Future Smackdown

I am not pretty sure behind the motive of the launch however. It might have got something to do with the browser wars in particular. You see, when the giants are busy fighting a dwarf can easily run away with the bounty. If the saying is anywhere close to truth then Google Chrome just might be the next big thing we have to wait and watch. What makes me say this you might wonder. Well, Internet Explorer is busy getting decked up for its version 8 release which Microsoft must be really pushing in with its best efforts. On the other hand Firefox has had a majestic release of its version 3.0. So where does Google Chrome fit in here? Remember, they say its in beta! Gmail was too!

Google Chrome has already been stated to possess best features of Firefox and other browsers. Bloggers have been ranting about this, the most. That is true since Google Chrome may not support plugins and themes feature as of now, on which Firefox has found its enormous success. But the first question to put up front is, is Google Chrome really just another browser or a desktop application which connects to the internet. Well both say the same thing but the mention of a different memory processing model for Chrome is something which you have to consider. Google won’t be silly to reinvent the wheel. It just might be a futuristic vision of Google which we are currently witnessing on a miniature scale. Google Suggest, Maps or GMail must ring the bells as I mention this.

People may crib and rant about Google Chrome but it hasn’t hampered the success of launch down even by a pint. In fact Google has made a smart move to get as many feedbacks as possible since it has made Chrome right from scratch. Now its motive would definitely be to do a write up once again and make a surprise launch with power packed features in the next version. I can see people waiting with baited breath keeping a hawks eye on every single move Google does.

In For a Tough Competition?

Google Chrome has been launched amidst Adobe Flex going mainstream with its enterprise presence and while Silverlight is being pushed into your face. You must have some or the other time come across Flex and Silverlight applications which left your mouth wide open to see the magic they do. Can a browser reduce these giant’s market share? Why do I ask?

If you carefully notice Chrome has heavily emphasized that it is going to support the standards of web technologies like CSS, Javascript, HTML5. This means that Google Chrome would be a perfect foundation for web developers who always have been frustrated with browser dependencies when working with these web technologies. By using Chrome you might really enjoy developing a web application. This translates to more web developers being happy, more usage of standard features of Javascript, CSS and HTML, more usage of open technologies viz. Ajax, XML, JSON, leading to more usage of free tools & less use of propreitary products.

All this means, more market share for open source and Google already has set its base up front with a plethora of tools. You name it, Google Gears, GWT, Google App Engine, Google Analytics, Google Maps etc for the web developers. More standards attribute to better web applications and all which is supported by Chrome inherently. The survival of Flex or Silverlight will be a debatable issue henceforth if Google Chrome manages to captilize on its intentions.

This sounds a huge success to Google Chrome. If this falls in line, then Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera will be competing with Chrome rather than with themselves. Google will rise to the top and rule the universe. All of this is a distant dream for me and I don’t want to sound preachy now. You do the analysis as I will wait for a surprise in the next version of Google Chrome. It might just be the next big thing, you may never know!

The things I admire in the current release of Google Chrome :

1. Full screen interface
2. Draggable tabs to windows and back into tabs
3. Neater display of history links and thumbnails of recent visits

Testing Google Chrome

The thing you might be wondering at the moment is how to distinguish Chrome from the rest of the browsers. As Google mentions, Chrome sports a different memory management model which implements each tab as a whole new process instead of a thread. On opening a tab you would notice that the task manager would have a new process listed. In order to try out Chrome’s ability with this regards you should try opening a Javascript heavy page first in browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Heavy Javascript attributes to browser hanging which is considered often as a painful process since all the tabs hang and the browser itself has to be killed to stop the loading. As far as Chrome goes, this nature would be handled in a completely different manner since you can now directly kill a tab process from the task manager without affecting the other open tabs.

While the above concept is not much useful for the casual surfer, it will be a must for web application users in times to come, since the advent of Web 2.0 has in fact spruced up the usage of Ajax which in turn has made the web application heavy for processing. Such a model would have been required any time in near future, but with Chrome stepping the right foot at the right time you can relax down a bit now. If you are a staunch Ajax developer then Chrome surely would come to your rescue.

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I am thoroughly satisfied with Google Reader for reading my RSS feeds but I felt its been a long time I have spent on it and it has now started to bore me a bit. So I started some search for good desktop applications which would give some eye candy and also improve my productivity while learning from the feeds.

I have found one nice solution which has relieved me to some extent and which is certainly an impressive effort in the direction of web desktop integration. Its called ReadAir. It is a really nice application for feed reading and I am impressed by its potential.  The reason I liked it was because it is built on Adobe AIR. I had become a fan of Adobe AIR when I had read about it for the first time.

Seeing a live usable application built on it was something I had waited for and ReadAir has confirmed my belief that sometime later in the future we are going to see amazing applications built for the desktops but running on the web. Mozilla Prism is a yet another effort in this field.

Okay, coming back to the ReadAir. ReadAir is a desktop feed reader for reading your Google Reader feeds. The features that I can place my votes on are:

• Easy setup and login straight into Google Reader
• Direct synchronization of read posts with Google Reader
• You can star any post directly inside it which is also visible later in your Google Reader
• Add/Remove tags or feeds from within it
• It has got a very minimalistic Interface yet its pretty neat looking
• The feed post colors and fonts are soothing to the eye
• It is quick in loading.
• Clicking on the post title marks the post as read (This is better than scrolling the entire length of the post as in Google Reader)

I was satisfied by the above basic features and also expect them to improve them in the future. Since the application is in its early days, some features can be cranky at times. For example, I found the auto update feature somewhat unnecessary. It updated the application with some new features which later started to show some errors. Also, the search is not fully functional and currently ReadAir does not support keyboard shortcuts.

Leaving apart the shortcomings, the synchronization was the best part of ReadAir. At least I have got a different reader for my taste and also due to the synchronization with Google Reader, I do not have to worry about re-reading the same posts if I happen to access Google Reader from a different location. I appreciate the commendable effort put up by Adam Mcgrath for bringing this idea to life and am looking forward for addition of more features.

Try it, its nice to have a change sometimes and I would always root for web desktop applications like these. For installing ReadAir you need to have Adobe Air installed on your system. Download Adobe Air from here.

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Enter Web 2.0, and you do not have to ponder much over lost time for waiting to get hold of a tool. In this era, whatever you think of is already available online. So without fretting just google up your requirement and you would be amazed by what kind of power the internet can provide you. Coming back to the question, I responded him coolly, to use an online photo editor! He was totally baffled at the thought. If you are too, then I might as well introduce to you the best tools for photo editing online.

Online Photo Editors

The most important thing for a photo editor is to provide the features such as, cropping, editing brightness and contrast, sharpening and blurring, resize, effects and saving in multiple file formats. In a standalone editor you are most likely to find these features. But in an online environment the features will be severely limited with regards to flexibility of usage, since they are entirely web based which make them complicated to implement. I will suggest you some nifty tools which would actually make your work easier and lot more fun. Browsing across several editors I would recommend you 3 of the most liked online photo editors.

1. Phixr

Phixr is an interesting tool which does not use Flash. It is completely Ajax based and has got the potential to give the user a complete satisfaction. The most likable feature I found in this was the ability to convert your photograph into an artistic polaroid snapshot, comment bubbles and effects. It gives you the facility of direct upload of the edited photo to numerous photo sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, Picasaweb and so on. Moreover, its free to use.

Its not a compulsion for registering for using the tool. You can try out the demo from the photo shown on the front page itself and check the features for yourselfs. Look what I could come up in a few minutes of playing with this tool.

2. SplashUp

If you are a Photoshop addict and cannot think of any other tool besides it, then you are in for a real surprise. SplashUp, earlier called Fauxto is a very well designed application which closely resembles Photoshop. It has the same look and feel and is completely made in Flash. The bonus of using SplashUp is that you can actually save your work in its own file format so that you can continue working on it later. It is the first online tool, to give a layered editing environment and work on multiple images at the same time without your browser getting hanged up. Doesn’t that sound exciting enough?

3. Picnik

Picnik one is one of my favorites and one of the most used tools while editing photos online. This is because, Flick has recently bought it, and it has been directly integrated into flickr. This makes editing your online flickr photos even more simpler. Just go to a flickr photo and choose the Edit Photo button, which opens up in a picnik editor mode. Check out for the humorous load messages it shows. The only thing I dislike about it is it takes a lot of time to load the photo which is not the case in SplashUp.

Picnik has a lot of amazing features to offer but they all do not come for free. Yet you are free to use some commonly used features with ease. Check out for fancy text effects and custom shapes. They are surely fantastic. With a tool like Picnik you wouldn’t need Photoshop around for common usages.

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What is the difference between Yahoo Live and Youtube?

Yahoo Live can be seen as a video conferencing portal. Get your webcam and broadcast into Yahoo Live by creating channels. The difference Yahoo Live offers from Youtube is direct broadcast from your webcam and not recorded uploads. I slightly doubt such a service getting popular when Youtube has become a brand name of sorts. It would take Google only a matter of days to offer a similar service. Where the business of Yahoo goes with the launch of live is the thing to watch out for.

Does it offer anything new?

In my opinion it does not seem to be an innovative concept. The live webcam has been around ages right from the inception of online porn webcam portals. Yahoo Live should avoid becoming one, because spammers are always on the prowl to attack new emerging systems. Something worth of interest in Yahoo Live is that, it has featured channels which includes some famed personalities performing live for free. This may be just for popularising the service. On the flip side you cannot archive the live broadcast.

What to expect from Yahoo Live?

Yahoo Live says that it is an experimental release. I am not so sure what this means but if there is something innovative to be seen in its future then Yahoo just might be able to revive its business after the downstream trend it is facing currently. Apart from the webcam streaming, Yahoo Live offers live chat, a developer’s API. The API might be of interest since it would offer features for embedding live video chat from your blog or site which has become popular these days.

Guess what, its even got a twitter feed!

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The song is really catchy and has a foot tapping tune. The lyrics, mind blowing. I listened to it almost 3 times back to back. And hey, it also mentions about Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The part of the song which I liked most was,

blog, blog, blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small

blog at the cineplex
blog while you’re having sex

blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb

blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song?

Well I am, in fact blogging about this song because it was irresistible. Kudos! to whoever made the attempt. You can catch the lyrics from here. Enjoy!

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Lets say I want to buy an mp3 player but I don’t have the idea what is the ideal kind of mp3 player to purchase from the current market. There is an MP3 player section in the Electronic Goods category which sports a page full of useful knowledge about the types of MP3 players available. I did not know until now that there existed 3 types, namely

1. Hard Drive Models
2. Micro / Mini Hard Drive
3. Flash-Memory MP3 Players

The crux of the above information will definitely help an individual make more smart choice as apposed to information got by just searching out the popular brands or pestering your friends. You wouldn’t have to search for a briefing on the product anywhere else if it were not provided in a simple fashion as ShopWiki.

ShopWiki provides the list of available brands along with the list of most popular products (taken from C-NET) beneath the information. These list point out to the the array of the products a brand has or the specific model whichever you want to view. The information carried on the specific product page provides a rating for the product, its reviews and available stores. Take a look at the Ipod Nano Page. To check prices for the product at Ebay you don’t have to visit Ebay. Instead the Ebay tab will do the live check on the latest updated prices. This is something worth your time.

The best experience is on ShopWiki is to search for a desired product. The search results page is nicely represented by providing quick information when you hover the mouse on the list. There are video reviews for all the products and to specifically point of the best feature is the price meter. If you aren’t satisfied with the search based on price of the product then you can squeeze the price meter to refine your search. Besides that the brand and even the color can be selected for refining. The products are instantly updated. Check out the Grid view too.

If you want to decide for a gift then go to ShopWiki’s Directory which provides a comprehensive coverage on which gifts to choose from for any event or occasion. Check out the Chirstmas gifts section if you want to fill in those stockings at night. You can even try out the more helpful Gift Guide section to get advice on which gifts to purchase.

ShopWiki is an a truly useful concept in the world of millions of product which helps the consumer to get updated information on the products and make intelligent choices. Spending time on ShopWiki is like getting worth for every penny spent.

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Ajax had redefined the web application just a couple of years ago. It definitely changed in the way web apps were being developed. This promoted rise of different interesting possibilities that more than widened the eyeball of a regular surfer. Web Operating Systems were at that time being touted as being able to replace the desktop operating system altogether in the future. But all these breath taking ideas have fallen flat to a place where the idea is still traditional. The usage of web browser.

Web applications have and still are web applications and I have not come upon any idea so simple yet so revolutionizing as the WebRunner. To update you upon the news surrounding WebRunner, Mozilla has converted the WebRunner project to a Mozilla Labs Project with a new fascinating name, Prism. When I saw Web Runner I was not amazed at this app itself. My mind was already seeing the future of web applications. It’s behavior was similar to the nature of a desktop application. Yet it ran on the web! It was the perfect example of how we can expect to put our web applications for our future projects.

I think I may be a little too far a bit sooner, but I can see how Prism an impact our surfing lives. Imagine a day, you start your computer in just a moment, without any startup utilities coming in the picture. You have several Prism apps lying on your desktop. You double click an application and it is launched in another moment. This is something I am dreaming of, something which will definitely be backed by todays high speed connectivity and robust network infrastructure.

Well,a question in your mind would be how would Mozilla’s Prism contribute here. The direction I am seeing for Prism is not something out of context from my dream. A lite browser without the unnecessary facilities of the browser like the back button, the menu bar, the history, the bookmarks which only matter while surfing web sites. Prism is just enough to provide the basic foundation for connecting to the web, minus the normal browser behavior, yet retaining the background services like session management and security. Web applications don’t need them and all the more should not be taken care when they are being designed.

Prism comes to mind when we require a web application to work in their own self with the support of the design which the web application has itself provided and not that of the browser. This is a thing of the past where web applications are designed with a thought process of developing a web site. Kind of traditional way which considered styling, the cross browser compatibility and many other aspects which form a part of the web site and not of the web application.

With Prism I am sure that one day the project would take us to a time where web applications would not require any HTML, CSS or JavaScript. It would be just like designing a desktop application just as we do it currently in .NET and Eclipse IDE’s. Drag and drop your required widget, give a theme for the app, and execute the app in Prism and later distribute it as a web application. The users of the Prism would just have the need to Prism app installed on their system. This is just like Java where only the JVM needs to be installed and the Java Programs come to life. Similarly install Prism and the required web application will come to its life. Isn’t this a great feeling in itself?

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Ajaxian recently reported about this tool by the name Xinu which is simply amazing. Some of the amazing statistics it provides are:

1. Page indexed by various search engines
2. Keywords listed in your site
3. Site ranking
4. Site linked in various social networks
5. Errors found in your site’s HTML or CSS code
6. Backlinks to your site from various engines

Isn’t this simply amazing to see the list of features? Although this tool is in Spanish the statistics are easier to understand and valuable. They give an insight even to the most overlooked aspects which might be crucial in getting more popularity to your site. Another nice feature of this tool is it gives you all the statistics in a downloadable PDF format.

The user interface of Xinu is completely Ajax based. So that’s an added advantage of faster response. One thing that you would particularly like is that the different satistics keep filling one by one and you can customise the flow. There are draggable blocks of statistics categories as in the above mentioned list and the the blocks are filled acoording to their placement i.e upper blocks will be proccessed first.

Although not very sophisticated enough the idea is very innovative and it would be very nice to have such facilities in an English version and with customizable statistics features! Feel free to share if you know any other such utilities available elsewhere.

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Ajax is not about XMLHttprequest Object
Most of the people think that if they know about the XMLHttpRequest (XHR) object then they are Ajax programmers. Only a part of this statement is true since the base of Ajax is about XHR. But Ajax is not just about XHR.

The article by Jesse James Garet (who originally coined the term Ajax) mentions the same as,

XMLHttpRequest is only part of the Ajax equation. XMLHttpRequest is the technical component that makes the asynchronous server communication possible; Ajax is our name for the overall approach described in the article, which relies not only on XMLHttpRequest, but on CSS, DOM, and other technologies.

Working with Ajax means that you intend to use asynchronous behavior in your web page. The next thing which comes into practicality of Ajax usage is the XHR object. Although asynchronous, your web page will be far away from using Ajax in the right manner.

Ajax was not just meant for providing asynchronous behavior, but to make a web page shed its primitive look from blocking a view whenever a request was made to a look, which more seemed as if a person was working on his desktop application, by a combination of features provided through CSS, DOM, etc along with the specialty of XHR. The driving force to the popularity that Ajax has received is majorly speed and natural responsiveness which means that a response is generated to only what is demanded keeping the other things constant without changing.

Thus a person gives a preference more to a quick responsive page rather than the one which takes intervals in each and every request initiated and makes changes to the other things as well. XMLHttpRequest might be the base but along with the asynchronous behavior that XHR inherently provides you should be using it carefully with a proper separation of concerns between DOM, JavaScript and CSS along with XML, XSLT and XHTML.

Ajax is not an acronym
The fact is that, Ajax is just a shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. When the Ajax hype happened about a year ago all the work done in Ajax was a miracle for those who hadn’t been much into the user interface driven aspects like CSS, JavaScript and XML. With the advent of Ajax, people have recently become more enthusiastic about JavaScript which was once a hated language by programmers amidst all the heavy duty strict counterparts like Java, C#, etc.

However, people failed to realize that this comparison was baseless since JavaScript was client side UI driven technology and had nothing to do with remote technology that Java, C# provided. Both belong to the different paradigms and cannot be compared. The name might itself suggest, JavaScript is nothing more than a scripting language for browsers in order to make the DOM active in its response. It is UI related and not meant for server side. However if you have used ASP you might disagree with this statement. But that is a different thing concerning with familiarity of JavaScript users for ASP using JavaScript.

In the Story behind Ajax, Garett once again comes upfront to clearly mention this

I thought of Ajax as a convenient [term]. It was never intended as an acronym.

Ajax came into the popularity charts due its catchy term and powerful way of representing a number of different things under its hood. Many JavaScript libraries which were providing a set of dynamic functionality to a web page became full fledged Ajax Toolkits since the emergence of this term. However if you see the source of these toolkits, you would come to know that they are a pure blend of many complicated modules involving CSS, XML, iFrames, Closures,etc.

The only place where the asynchronous behavior comes into picture is where the XHR object is used or where a graceful degradation in the form of an iFrame is provided for old browser compatibility. Rest of the rich interface experience is brought by other prior existing features like JavaScript special effects and utilities. Now these have come into limelight due to the coinage of the term “Ajax“. It can be compared to as a brand name rather than an paradigm shift.

Ajax is not AJAX
When Jesse James Garett had coined the term Ajax it was used in camel case. But due to its expansion coming into the limelight as “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML” (notice the uppercase of the words) people represented it as AJAX and not Ajax. Much hue and uproar was made about this inclusion. Should Ajax or AJAX be used, is of more importance in the data driven aspects.

If you have a tool or search engine which you use to search case sensitive terms then using Ajax will fetch different results than AJAX. The same applies to using case sensitive switch cases in your applications which might be disturbing of search intensive applications. So it is required that people across the world stick to a single norm. The reference of the usage is correctly attributed to the creator of the term itself i.e Jesse James Garette. He used Ajax (camel case). Wikipedia also uses in the same way, alongwith many big vendors, so it ought to be Ajax and not AJAX.

Arun Gupta recalls his experience in making the changes at Sun Microsystems.

Ajax is a popular term for past few months but is still being written incorrectly as “AJAX” (all capitals) instead of “Ajax” (camel case). I started using AJAX but then corrected myself and have been using Ajax since then.

Arun has mentioned a set of nice resources which prove the need of using a globally accepted term. Its analogy can be put forward to the acceptance of English as a global language. Even this site needs to make the changes to the usages of the term AJAX wherever used. So if you are in the AJAX bandwagon it would be better to jump on to the Ajax one, due to the global directives.

Ajax is not Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is a conceptual term and rather a representational term which in recent times is being used on a tremendous scale to put forward the freedom of data usage on the web. Earlier the web was used to share data statically and allow limited interactions in the form of feedbacks from the user. But today if we see the web, its a lot more interactive and user has the power to generate content, publish at ease and choose various alternatives to acquire it.

The web sites today cater more to the user inputs rather than passive information being pushed to the users. The result being the increasing number of blogs, forums, social networks and communities. In addition to the increasing user interactions, Web 2.0 is about using data freely. There is no limitation to getting data only in a pre-specified format or a pre-specified contractual terms.

The user is free to choose how he can receive the same data in various ways. The proof of the fact is the number of technologies that are being built to cater to this aspect. Web Services, RSS Feeds, Webcasts, Podcasts etc. Spreading of data more accurately and in a wide spread manner is another aspect of Web 2.0. Tagging, Online bookmarking are only the beginning of such techniques and the web is about to see a lot more than this.

In his article, De Witt Clinton tries to showcase this is a rather detailed approach on how communication has evolved,

Web 2.0 is about giving up control. It is about setting the data free. It is about providing services that work with other people’s data. It is about having a valuable resource and making no presumptions about how or where that resource will be used.

In my opinion, the web just might become obsolete in the near future. The fact being it might be something closer to having online desktops. It might be possible that computers will be replaced entirely by mobiles which would become more handy than a computer, with power packed business and multimedia features.

Ajax can be considered to as a part of the implementation process but not a concept of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is also just a term used to replace long statements indicating the changing nature of the web and not a replacement to the existing characteristics of the web, just like Ajax did to the underlying technologies. You might read about this aspect in Wikipedia’s information on Web 2.0,

The argument also exists that “Web 2.0″ does not represent a new version of World Wide Web at all, but merely continues to use “Web 1.0″ technologies and concepts.

The term Web 2.0 showcases how data can be shared and used freely without any sort of restrictions while Ajax makes it possible to make innovations which attribute to the growth of Web 2.0. It’s more of a marketing strategy when you see Ajax and Web 2.0 used as synonyms just to derive maximum popularity owing to the two latest terms coined. Web 2.0 shows the way to use and spread data while Ajax is a practical approach to present the data in an effective and interactive manner.

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A week later I discovered a web preview plugin for Firefox called CoolIris. This was the exact thing I had mentioned and wanted. But it was a client side preview, not like the server side preview given by Snap. If you are pondering over what do I mean by server side and client side preview and what is the difference between Snap and CoolIris there is rather detailed article on readwriteweb. I’ll just cash in on the snippets from there.

What is a web preview?

The basic idea behind previews is simple: they save you a click. Instead of clicking on a link to see the content, you can get a preview of the page using a gesture – typically a mouseover. Assuming you can decide if the page is interesting or not based on the preview, you can save a click and more importantly the page load.

What is CoolIris?

Cooliris, one of the Firefox recommended extensions, offers great quality previews. It works by popping up a little blue square when a user moves their mouse over a link. If the user clicks on the square, a preview of the link comes up.

What is Snap?

Unlike Cooliris, Snap’s technology is powered by JavaScript that sits inside the page. To ctivate it, bloggers and webmasters need to paste a small chunk of code into their pages. lso unlike Cooliris, Snap shows a smaller preview when the user moves the mouse over any link.

The point worth mentioning over here is that, Snap doesn’t depend on the browser you are using where CoolIris is a plugin only meant for Firefox. Snap works only on selective links where the script is invoked which is dependent on the web master while CoolIris works on any link in the page and it is upto the user to preview the page or not. Such choice is not provided in Snap which forces a preview on a mouse hover. This aspect of snap has been disliked by many bloggers. You can read the incident of ShandyKing removing the Snap Preview from his blog even on making an entry in the top 100 list of snap users. That was sad. CoolIris even has options which help you decide whether you want to see a preview either on click, hover, etc. I personally prefer something like this i.e the options left open to me to choose my preferences.

The future of web preview lies in something like CoolIris and it should be challenge to the Snap founders to render something like CoolIris does although it might be tough since a domain cannot make a cross domain request. But using Iframes like CoolIris, I guess, it might be possible. Until then, what would you prefer, CoolIris or Snap?

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