gets my vote as the most important read of the year.  We all know that the the Web is the future of both computing and communications/connectivity.  But wha tis the future of the Web?  Uber coder Mike Loukides says it's JavaScript, and what a compelling case he builds.  This is a must read.  Key concepts are diigo highlighted :) excerpt: JavaScript has "grown up." I'm sure there are many JavaScript developers who would take issue with that judgement, and argue that JavaScript has been a capable, mature, and under-appreciated language all along. They may be right, though you can write any program in any complete programming language, including awful things like BASIC. What makes a language useful is some combination of the language's expressiveness and the libraries and tools available. JavaScript clearly passed the expressiveness barrier a long time ago, even if the ceremony required for creating objects is distasteful. But recently, we've seen some extremely important game-changers: jQuery, JSON, Node.js, and HTML5. JavaScript may have been a perfectly adequate language in the past, but these changes (and a few others that I'll point out) have made JavaScript a language that is essential for every developer to know. If there's one language you need to learn in the next year, it's JavaScript. Insightful comment: HTML5 is a JavaScript API, introducing new elements but significantly redefining ALL elements as objects or classes.  Elements can be expressed with tags.  Or, you can use DOM JavaScripting to create elements. 

Good article covering lots of JavaScript Libraries and their specific uses. excerpt:  Over drinks, one person proclaimed, "No one programs in JavaScript, they just string together jQuery calls." This statement is certainly not true, but like a hand grenade, it gets close enough to make its point. jQuery sure seems to be everywhere, and with good reason: Its creators took all of the neat ideas from libraries like Prototype, Dojo, and Yahoo's YUI, then turned them into something that was just a tad easier to use. When jQuery nurtured fertile plug-in culture, the library became irreplaceable. One seemingly random estimate claimed that at least 70 percent of JavaScript is jQuery. While there is probably no scientific way to make such a blanket statement, the fact that someone would try is good enough.

MSOffice is now "Web ready".  The Office apps are capable of running HTML5-JavaScript apps based on a simple Web page model.  Think of this as the Office apps being fitted with a browser, and developers writing extensions to run in that browser using HTML5 and JavaScript.  Microsoft provides an Office.js library and, a developer "Web App/Page Creator"  Visual Basic toolset called "Napa" Office 365 Development Tools.  Lots of project templates. Key MSOffice apps are Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.  Develop for Office or SharePoint.  Apps can be hosted on any Web Server. excerpt: Microsoft Office 2013 Developer Environment with HTML5, XML and JavaScript.  Office.js library. "his documentation is preliminary and is subject to change. Published: July 16, 2012 Learn how to use apps for Office to extend your Office 2013 Preview applications. This new Office solution type, apps for Office, built on web technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, REST, OData, and OAuth. It provides new experiences within Office applications by surfacing web technologies and cloud services right within Office documents, email messages, meeting requests, and appointments. Applies to:  Excel Web App Preview | Exchange 2013 Preview | Outlook 2013 Preview | Outlook Web App Preview | Project Professional 2013 Preview | Word 2013 Preview | Excel 2013 Preview  In this article What is an app for Office? Anatomy of an app for Office Types of apps for Office What can an app for Office do? Understanding the runtime Development basics Create your first app for Office Publishing basics Scenarios Components of an app for Office solution Software requirements"

Very interesting the way JavaScript Libraries are continuing to challenge Native Code for Web Application dominance.    excerpt: "The code library, ORBX.js, can be thought of as a cloud-based alternative to Google's Native Client technology. It permits Linux, OS X and Windows applications to run on remote servers and to be presented in a Web browser." "With ORBX.js, native code and legacy applications can be hosted in the cloud (e.g. Amazon EC2), and stream interactive graphics, 3D rendering or low latency video to a standard HTML5 page without using plugins or native code, or even the video tag (which, like Google NaCL,is vendor specific - ORBX.js works on all five major browsers)," explained Otoy founder and CEO Jules Urbach in an email. "The video codec created for ORBX.js can decode 1080p60 at a quality on par with H.264, using only JavaScript." "With ORBX.js and a cloud service provider, you could conceivably run Value's PC Steam client on an Apple iMac or Google Chromebook. You could run Autodesk 3DS Max 2014 on an Android Nexus 7 tablet. You could run a big budget, graphically demanding game title like Left 4 Dead 2 in a Web browser, without any plugins, Flash, Java, NaCL or other supporting technology."

Modernizr is a small and simple JavaScript library that helps you take advantage of emerging web technologies (CSS3, HTML 5) while still maintaining a fine level of control over older browsers that may not yet support these new technologies. Modernizr uses feature detection to test the current browser against upcoming features like rgba(), border-radius, CSS Transitions and many more. These are currently being implemented across browsers and with Modernizr you can start using them right now, with an easy way to control the fallbacks for browsers that don't yet support them. Additionally, Modernizr creates a self-titled global JavaScript object which contains properties for each feature; if a browser supports it, the property will evaluate true and if not, it will be false. Lastly, Modernizr also adds support for styling and printing HTML5 elements. This allows you to use more semantic, forward-looking elements such as , and without having to worry about them not working in Internet Explorer. Another great catch by Marbux!  He's on fire today.

[Blush.] Should be mentioned that Modernizr comes with an MIT-BSD dual license. So compatible with both GPL and proprietary apps.

Google has pretty much given up on developing a JavaScript API for GMail. There was once a Greasemonkey script Google developed for GMail but that broke and Google shows no sign of fixing it. James Yu is now trying to fix that scenario with GMailr, a JavaScript API for GMail. It is made from the code he wrote for 0Boxer, an extension for GMail that turns organizing your inbox into a game. Yu is also a lead developer at Scribd. Yu said developing the API took him on a path fraught with frustrations and dead ends. He writes there is supported official JavaScript API for Gmail. The Greasemonkey script is broken and no one has yet released a frontend API for Gmail. He said he needed access to the various user actions in the UI as the backend APIs were not going to work as he wished. He decided to write his own library from scratch.

Good interview with Charles Jolley - SproutCore - WebKit (met Charles at Web 2.0).  He has left Apple and started a SproutCore Web App development company called "Strobe".  Looking very good Charles! The Blended Brew Apps have become a preferred way of accessing information on mobile devices. But developers want to provide a unified experience, and that is why Jolley believes that we will soon have apps that use HTML5 inside a native app wrapper. "People are looking for an either/or solution, but it is not going to end up like that," he said. Think of Strobe's offerings as a way to create an experience that is a blend of HTML5 and native mobile apps. How this works is that an application is developed in HTML5 instead of proprietary formats. It is wrapped in a native app wrapper for, say, the iPhone, but when accessed through a web browser on a PC or any other device, like tablet, it offers the same user experience. This is a good way to solve a problem that is only going to get compounded many fold as multiple endpoints for content start to emerge. The co-existence of web and native apps also means content publishers need to think differently about content and how it is offered to consumers. The multiplicity of endpoints (iPhone, iPad, TV and PC) is going to force content producers to think differently about how they build the user experiences for different sets of screens. Jolley argues that the best way to do so is to stop taking a document-centric view that is part of the PC-era. In the touch-based mobile device era, folks need to think of ways to have a single technology stack married to the ability to create unique experiences for different devices. And if you do that, there is no doubt that HTML5 and native apps can live in harmony.

Modernizr is a new library that detects various HTML5 and CSS3 features and lets you know so you can use them: Enables the writing of conditional CSS and conditional JavaScript! The JS tools just keep coming.

Nice OpenMobster graphic!  Good explanation of the Android notification advantage over iOS and Windows 7 too.  Note the exception that iOS-5 finally introduces support for JSON. excerpt: Why Android Rocks the Cloud Most open source mobile-cloud projects are still in the early stages. These include the fledgling cloud-to-mobile push notifications app, SimplePush , and the pre-alpha Mirage  "cloud operating system" which enables the creation of secure network applications across any Xen-ready cloud platform. The 2cloud Project , meanwhile, has the more ambitious goal of enabling complete mobile cloud platforms. All of the above apps support Android, and many support iOS. Among mobile OSes, Android is best equipped to support cloud applications, said Shah. Android supports sockets to help connect to remote services, and supplies a capable SQlite-based local database. It also offers a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) interchange stack to help parse incoming cloud data -- something missing in iOS. Unlike iOS and Windows Phone 7, Android provides background processing, which is useful for building a robust push infrastructure, said Shah. Without it, he added, users need to configure the app to work with a third-party push service. Most importantly, Android is the only major mobile OS to support inter-application communications. "Mobile apps are focused, and tend to do one thing only," said Shah. "When they cannot communicate with each other, you lose innovation." Comment from Sohil Shah, CEO OpenMobster: "I spoke too soon. iOS 5 now supports JSON out of the box. I am still working with a third party library which was needed in iOS 4 and earlier, and to stay backward compatible with those versions.  Anyways, it should have been supported a lot earlier considering the fact that AFAIK, Android has had it since the very beginning. "

The Future of the Open Web You're right that the browser wars do not matter - except for this point of demarcation; browsers that support HTML+ and browser that support 1998 HTML. extensive comment by ~ge~ Not all Web services and applications support HTML+, the rapidly advancing set of technologies that includes HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, and JavaScript (including the libraries and JSON). Microsoft has chosen to draw the Open Web line at what amounts to 1998-2001 level of HTML/CSS. Above that line, they provision a rich-client / rich-server Web model bound to the .NET-WPF platform where C#, Silverlight, and XAML are very prominent. Noticeably, Open Web standards are for the most part replaced at this richer MSWeb level by proprietary technologies. Through limited support for HTML/CSS, IE8 itself acts to dumb down the Open Web. The effect of this is that business systems and day-to-day workflow processes bound to the ubiquitous and very "rich" MSOffice Productivity Environment have little choice when it comes to transitioning to the Web but to stay on the Microsoft 2010 treadmill. Sure, at some point legacy business processes and systems will be rewritten to the Web. The question is, will it be the Open Web or the MS-Web? The Open Web standards are the dividing line between owning your information and content, or, having that content bound to a Web platform comprised of proprietary Microsoft services, systems and applications. Web designers and developers are still caught up in the browser wars. They worry incessantly as to how to dumb down Web content and services to meet the limited functionality of IE. This sucks. So everyone continues to watch "the browser wars" stats. What they are really watching for though is that magic moment where "combined" HTML+ browser uptake in marketshare signals that they can start to implement highly graphical and collaboratively interactive HTML+ specific content. Meanwhile, the greater Web is a

This is the Dec 2010 interview that totally changed my view of the future of Documents.  Separating content and layout, and then reconstituting is the essence of preparing a publication.  Are documents Web pages?  Are Web sights magazines?   Visually-immersive apps like TreeSaver and Flipboard change everything, as this video demonstrates.  TreeSaver is OpenWeb HTML+.  FlipBoard is iOS platform specific.  Filipe argues why Open Web will win.  Great interview.  Life changing stuff. excerpt: The problem with Flipboard is that it's an app, not the Web, and I keep hoping someone will show me a really well-designed Web app that shows me that the Web can still win. Yesterday Treesaver's Filipe Fortes took me up on my "can the Web be saved" challenge and visited my house to show me what he's been working on for publishers. An open-source JavaScript/HTML5/CSS library of design templates that will help developers at content companies compete with the design aesthetic that Flipboard showed us.