Web Development Live

LAS VEGAS Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price, Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless, a cell-phone industry trade show in Las Vegas. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone.Sprint, which has been losing subscribers, will spend $150 million to advertise the Instinct when it launches, compared with $30 million for a typical product introduction, according to David Owens, the company’s director of devices.Like the iPhone, the Instinct lacks a keypad and has just a few buttons. Most of the functions are accessed by touching the screen.A few touch-screen phones appeared on the U.S. market last holiday season, after the iPhone’s debut in June.Verizon Wireless launched the LG Voyager, which has an exterior touch screen and folds out to reveal a non-touch screen paired with a keyboard. Sprint introduced the Touch by HTC, a slim pad with only a touch screen.Both phones were hampered by the lack of software designed specifically for a touch screen. The Voyager dealt with that by adding a keyboard. The Touch grafted some touch-friendly features on to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system, which is designed for smart phones that either lack a touch screen or are intended for use with a stylus. Some functions on the Touch are hard or impossible to use by tapping with the fingers alone.The Instinct is based on a Samsung phone that’s already available under different names, and with different software, in South Korea and Europe. Sprint commissioned its own software from European design house Icon Mobile.”We took a more active part than we ever have” in a phone’s development, Owens said. “This was designed from the ground up to be a touch-screen phone.”The software is based on Java, a commonly used programming language that should make it easy to develop applications for the phone.The Instinct will have a few features the iPhone lacks. For one, it will be the first consumer phone in the U.S. to use EV-DO Rev. A, the fastest cellular broadband technology available on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks.AT%26T Inc. has phones that use a competing technology with equivalent speeds, but the iPhone is not one of them: It runs on a comparatively slow network, supplemented by Wi-Fi access.The Instinct also contains a Global Positioning System chip, for location applications. The iPhone lacks one, but it can use cellular and Wi-Fi signals to determine an approximate position.The Instinct’s screen measures 3.1 inches diagonally, compared with the iPhone’s 3.5 inches.The Instinct won’t be able to take input from more than one finger at a time: The iPhone’s characteristic “pinch to zoom out, spread to zoom in” feature won’t work. Sprint compensates for this by using the phone’s motion sensor. In a demonstration of a prototype, tilting the phone while holding a button made a Web page scroll.

DEEP in the bowels of a Las Vegas hotel, a smiley face and the
words “Hello World” display on a web page. Applause breaks out. The
page is called the Acid2 Browser Test, and the web browser is a
preview of Internet Explorer 8, presented by its platform
architect, Chris Wilson.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” says a member of the
audience to more applause from about 3000 web designers and
developers at the Mix08 conference, where Microsoft showed its
latest internet technology.
The Acid2 page (webstandards.org/action/acid2/) was created by
the Web Standards Project to test whether a browser conforms to the
official standards for describing page layout, mainly focusing on
cascading style sheets (CSS).
The reason for the applause is twofold: first, until now
Microsoft’s web browser, used by an estimated 75% of net surfers
(although Firefox has been eroding that hold), has never been close
to passing the test; second, Internet Explorer’s poor standards
compliance causes significant extra work for web designers.
When users navigate to a web page, they expect it to look and
work the same whatever the browser or operating system they are
using. Achieving this is difficult. Different browsers display the
same page differently, with IE often the worst offender.
Web developers now hope they do not have to insert conditional
code to account for these differences, but can deliver a standard
page to all browsers. “CSS support in IE8 looks thus far to be
very, very promising,” says Eric Meyer, an independent expert in
the field. “It’s very important, because the level of CSS support
in IE7 and IE6 has served as a brake on advanced CSS adoption by
authors, limiting them to less-advanced techniques and
capabilities.”
Internet Explorer has a curious history. Six versions were
released between 1995 and 2001, the time of the “browser wars” with
Netscape. Microsoft won the war and then did not release another
major version of the browser for five years - long enough for it to
become thoroughly outdated.
IE’s CSS implementation fell far behind that of other popular
browsers. In late 2006 Microsoft released IE7, which fixed some
problems but still lagged behind its rivals. “Differences between
browsers simply waste too much developer time,” says Dean
Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for IE, without
mentioning the extent to which Microsoft created the problem.
Mr Hachamovitch, who has led the Explorer team since 2003,
explains why Microsoft took so long to address these deficiencies.
“It comes down to what we were doing with our time,” he says.
“Between 2001 and 2003 we were building what you experience now as
Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight.”
These technologies display not HTML, the language of web pages,
but XAML, Microsoft’s proprietary code for creating rich visual
content.
“In 2003 and 2004 we were making IE secure,” he says, referring
to the security-focused Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Security remained the theme in IE7. The dilemma was that fixing
bugs introduced compatibility problems. “You can’t just flick a
switch and have all the browsers in the world change, or have all
the servers and services in the world change,” Mr Hachamovitch
says. The result was that some websites looked worse than before,
because they detected that IE was accessing them and delivering
content that took into account presumed peculiarities.
Microsoft’s answer was to build “compatibility modes” into IE8.
The manner in which this was done remains controversial. The
question was whether to default to the IE7 compatible mode, or
default to the better standards mode, Mr Hachamovitch says. “(We
found in) releasing IE7 that web developers were slow to modify
their sites. We wanted to keep the web working.”
Microsoft initially announced that IE8 would behave by default
like IE7. Page designers would have to include special code to turn
on IE8’s standards support. The decision was greeted with a hail of
protest because it might perpetuate a non-standard web.
Earlier this month, Mr Hachamovitch announced that Microsoft had
changed its mind. “We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default,
interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it
can.”
Apparently the key to that change of heart was a separate
strategic announcement last month, covering what Microsoft calls
interoperability principles and promising “open connections to its
products, support for industry standards and data portability”.
According to Mr Hachamovitch, Microsoft now had “a more
interoperable way; a more compatible way”.
It sounded good, but what about browser scripting. The context
is important. Mr Hachamovitch had already stated that Microsoft
spent three years neglecting IE for the sake of a more proprietary
technology, which is now appearing on the web as a browser plug-in
called Silverlight.
This is similar in some ways to Adobe’s Flash, and supports rich
multimedia effects within web pages as well as the ability to run
applications written in Microsoft’s .NET Framework.
Silverlight and Flash applications in effect bypass the browser.
Web standards advocates are wary of them because they replace the
open web with content that depends on a proprietary plug-in.
The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the cross-platform Firefox
browser, prefers to upgrade the capabilities of the browser itself.
A key component of this is JavaScript, the programming language
that runs in the browser and that is standardised by ECMA, the
European standards body, under the name ECMAScript. Mozilla is keen
to see the current JavaScript upgraded to a far more powerful
version called ECMAScript 4.0.
“Why do we care about ECMAScript 4.0?” asks Mozilla’s
vice-president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer. The answer is that
JavaScript is the language of the net. We want to keep pushing that
technology forward to make it easier for people to build bigger,
faster, more secure websites.”
Asked if Microsoft will implement ECMAScript 4.0, Mr
Hachamovitch prevaricates and talks about competing demands on the
IE development team.
“Right now there isn’t really an ECMAScript 4 offering to
implement, there is an ECMAscript for discussion.” he says.
The Guardian

LAS VEGAS Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price, Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless, a cell-phone industry trade show in Las Vegas. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone.Sprint, which has been losing subscribers, will spend $150 million to advertise the Instinct when it launches, compared with $30 million for a typical product introduction, according to David Owens, the company’s director of devices.Like the iPhone, the Instinct lacks a keypad and has just a few buttons. Most of the functions are accessed by touching the screen.A few touch-screen phones appeared on the U.S. market last holiday season, after the iPhone’s debut in June.Verizon Wireless launched the LG Voyager, which has an exterior touch screen and folds out to reveal a non-touch screen paired with a keyboard. Sprint introduced the Touch by HTC, a slim pad with only a touch screen.Both phones were hampered by the lack of software designed specifically for a touch screen. The Voyager dealt with that by adding a keyboard. The Touch grafted some touch-friendly features on to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system, which is designed for smart phones that either lack a touch screen or are intended for use with a stylus. Some functions on the Touch are hard or impossible to use by tapping with the fingers alone.The Instinct is based on a Samsung phone that’s already available under different names, and with different software, in South Korea and Europe. Sprint commissioned its own software from European design house Icon Mobile.”We took a more active part than we ever have” in a phone’s development, Owens said. “This was designed from the ground up to be a touch-screen phone.”The software is based on Java, a commonly used programming language that should make it easy to develop applications for the phone.The Instinct will have a few features the iPhone lacks. For one, it will be the first consumer phone in the U.S. to use EV-DO Rev. A, the fastest cellular broadband technology available on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks.AT%26T Inc. has phones that use a competing technology with equivalent speeds, but the iPhone is not one of them: It runs on a comparatively slow network, supplemented by Wi-Fi access.The Instinct also contains a Global Positioning System chip, for location applications. The iPhone lacks one, but it can use cellular and Wi-Fi signals to determine an approximate position.The Instinct’s screen measures 3.1 inches diagonally, compared with the iPhone’s 3.5 inches.The Instinct won’t be able to take input from more than one finger at a time: The iPhone’s characteristic “pinch to zoom out, spread to zoom in” feature won’t work. Sprint compensates for this by using the phone’s motion sensor. In a demonstration of a prototype, tilting the phone while holding a button made a Web page scroll.

Sprint Nextel Corp.’s new ultrafast cellular data network is getting some support from Nokia Corp., which said Tuesday it is going to launch a Web-browsing “tablet” for the WiMax network as it goes live this summer.
The Web tablet, which features a 4.1-inch (10.4-centimeter) touch screen and a slide-out keyboard, is likely to join a tiny laptop from ASUSTek Computer as the first gadgets that can use the network, in addition to laptop cards and desktop modems.
Finland-based Nokia previously announced its intention to make a WiMax tablet, but provided specifics for the first time on Tuesday. The tablet will be a modified version of Nokia’s N810 model, with a slight bulge on the back for the WiMax antenna. Nokia President Mark Louison said the price would be similar to the N810, which sells for $439 (euro280) on Nokia’s Web site.
Contrary to usual practices in the U.S. wireless industry, Nokia will be selling the devices, rather than the carrier. Activation for Sprint’s network will happen in much the same way people buy access to commercial Wi-Fi hotspots. If WiMax becomes available in the area, the tablet will notify the owner that it has picked up a signal.
Connecting to the network will take the user to a Sprint Web page where a credit card number can be entered. Access prices have not been announced for the network, which Sprint will be marketing under the Xohm brand.
Nokia is involved in Xohm in another way: Its joint venture with Siemens AG is one of the suppliers of network hardware.
WiMax will enable downloads of 2 to 4 megabits per second, peaking at speeds of up to 10 mbps, according to Nokia. By comparison, current third-generation broadband networks peak out at 1.4 mbps, though speeds are increasing.
In January, Asus announced that a model of its small portable computer, the eeePC, will come with a built-in WiMax chip. It also plans to make regular laptops with the chips later in the year. Intel Corp. is a major backer of the technology, making it likely that chips will show up in laptops from other manufacturers as well.
Sprint is in talks with Intel, Google Inc. and cable operators Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks for an infusion of capital to help build the network. Clearwire Corp., which already operates a pre-WiMax network in smaller cities across the country, would collaborate in building the network.

Sprint Nextel Corp.’s new ultrafast cellular data network is getting some support from Nokia Corp., which said Tuesday it is going to launch a Web-browsing “tablet” for the WiMax network as it goes live this summer.
The Web tablet, which features a 4.1-inch touch screen and a slide-out keyboard, is likely to join a tiny laptop from ASUSTek Computer as the first gadgets that can use the network, in addition to laptop cards and desktop modems.
Finland-based Nokia previously announced its intention to make a WiMax tablet, but provided specifics for the first time on Tuesday. The tablet will be a modified version of Nokia’s N810 model, with a slight bulge on the back for the WiMax antenna. Nokia President Mark Louison said the price would be similar to the N810, which sells for $439 on Nokia’s Web site.
Contrary to usual practices in the U.S. wireless industry, Nokia will be selling the devices, rather than the carrier. Activation for Sprint’s network will happen in much the same way people buy access to commercial Wi-Fi hotspots. If WiMax becomes available in the area, the tablet will notify the owner that it has picked up a signal.
Connecting to the network will take the user to a Sprint Web page where a credit card number can be entered. Access prices have not been announced for the network, which Sprint will be marketing under the Xohm brand.
Nokia is involved in Xohm in another way: Its joint venture with Siemens AG is one of the suppliers of network hardware.
WiMax will enable downloads of 2 to 4 megabits per second, peaking at speeds of up to 10 mbps, according to Nokia. By comparison, current third-generation broadband networks peak out at 1.4 mbps, though speeds are increasing.
In January, Asus announced that a model of its small portable computer, the eeePC, will come with a built-in WiMax chip. It also plans to make regular laptops with the chips later in the year. Intel Corp. is a major backer of the technology, making it likely that chips will show up in laptops from other manufacturers as well.
Sprint is in talks with Intel, Google Inc. and cable operators Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks for an infusion of capital to help build the network. Clearwire Corp., which already operates a pre-WiMax network in smaller cities across the country, would collaborate in building the network.

The Rocket Man and the funky monk have let Bryan Pepperell use their social networking MySpace web pages to promote his idea that the US Government apologise for the harm caused to native tribes.
One of Mr Obamas staff also took a brief break from helping him in his quest for the Democrat presidential nomination to reply to Mr Pepperells e-mail.
The reply said the most important native American issue was the development of authentic government-to-government relationships between the federal government and Indian tribes.
Mr Pepperell is still waiting for replies from President George W Bush and Mr Obamas Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, on whether they would issue an apology.
America is such an important country and if it cant get this right, how can it ever hold itself up as a leader of the world? Mr Pepperell said.
Singers Willie Nelson, the Neville Brothers and Linda Ronstadt have also opened up their MySpace pages to Mr Pepperells quest, with readers asked to leave messages of support.
It is only through reading about the history, going through the documents, and talking to some friends I have met on MySpace that I have decided to do this, Mr Pepperell said.
I also thought that since the Australian Government had the guts to front its [Aboriginal] issues recently, and start down the path of compensation and reconciliation, that I should pick up this issue, he said.

Visual WebGui, developer of the AJAX enterprise application development and deployment platform, has announced the availability of their browser-based solution.Visual WebGui is an open source framework, which is available for graphical user interfaces used for web applications. Visual WebGui, which is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET framework, is expected to launch a Microsoft Silverlight compliant solution, supported by Microsoft.Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), is a combination of Javascript and XML technologies that allow the content of a web page to be updated without reloading the entire page, thereby enabling browser-based applications to behave like software applications.Visual WebGui solves the development setbacks associated with AJAX by providing developers with a Rapid Application Development solution with full Win Forms support. Visual WebGui is delivered with a designer, the application interfaces (WinForms designer), instead of Word documents (ASP.NET designer). This enables interfaces using drag-and-drop editing. Visual WebGui is available under LGPL.

LAS VEGAS Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price, Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless, a cell-phone industry trade show in Las Vegas. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone.Sprint, which has been losing subscribers, will spend $150 million to advertise the Instinct when it launches, compared with $30 million for a typical product introduction, according to David Owens, the company’s director of devices.Like the iPhone, the Instinct lacks a keypad and has just a few buttons. Most of the functions are accessed by touching the screen.A few touch-screen phones appeared on the U.S. market last holiday season, after the iPhone’s debut in June.Verizon Wireless launched the LG Voyager, which has an exterior touch screen and folds out to reveal a non-touch screen paired with a keyboard. Sprint introduced the Touch by HTC, a slim pad with only a touch screen.Both phones were hampered by the lack of software designed specifically for a touch screen. The Voyager dealt with that by adding a keyboard. The Touch grafted some touch-friendly features on to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system, which is designed for smart phones that either lack a touch screen or are intended for use with a stylus. Some functions on the Touch are hard or impossible to use by tapping with the fingers alone.The Instinct is based on a Samsung phone that’s already available under different names, and with different software, in South Korea and Europe. Sprint commissioned its own software from European design house Icon Mobile.”We took a more active part than we ever have” in a phone’s development, Owens said. “This was designed from the ground up to be a touch-screen phone.”The software is based on Java, a commonly used programming language that should make it easy to develop applications for the phone.The Instinct will have a few features the iPhone lacks. For one, it will be the first consumer phone in the U.S. to use EV-DO Rev. A, the fastest cellular broadband technology available on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks.AT%26T Inc. has phones that use a competing technology with equivalent speeds, but the iPhone is not one of them: It runs on a comparatively slow network, supplemented by Wi-Fi access.The Instinct also contains a Global Positioning System chip, for location applications. The iPhone lacks one, but it can use cellular and Wi-Fi signals to determine an approximate position.The Instinct’s screen measures 3.1 inches diagonally, compared with the iPhone’s 3.5 inches.The Instinct won’t be able to take input from more than one finger at a time: The iPhone’s characteristic “pinch to zoom out, spread to zoom in” feature won’t work. Sprint compensates for this by using the phone’s motion sensor. In a demonstration of a prototype, tilting the phone while holding a button made a Web page scroll.

YOKOHAMA, Japan The new sprawling Japanese shopping mall has the usual restaurants and stores, even a fitness gym. But it’s the shiny Camry and other Toyota models that take center stage - not only at the dealers but on display in the walkways.The indoor shopping mall, with 220 stores and restaurants, opening to the public this week, is being developed, built and operated by a relative newcomer to the business - Toyota Motor Corp.It’s the latest attempt by the Japanese automaker to tackle a serious problem in its home Japan market: Young people are rapidly losing interest in cars. Overseas, however, Toyota is doing so well that it has nearly overtaken General Motors Corp. in global vehicle sales.Sales of new autos in Japan for the fiscal year starting next month are forecast to drop to a 27-year-low of 5.3 million vehicles, down 0.6 percent from the previous year, as demand gets battered by soaring gas prices and sluggish wage growth, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.In Japan, the usual old ways of selling cars like showrooms and TV ads are no longer working. Youngsters are choosing to spend on mobile phones and laptops than on cars, Toyota officials say.A study last year by The Nikkei, Japan’s top business daily, found that some people in their 20s said they didn’t want a car, even if it were free. Others said they didn’t find the idea of going for a drive with a date or zipping around on a sportscar as particularly appealing.The goal of owning a car - taken for granted during the modernization that followed World War II - is no longer true, the report said.Other factors, including Japan’s declining population, are behind the falling sales. Japan has excellent public transportation, including trains and subways, and so many feel they don’t need a car.Also, parking is often expensive, with many apartment buildings charging about $100 per month. And traffic can be congested.In that context, perking interest is so difficult that automakers are resorting to offering other consumer activities, like grocery shopping, to coax buyers to consider buying a car or trade in their wheels for a new model.Dealers must actively seek out buyers, instead of passively waiting for people to come to the showrooms, car companies say.”We need to provide opportunities for people to come in contact with cars,” Toyota Senior Managing Director Yoichiro Ichimaru, who oversees Japan sales, told The Associated Press Tuesday.Toyota Automall Development Corp., a Toyota subsidiary set up in 1999, already runs one shopping mall in Gifu Prefecture, central Japan, near Toyota’s headquarters.The new Tressa mall, inspired by the French word for braiding “tressage,” in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, opened partly in December, and is set to fully open to the public this week.The mall looks much like any other mall, with its clothing and toy stores, arcade game center, nail salon and cafes.But its shopping carts are shaped like cars, and a plastic model store boasts a big lineup of car models, including Toyotas. And massive space is allocated to Toyota showrooms.Toyota is also showing off its robot technology, including a humanoid that plays a trumpet. Atsushi Komatsuki, president of Toyota Automall Development, said he hopes to have partner robots helping out at the mall later this year.But it’s unclear if Toyota’s sales tactic will work.Mieko Yabe, shopping for clothes with her baby at Tressa, said the mall is convenient because she lives in the neighborhood, but expressed little interest in owning a Toyota car.”We have absolutely no interest in Japanese cars. My husband drives a BMW,” the 35-year-old housewife said.Toyota, which controls nearly half of the Japanese market, is seeing its domestic sales fall, selling 2.26 million vehicles in Japan last year, down 4 percent from the previous year. Overseas sales, meanwhile, jumped 10 percent on year to 7.1 million vehicles.Other Japanese automakers are also working hard to boost domestic sales.Last year, Nissan set up a recording company to have popular bands produce original tunes that were TV ad jingles for Nissan models but were also sold as CDs and downloads.Nissan also set up a shopping Web page featuring cute mascotlike items and developed cars with special features and marketing campaigns to target young women.Atsushi Kawai, auto analyst with Mizuho Investors Securities, believes manufacturers haven’t done enough to develop cars for the Japanese market, focusing instead on costs cuts and overseas models that sell in numbers.”Domestic sales are a total disaster now,” he said. “A car used to symbolize a dream. People used to work hard to buy a car. These days, nobody is saying that. No one thinks a car is cool anymore.”

Visual WebGui, developer of the AJAX enterprise application development and deployment platform, has announced the availability of their browser-based solution.Visual WebGui is an open source framework, which is available for graphical user interfaces used for web applications. Visual WebGui, which is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET framework, is expected to launch a Microsoft Silverlight compliant solution, supported by Microsoft.Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), is a combination of Javascript and XML technologies that allow the content of a web page to be updated without reloading the entire page, thereby enabling browser-based applications to behave like software applications.Visual WebGui solves the development setbacks associated with AJAX by providing developers with a Rapid Application Development solution with full Win Forms support. Visual WebGui is delivered with a designer, the application interfaces (WinForms designer), instead of Word documents (ASP.NET designer). This enables interfaces using drag-and-drop editing. Visual WebGui is available under LGPL.