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I haven’t forgotten about that Windows Phone post. It’s coming. This is a small interlude while I get it juuust right.

Every Tuesday for the past four weeks, I’ve written up some super-geeky browser trivia on Google+. If upcoming jQuery releases and Opera are your thing, you should follow along! The posts are public, you don’t need a G+ account or anything.

I think I’m going to keep this up for the foreseeable future. The research-and-report format is surprisingly fun, and it’s filling in all kinds of gaps in my browser history knowledge. I have no idea if anyone is reading the trivia, let alone enjoying it, but sometimes you just have to do something because you want to do it, you know?

In case you didn’t hear about it on Twitter or Google+ or from me jumping up and down and yelling out loud, I was interviewed the other day by Chris Brogan:

We talked about mobile websites, and went over the basics for businesses looking to get into the mobile web space.

I tried my best to not look and sound completely starstruck. I’ve been reading Chris’s blog since 2008, and for those of you that aren’t (a little too) obsessed with blogging, he’s kind of a big deal.

It was a lot of fun, and surprisingly easy to set up. I think I might do a bit more video-stuff in 2012. What do you think?

Have a good weekend!

Adobe is changing. The once-great giant of web and web tools has fallen, and is poised to rise again — albeit in a much different form. What does this mean for us web developers?

For starters, let’s go over some recent news. Adobe made three major announcements in the past six weeks that will have sweeping implications on their image. See if you can spot a trend in these headlines:

• On October 3rd, Adobe acquired Nitobi, makers of PhoneGap.
• On November 9th, Adobe announced that they will cease development of Flash Player for mobile to focus on HTML5.
• Two days later, Adobe announced that Flex is going open-source.

What do these press releases have in common? If you caught that all three are about open technology, give yourself a pat on the back. Let’s dig into the facts before discussing the ramifications.

Adobe has seen the light, and open source is sparkling.

Closed formats are dying across the web. The days are numbered for plugins like Silverlight and Flash; they’re simply not necessary anymore for the vast majority of sites and applications. HTML5, on the other hand, is thriving. We’re starting to see open fonts pick up, and even longtime-stalwarts MP3 and MPEG-4 are starting to lose their grasp of the online audio/video markets.

Adobe isn’t blind. They know they need to transition away from closed platforms. Picking up PhoneGap shows their commitment to this cause.

Re-aligning their mobile efforts towards HTML5 is another positive step towards open technology. Adobe still makes some of the web’s best tools, and Javascript development could seriously use an outstanding IDE. This seems like a great match-up.

Finally, releasing Flex to the community is a smart move. There is a very vibrant community around Flex, and there are still niches where RIA will matter for a little while longer. If Adobe can’t support Flex on its own, enabling the community to take control of it’s own future simply makes sense.

Adobe’s intentions are clear. Proprietary formats are out, the open web is in.

What does this mean for web developers?

Three things:

First and foremost: Learn your shit. If you’re a web developer, learn everything you can about Javascript, HTML5, CSS3, and the myriad of related frameworks. These will only become more important following the fall of Flash.

Second: If you’re a Flash/Flex dev, start looking at Sencha. At SenchaCon last month, the number-one answer I got back when I asked people what they worked in before switching to Sencha was Adobe Flex. And I believe it. I’m a Flex guy too, but that market’s shrinking quickly. Sencha is going to be a major player on the web for a while to come, and it’s a relatively smooth transition.

Third: Get into mobile. Adobe didn’t pick up PhoneGap just to gain FOSS-cred. Mobile is huge. Huge! This is where you want to be right now, and you can join in using Javascript and Sencha and many other web technologies.

This is an exciting time to be in web development. Let’s keep on top of the constantly-changing platforms and tools. Let’s keep building wonderful things. Let’s make this an age to be proud of when they talk about the day Adobe changed their ways.

Who’s with me?

The last day of SenchaCon was a hackathon, where everyone that stuck around (probably over 100 people) grouped together and hacked away to see who could make the coolest one-day project. There were a LOT of great apps, and several came away with cash and prizes (all of it very well earned!).

Not featured in the winners list is the app I made, because I missed the submission deadline by about twenty minutes. All this because I lost far too much time debugging issues with HTML5′s native drag-and-drop API. (I was planning on writing a rant about it, but Quirksmode beat me to the punch.)

In any event, I’ve uploaded the incredibly raw creation, and you can now play my simple HTML5 Video Puzzle Game. I only tested in Chrome, but it seems to run alright in the latest Aurora build of Firefox. Basically the app loads up an HTML5 video, slices it into 16 canvases, and scrambles the pieces. Your job is to re-arrange them by dragging them back into place (using HTML5′s native drag-and-drop, of course).

It’s really, really unpolished. I spent all of about 8 seconds on the styling, and there are a lot of features that are complete but inaccessible (like slicing the video into more pieces). I might try to fix it up later.

Anyway, the whole day was a lot of fun, just like the rest of the conference. It would be awesome to go again next year. We’ll see!

Until then, happy hacking, all my fellow attendees!

Most Sencha Touch applicaions are small, single-purpose mobile apps. Those aren’t the ones I’m talking about.

Over the past 9 months, I’ve worked on a Sencha Touch app with a team of 15 people. It’s for a major, world-famous client. It contains tens of thousands of lines of code. It could be the biggest Sencha Touch app ever built.

My talk will be about how we built it, and how we made it perform well despite the sheer size of the application.

If you’re at SenchaCon, and this sounds like something you want to know more about, here are the details:

Time:
11:35am — 12:20pm

Session Name:
Community Code: Macadamian

Location:
Grand Ballroom, Section 3, 6th Floor

Hope to see you there. I’ll be the guy glowing with enthusiasm :)

This post is part of the Classics Week(s) feature, which will run for three weeks while I’m off overseas. This week’s post was the first to be published after the switch to regular, weekly updates. Here it is again, better than ever!

2009 was an exciting year for the web browser crowd:

• Google released Chrome.
• Apple ported Safari to Windows.
• Firefox picked up a lot of market share.
• Microsoft actually produced a half-decent version of Internet Explorer.
• The iPhone and Android finally made mobile browsing popular.
• Support for HTML5 and CSS3 was way up across the board.

The term crowd is especially appropriate here because it really is starting to get very crowded. For a long time the browser war has been fought largely between two major players at a time (IE/Netscape, IE/Firefox) and all of a sudden we have four major companies with fantastic browsers available to the vast majority of users.

Oh, and then there’s Opera.

Here’s the thing about Opera…

Opera is in serious trouble because it doesn’t have a “thing”:

Internet Explorer’s thing is its existing market share. It has a lot more users than everyone else, so its going to be relevant for the foreseeable future.

Firefox’s thing is its community. Not just its core developers, but the people who create addons or personas or rally everyone they know to go download the latest version on launch day. It’s easily the most passionate user group of the bunch.

Chrome’s thing is its brand. When people think web, they think Google. Google has the best search, the best email, why not the best browser? Users rely on Google for a great online experience, and Google has a lot of high-traffic areas where it can push Chrome.

Apple’s thing is its loyalty. Apple fanboys are a loyal bunch — most of them will stick with Safari on their Mac and many will consider getting Safari for any Windows computers they’re forced to use. Apple also has the iPhone, which gives it a growing space where it has the only browser (not that any iPhone users mind — loyalty, remember?).

What does Opera have? The Wii? Please.

• It used to be the most advanced browser for HTML5 support, then everyone else caught up.
• It used to be a major player in the mobile space, then Apple and Google obliterated it.
• It used to be a fun browser for geeks to talk about, but now the buzz is all Chrome.

Simply put, it’s not enough to be an alternative to IE anymore; users are demanding more from their browsing experience, and they’re flush with places to find it.

Any Opera fans out there?

What’s even worse is that there isn’t really anything you or I can do to help.

Opera’s engine isn’t open source, like Gecko (Firefox) or Webkit (Chrome/Safari), and it doesn’t benefit from a strong plugin community, like Firefox/Chrome. It isn’t an OS-default browser like IE (Windows), Safari (OSX) or Firefox (linux). Even if I wanted to rally some Opera enthusiasts, where would I start? How many people do you know that have even heard of Opera?

I don’t have anything against Opera (it’s a fine browser), it’s just it has fallen behind the times — there are too many better options around preventing Opera from picking up new users, and I can’t think of a single significant reason for its existing users to stick with it.

Do you use Opera? Care to share any thoughts on Opera’s future?

A few weeks ago, in a post about why Google+ is going to succeed, I noted that Google Chrome has been on an upward trend of about .5–1% per month since it launched nearly two years ago.

While I didn’t mention it at the time, Firefox has an interesting usage graph as well. If you follow that link, you’ll see that Firefox’s curve hovered a little over 30% for the tail end of 2009 and the better part of 2010, but has started to drop over the past twelve months.

If these trends continue, Chrome will be more popular than Firefox by the end of next year.

What does this mean for everyone’s favourite open-source browser?

From Phoenix to Providence.

Back around 2003, the ‘net was desperate for something new. Sure there were other browsers around, but nobody could hold a candle to the market-dominating behemoth that was Internet Explorer (source). Innovation was non-existent, and the web as we knew it was suffocating.

Enter Mozilla. The release of Firefox 1.0 in 2004 was a breath of fresh air for the online community. Suddenly there was an open-source, standards-compliant competitor gaining momentum. We were thrust from the shackles of monopoly into an arms race that culminated in the second browser war.

Mozilla was a critical piece of the puzzle. It was a veritable flagship of new, exciting features. Better CSS support. A clean, tabbed interface. The prevalence and importance of add-ons could be its own post; countless extensions have become standard features across the board of popular browsers.

By the time Firefox 3 was released, in June 2008, Mozilla could do no wrong. Everything was on the up-and-up.

Then, the landscape changed.

Is Firefox still necessary?

With Microsoft innovating again (see IE9), Apple’s devices gaining popularity (and Safari with them), and Google bursting into the browser space with Chrome, competition was hot in 2009/2010.

Firefox still played a key role at this time: it was the yardstick against which all other browsers were held. Sure Safari and Chrome have built-in development tools, but are they as good as Firebug? How does WebKit’s HTML5 support compare to Gecko’s? And isn’t IE still laughably behind?

But this role has run its course. The major players are now well-established. Most users are aware of alternatives to their operating systems’ default browsers.

This can’t be a long-term position for Firefox. It won’t last.

The competition is no longer resting on its laurels. Chrome is closing in. Internet Explorer is finally in a position to reverse its eight-year downward trend, and WebKit is absolutely dominating this year’s explosive rise in mobile browsing.

Extensions are everywhere. Support for standards has never been better. Firefox is quietly becoming less and less relevant with each passing update.

So I ask again:

Does the golden age for Firefox lie in its past?

It’s official, I’m making a call: Google+ is going to work out just fine.

I know there are plenty of skeptics out there, so let’s go ahead and address the most common concerns:

Common Concern #1: Google+ can’t compete with Facebook.

The idea: Facebook is too popular, and a new network like Google+ won’t gain enough traction to reach critical mass.

Why that’s dead wrong: Google knows a thing or two about taking on massively-successful competitors. If it can hold its own against Apple and Mozilla, it can hold its own against Facebook.

The long answer:

Google doesn’t try to gain market share in one overwhelming blow. Google prefers slow, steady growth.

Look at Android. When it launched in Q4 of 2008, Apple had already sold nearly 10 million iPhones — and Steve & co. were getting started. Google didn’t try to win these users over immediately; they gradually earned market share one user at a time. Now Android is more popular than iOS, and all signs point to continued, step-by-step growth.

Need more proof? Let’s talk Chrome. At launch in 2008, Google’s browser started out with roughly 1% of the world’s internet users. Since then, Chrome has slowly crawled along, picking up half a percent of the market every month or so (stats). It now owns a whopping 20% of the browsing market, and there’s no reason to believe it’s going anywhere but up. Half a percent at a time.

Google+ isn’t out to crush Facebook all in one go. It’s going to slowly pick up users, little by little, until it’s a force to be reckoned with in the social media space.

Common Concern #2: Google+ is going to end up just like Google Wave.

The idea: Google’s last major product launch failed. Why should Google+ be any different?

Why that’s dead wrong: Google learns from mistakes. It’s a wildly successful company full of incredibly smart people. If anything, Wave’s failure will help the Google+ team overcome similar challenges.

The long answer:

Google Wave failed for a lot of reasons. It was difficult to explain to others, its success relied too much on developers, and invites were a mess. Google+ has fixed all of these problems.

“It’s just like Facebook” is an adequate description of Google+. Everyone knows Facebook, and that begs questions like “well, what is different?”. These conversations show what Google+ is really about: polish. It doesn’t have a bunch of killer new features, it just has a slightly-better version of the features common to most social media tools.

The invite system is much improved as well. Google Wave fed users a meagre handful of invites on an ad-hoc schedule. This meant carefully choosing who to invite, any only inviting a few friends at a time. The invite system for Google+ is more like a valve; when the servers can handle more users, the valve opens, and everyone can invite as many people as they want. When capacity fills, the valve closes, and we take a short break until the next tide.

Google+ isn’t Wave. It’s not just a different product, it’s a better product. Run by a better team, with a better plan going forward. Why expect anything less from an internet powerhouse with a proven track record?

Even if I’m wrong, I still win.

You know what the best part is about Android vs iOS and Chrome vs Firefox?

Of course you do. Competition.

High-profile technology wars bring major innovation to the market, and that’s always a win for users. Just look at how much smartphones and browsers have advanced in the past three years or so. All of it thanks to increased competition.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if Google+ succeeds. The real value is the threat — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer… they all have to up their game to stay competitive. As a user of these networking tools, we’re certain to benefit for the foreseeable future.

What do you think?

This post also appears on the Macadamian blog.

Who are the most innovative browser-makers right now?

• If you’re hip and trendy, you’ll probably say Google (and you’re right).
• If you’re a bit of a techie, I bet you’ll say Mozilla (also a good choice).
• And if you’re an honest web developer, you’ll say Microsoft (equally correct).

I’m sure there’s enough flamebait in that list to start a dynamic discussion, but I’ve got another question first:

Who were the most innovative browser-makers ten years ago?

The list looks something like this:

• Apple (back when they were unpopular).
• Mozilla (pre-Firefox).
• Opera (obviously).
• A whole raft of independent developers.

Notice anything?

The current wave of browser innovation is driven by the big players.

You can complain all you want about the travesties Microsoft has wrought upon the development community, but they pioneered in-browser GPU-acceleration with IE9.

Chrome and Firefox hardly need justification. The number of features they’ve introduced that are now must-haves is staggering. (Pinned tabs, tabs-on-top, private browsing, and built-in debugging tools, just to name a few.)

But it wasn’t always this way.

The previous wave of browser innovation was all about the little guys.

Before the days of iPods and Macbooks, Apple was struggling to keep OSX afloat. Many called their decision to make a browser a mistake, but Safari 1.0 was a boon for the web’s widening world. That’s where webkit got its roots, and we’ve been blessed with the fruits of its labour ever since.

Mozilla was making a browser by its own name, with platform-specific spin-offs like Camino and K-Meleon. The trials and tribulations of the heavyset gecko platform encouraged a culture of ruthless javascript performance improvement — a culture which still thrives to this day.

Opera was the de facto non-Microsoft choice at the time, and did wonders for open standards. As much as we like to take this for granted, there was a very real time in the early 2000s where every website had to be written twice; once specifically for IE, and once for all other browsers.

Then there were the independents. The Shiiras and the Avants. The stepping stones that lead to the giants we surf the web with today. Each contributed to a better web. A stronger web! And we wouldn’t be where we are today without them.

But how did we get there in the first place?

The rise of small-time browsers was driven by a number of forces:

• The late 90s were ruled by then-juggernauts Netscape and Microsoft.
• Internet Explorer began devouring market share, and users wanted alternatives.
• When Netscape folded, it (thankfully) left behind a rich, open-source codebase.

Then, as the browser evolved from geeky toy to application that everyone needs, the costs associated with developing and maintaining a modern, working codebase soared. Suddenly the hodgepodge teams working out of basement apartments couldn’t compete, and the rest is history.

So the cycle so far has looked something like this:

Big Juggernauts → Low-budget Developers → Major Companies

What can we expect to see going forward?

I don’t see an indy-browser renaissance on the horizon. Lately it’s been the opposite: we’ve lost Flock, Opera is flailing, and the myriad of mobile browsers haven’t mustered but a whimper against their built-in counterparts — a far cry from the independent revolution discussed above.

The competition between the current super-powers is more than enough to keep us in an innovative state, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

§

What will the next wave of browsers look like? How will they gain traction? Where will the innovation come from?

I don’t think this iteration of the BlackBerry Playbook will do very well, and I blame RIM’s marketing team.

If you’re not sure what the Playbook is, let me explain — and thank you for proving my point. The BlackBerry Playbook is a tablet computer released last week by Research In Motion, the company behind BlackBerry phones. It’s chief competitor in the tablet space is the iPad, followed by the handful of Android tablets that are currently available.

It’s a great device. The hardware is plenty powerful, and the software is certainly good enough for a 1.0 release. It supports native apps written in several languages, and web apps that can take advantage of HTML5 and Adobe Flash.

The Playbook has a lot going for it, but the one thing it’s sorely lacking is a marketing strategy. Without this, it will fail.

People need to know you have a product before they can buy it.

I spend a lot of time on this Internet thing. I read too many blogs, I stalk people on Twitter, I waste time on Facebook. As a tech-savvy 20-something year old, you’d think I would be the target market for a sexy new tablet. But alas! Everything I know about the Playbook, I learned from friends that work at RIM. Is that how the marketing team was expecting to reach me?

What’s their plan for everyone else? Let potential customers hear about it through word of mouth — weeks or months after launch — if at all?

That doesn’t work anymore. If you’re going to compete with someone like Apple, you have to be loud about what you’re doing.

And that brings us to an even bigger problem with RIM’s silent strategy:

When you don’t make your product sound great, your customers don’t either.

iPad users don’t need to think to explain why they love their iPads. They need only recite whatever Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple Marketing Messiahs have told them about it.

What are potential Playbook users going to say when they talk to their iOS brethren?

“It has Flash”?

Fail.

Specs don’t sell products. Potential users want to know which tablet will improve their day-to-day life, not which one has more RAM. And that’s marketing’s job.

We’ve seen this before.

If RIM isn’t convinced that a lack of marketing will kill their product, maybe Google can sway them.

Remember when Google Wave launched? It was going to replace email, and add awesome features, and be everything to everyone!

Not a single person I knew could explain what it was in one sentence. What followed was confusion, lacklustre adoption, and ultimately, termination.

I loved Google Wave. It was a fantastic product that was constantly misunderstood because there was no marketing message to support it.

And as I read article after article, I can’t shake the feeling that I know where the Playbook is headed…

This post also appears on the Macadamian blog.