HTML5

Adobe announced a preview version of a new application dubbed Adobe Edge meant for creating dynamic Web content using HTML5 and related open Web standards.

"This is a motion and interactive tool for designers who want to build interactive Web content using Web standards," said Adobe Group Product Manager Devin Fernandez.

"More workloads that were previously reserved for Flash are now being done with Web standards," Fernandez admitted. "We see that as a huge opportunity for the company, to help people take advantage of HTML5."

Norwegian software developer Opera Software has at last launched its flagship web browser Opera 11 to the general public after releasing its beta version earlier in November.

The last iteration of the browser comes with such notable features as "tab stacking," which allows users to combine multiple tabs into a group in order to reduce clutter. Besides, the browser now enables extensions which all major browser makers have already included long ago with Safari being the most recent to introduce them, when version 5 was released in June.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 was ranked as the top browser that passed the HTML5 conformance tests. The Worldwide Web Consortium has released the results of its first tests which showed the IE9 as the browser that most closely adheres to the latest set of web standards.

While the HTML5 specification is yet to be finalized and these tests cover only a portion of the spec, still the top position of the IE9 is a sign of a big job made by Microsoft.

A group of customers filed a lawsuit against Ringleader Digital on the allegations that the company is abusing HTML5's local storage feature, using it to store a tracking "cookie" that can't be deleted when you delete your browser's cookies.

Websites use the HTML5 local storage feature to store certain data on user’s hard drive so as to allow them quicker access later on. Thus, a Webmail service could use this feature to store some of your inbox data on your hard drive, so that when you visit your Webmail inbox, it'll load more quickly.

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the launch of its Adobe HTML5 Pack for Adobe® Illustrator® CS5 which is used extensively by designers of mobile device and web content. This pack provides initial support for HTML5 and CSS3 and extends the scalable vector graphics (SVG) capability in Illustrator, making it easier to design, deliver and optimize compelling content for mobile devices and the web.

A new activity group in the W3C (World Wide Consortium) is exploring the task of incorporating voice recognition and speech synthesis interfaces within Web pages. A new incubator group will file a report a year from now summarizing the feasibility of adding voice and speech features into HTML, the W3C's standard for rendering Web pages.

Among other companies AT&T, Google, Microsoft and the Mozilla Foundation also have their own task forces who participate in the research.

Talking about the Internet standards Microsoft’s director of product management for Developer Platforms Brad Becker, noted in a blog posting that Silverlight technology enriches the web more than what is possible with HTML5 standards.

While in recent time standards-based multimedia features offered by HTML5 have taken the spotlight lately from proprietary technologies such as Silverlight and Adobe's Flash, Becker thinks that Silverlight still has a purpose in the wake of HTML5's emergence.

This week YouTube has unveiled a new version its YouTube Mobile website (m.youtube.com) specially meant for HTML5-capable browsers such as the iPhone's Safari and those on Android-based phones.

"[The update] incorporates the features and functionality you've come to expect from the .com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists, the ability to designate 'favorite,' 'like' or 'unlike' videos directly from your device," YouTube product manager Andrey Doronichev writes in a introductory blog post.

Mozilla at last has released first beta of Firefox 4 with a number of innovative features and new appearance.

“If you are using a Windows PC, the most noticeable new feature will be the look of the browser,” noted Mike Beltzner on Mozilla’s blog.

Opera unveiled this week its final Opera 10.6 version which claims to feature more speed, fixed vulnerabilities and addition of a number of new elements.

Opera has included several HTML5 features into its new flagship web browser. Now Opera 10.6 supports Web Workers, the Geolocation API and better runs offline web apps, and it has
improved support for the Cross-Document Messaging spec.

Apple was joined by a number of other companies who do not want to support Adobe Flash platform. Among them is Digital Playground, one of the major players in the adult film industry.

Digital Playground said that it will switch from Flash to HTML5 as soon as desktop browsers fully meet the specification requirements.

Yahoo unveiled its web-based mail service on HTML5 platform this week during the Hadoop Summit in Santa Clara. The company’s new service will first target Apple iPhone users.

The new HTML5 Yahoo! Mail is not an application that can be downloaded, instead it is a web service that can be accessed only through a web browser. However, the first users who will access it will be iPhone owners.

During its web developer-focused conference Google announced the introduction of a new video format WebM. This new open-source, royalty-free video format is based on the VP8 codec intended for use with HTML5 video. According to the announcement the goal of the project is to develop "a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone." The initiative is supported by Google, Mozilla, Opera and many other companies.

Apple has released the list of the websites that are compatible with its coming computer tablet iPad. On its website Apple created a page that lists those web portals that are already “iPad ready”. The page lists the high profile sites that employ HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript to function better on the new device. None of the websites have Flash. Users who will load these pages from their iPad device will be automatically directed to special versions.