OneMind

Being a big fan of HTML5 and one who believes that smartphone Web apps will get more and more competitive with single-platform dedicated apps, I try to monitor what's going on in the HTML5 universe. This morning, I took time to update the HTML5-readiness ratings on all the browsers I kept track of on OS X. 

Safari 5.0.1 on my desktop scored the highest at 208 of a possible 300 points. On my iPad and iPhone, Safari and Atomic Web scored the same, 185 on iPhone and 127 on iPad.

Here are the ratings. I'm surprised how low Firefox has allowed itself to sink on this important feature set. Camino is just about to drop off my radar altogether.

Safari 5.0.1 = 208 (127 on iPad, 185 on iPhone)

Atomic Web (185 on iPhone, 127 on iPad)

Google Chrome 5.0.375.125 = 197

Opera 10.6 = 159

Firefox 3.6.6 = 139

Camino 2.0.3 = 46

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

Yesterday's ruling by Federal Judge Vaughn Walker that California's blatantly illegal attempt to deprive citizens of rights based solely on their sexual preference was one of the most cogent and thorough pieces of legal writing I've ever read. And I have a law degree, which means only that I've read a lot of briefs and rulings over the years. He picked out 80 facts from the two-week-plus trial over which he presided and methodically and rationally dissected each of them. His logic is unassailable. And the ruling is so well written that it doesn't take a legal degree or background to read it and understand it. He clearly understood that he was deciding a case with major consequences throughout the nation and he wanted to issue an air-tight ruling.

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I have come to really like my iPad. Even though I was at first skeptical about its real utility, I have nonetheless become somewhat enamored of things like its immediate availabtility, immersive user experience, and wonderful screen quality. And I've found a few really useful apps, including replacing my Kindle2 with my iPad and the Kindle app.

Still, there has been one massive hole in the app scene without which I could not declare the iPad a suitable productivity tool: a way to create and edit Google Docs (and as a nice bonus, work with documents in my Dropbox account).

That gap seems to have slammed shut with the recent release of a highly usable version of Office2 HD from byteSquared.

I’ve written this review by starting it out on my iPad using Office2 HD, saving it locally, then moving it to my gDocs directory, opening it and editing some more. Then I saved it on gDocs and went back to the iPad to load the revised version. It all flowed quite smoothly.

Then I tried moving the document from the local Office2 directory to my Dropbox on my iPad. That, too, went flawlessly in both directions. You can either move or copy files to and from all of these sources. If, e.g., I move a document from gDocs to my local files on my iPad, the file disappears from gDocs. I can then edit it in Office2, then save it to any of the three locations: back in gDocs, over to Dropbox or locally.

The basic word processor in Office2 seems quite capable. Though it only supports commands for font and size and formatting for bold, italic, underlined, color, highlight and alignment, it does those things quite smoothly and efficiently.

I've hooked up an Apple Wireless Keyboardn to the iPad (something I had no reason to do before) and turned my iPad into a highy useful portable document editor. It is capable of editing formatted text documents and spreadsheet files within some limits but I'm sure that the program will continue to evolve.

One thing you do have to be careful about is to keep track of where the version of the document you are now editing is stored. If you press the iPad Home button in mid-edit, you're fine as long as the document is on your local file system. But if it's stored remotely, you lose all unsaved edits by doing that. I recommend always copying or moving the document from the remote server to the local iPad and editing it there, then saving it back when finished. It's a couple of extra steps but the security will be worth it.

I did document one apparent bug. If you have a local document saved and you want to move it to Dropbox, and a document of the same name already appears in DropBox, the file fails to save silently, leaving the old, presumably obsolete document in place on the Dropbox server. This is particularly problematic because the iPad version of the Dropbox app does not allow you to delete items. Ouch.

At $7.99, though, Office2 HD is a real bargain. Highly recommended.

Posted via email from danshafer's posterous

Facebook has recently launched a new feature called "Questions" in which you can ask and answer questions of others in the vast community who are willing to take part in discussions. I answered a couple of questions there today to get a flavor for the place. It's obviously brand-new. As you can see by this image, it appears they are faking the numbers of questions in some topic areas to get people to click on them, which is a dubious practice at best. It's one thing to seed the questions (which I suspect they've done in some places) but quite another to say there are 23 questions in an area that's vacant.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

It's almost enough to cause me to lose faith in the Cloud. I create a new document in Google Docs, give it a name, save it and I get an error message:

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

As promised by Apple, my new iPhone 4 arrived today. I’ve already done all the activation and update stuff and it’s running fine.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

Being, as I am, a huge advocate of Cloud Computing, I have almost all of my important documents and data stored outside my building somewhere. I'm a big fan of Dropbox.com for keeping documents synched across all my computers (including my iPad) and I have my work teams using GoogleDocs for all of the documents we can possibly use it for.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

I was pretty surprised this evening when researching a piece comparing
Amazon Kindle ebook offerings with the Apple iBook store. A search for
ActionScript or Flash programming brings up ZERO results! In the
Kindle store, on the other hand, lots of titles turn up.

Javascript? Two books on iBook, dozens on Kindle. I had similar
results on several other tech topics gotta make you woder, no?

Hmmmmm.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

My all-time favorite Web app development technology, NOLOH (Not One Line Of HTML) snagged the main cover article in the just-released edition of the print and online magazine PHP Architect. The article was written by NOLOH's lead developers, Asher Snyder and Phil Ross and it provides a very good overview of why I love NOLOH and why you should check it out if you're in the Web app space.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

The inventor of the JW Player posted a cogent and clear article yesterday about the HTML5 vs. Flash wars that are raging among Internet video developers and enthusiasts.

Not only are his comments easy to understand, some of the comments are by people who are heavily engaged in and/or closely monitoring the standardization processes going on now.

I recommend this very authoritative piece if you want a short read that brings you the key facts in a digestible form.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous