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Internet Explorer 9 and SilverLight 4 Announced Breaking News

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:55:07 +0000

Microsoft just announced that they been working on Internet Explorer 9 and SilverLight 4. Below I have listed a brief run down of all that you can expect in the both Internet Explorer 9 and SilverLight 4.

Internet Explorer 9 Whats new?

Increased JavaScript Performance

The latest builds of Internet Explorer 9 shows that the performance is comparable to that of FireFox 3.6 and Chrome 4 and the latest Web Kit Nightly build. If true this is a huge improvement.

Internet Explorer 9 JavaScript Performance

Standards Support CSS 3.0 and HTML 5

What does that mean? In plain english it means support for rounded corners, text shadows, Box shadows, video support etc without the need for using images or scripts. Thought the latest ACID 3 test for Internet Explorer 9 doesn’t seem to be that great.

Acid 3

Rounded Corners

CSS Selectors

Uses Graphics hardware acceleration for rendering

We’re changing IE to use the DirectX family of Windows APIs to enable many advances for web developers. The starting point is moving all graphics and text rendering from the CPU to the graphics card using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Graphics hardware acceleration means that rich, graphically intensive sites can render faster while using less CPU. Now, web developers can take advantage of the hardware ecosystem’s advances in graphics while they continue to author sites with the same interoperable standards patterns they’re used to.

In addition to better performance, this technology shift also increases font quality and readability with sub-pixel positioning

Rendering of font normally

96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom using GDI (note jaggies)

Rendering of font using Graphic card hardware

96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom: Direct2D (without jaggies)

SilverLight 4 Whats new?

Empowering richer, more interactive experiences

Silverlight is already in use as a comprehensive platform for building rich experiences both for application and pure media scenarios including HD quality, interactive video through Smooth Streaming. Silverlight 4 introduces additional capabilities to enable creation of ever more rich, appealing high-performance interactive experiences and innovative media experiences:

Fluid interface enhancements advance application usability through animation effects.
Webcam and microphone to allow sharing of video and audio for instance for chat or customer service applications.
Audio and video local recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server interaction, enabling a wide range of end-user interaction and communication scenarios for example video conferencing.
Bring data in to your application with features such as copy and paste or drag and drop.
Long lists can now be scrolled effortlessly with the mouse wheel.
Support conventional desktop interaction models through new features such as right-click context menu.
Support for Google’s Chrome browser.
Performance optimizations mean Silverlight 4 applications start quicker and run 200% faster than the equivalent Silverlight 3 application.
Deep Zoom enhancements include hardware acceleration to support larger datasets and faster animation.
Multi-touch support enables a range of gestures and touch interactions to be integrated into user experiences.
Multicast networking, enabling Enterprises to lower the cost of streaming broadcast events such as company meetings and training, interoperating seamlessly with existing Windows Media Server streaming infrastructure.
Content protection for H.264 media through Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady.
Output protection for audio/video streams allowing content owners or distributors to ensure protected content is only viewed through a secure video connection.

For Sandboxed applications

Place HTML within your application enabling much tighter integration with content from web servers such as email, help and reports.
Provide support for ‘toast’ notification windows, allowing applications to communicate status or change information while the user is working on another application through a popup window on the taskbar.
Offline DRM, extending the existing Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady technology to work offline. Protected content can be delivered with an embedded license so that users can go offline immediately and start enjoying their content.
Control over aspects of UI include window settings such as start position, size and chrome.

For Trusted applications

Read and write files to the user’s MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyPictures and MyVideos folder (or equivalent for non-windows platforms) for example storage of media files and taking local copies of reports.
Run other desktop programs such as Office, for example requesting Outlook to send an email, send a report to Word or data to Excel.
COM automation enables access to devices and other system capabilities by calling into application components; for instance to access a USB security card reader.
A new user interface for requesting application privileges access outside the standard Silverlight sandbox.
Group policy objects allow organizations to tailor which applications may have elevated trust.
Full keyboard support in fullscreen mode richer kiosk and media applications.
Enhancements to networking allow cross-domain access without a security policy file.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Microsoft, Software, Technology Tags: Browser, Internet Explorer, Silverlight

Prism and XUL Could Have Been A Silverlight And Adobe AIR Killer

Arpit Jacob — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:46:56 +0000

Rich Internet Application are the future of Web Based Applications and we have seen a number of competing technologies come up in the last year namely Silverlight, Adobe AIR and Prism. In the future we will see a tighter integration between desktop applications and the web. I couldn’t help noticing the similarities between XUL, Silverlight and And Adobe AIR. A few common similarities that I immediately noticed are.

All of them use a some form of Proprietary XML (A super set of HTML) to define the User Interface.
The emphasis on the use of existing Web technologies like DOM, JavaScript and CSS.
Cross Platform. (Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight is under development and Adobe AIR will run on Linux once version 1.0 is out)

Some people like to point out that XAML is a ripoff of XUL. I don’t fully agree with them, but I am sure Microsoft did borrow some ideas from XUL, but that’s technology my friend, ideas are meant to be copied if someone can do it better then they deserve to win.

One thing that differentiates Silverlight and Adobe AIR from XUL is that both of them come with a runtime engine based on their own advanced Proprietary technology and programming languages i.e. .NET and Flash which greatly enhances their capabilities. And this is where both Silverlight and AIR beat Prism /XUL hands down.

Its interesting to see that Mozilla is pushing Prism as an answer to Silverlight and Adobe AIR. I frankly feel its a rather poor attempt since I don’t see much difference between FireFox and Prism, i.e, Prism is just a stripped down version of FireFox.

XUL had a very good chance at taking a shot at Silverlight and AIR long before they had even come out. XUL, Canvas and SVG could have made a really powerful combination.

Some of the key reasons why XUL fails to compete

Lack of proper documentation Examples.
No marketing.
No advanced programming capabilities.
Inability to package as a Offline desktop Application.
A Good IDE. (You can’t expect Web Developers to waste time programming in Notepad)

Out of the three I feel Adobe AIR holds a lot of promise, Silverlight is too tied in to Microsoft own platform and they don’t seem committed to making it work on Linux (if they were they would have developed it they selves instead of giving off the work to Miguel de Icaza and the Mono developers) also it is not possible to native develop desktop applications. Prism/XUL is too raw and unfocused to be considered a worthy competitor.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Internet, Open Source, Technology Tags: Programming, Silverlight, Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

FireFox 3.0 And Opera Have Inbuilt Support For Video, SVG Is Pretty Cool

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:17:48 +0000

Update: Looks like Opera also has inbuilt support for video in the upcoming release. Read the Comments below

While you might have heard of Flash, SilverLight etc which are proprietary application frameworks to create RIA(Rich Internet Application) and have been developed by Adobe and Microsoft respectively. But did you know that Firefox has inbuilt support for various frameworks such as SVG, Theora and OGG, which can be used to create and build RIAs.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) an Open Standard by W3C is an XML specification and file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated.
Ogg is an open standard for a free container format for digital multimedia, unrestricted by software patents and designed for efficient streaming and manipulation.
Theora is a video codec being developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation as part of their Ogg project. Based upon On2 Technologies’ VP3 codec, and christened by On2 as the successor in VP3’s lineage, Theora is targeted at competing with MPEG-4 video (e.g., H.264, Xvid and DivX), RealVideo, Windows Media Video, and similar lower-bitrate video compression schemes.

FireFox 3 Added Inbuilt Support for Video Playback

FireFox 3.0 has officially added inbuilt support for the open video format Theora. You can download FireFox 3.0 from here to see the examples in action. For example you can easily use Html tag like the example given below to show a video without the need for installing any Third Party tool to view the video.

Also Check Out this cool implementation of the inbuilt video support and SVG it tries to simulate the Microsoft Surface interface.

FireFox 3 And RIA

What do think happens if you are able to combine all these Three Open Source Standard? I see the possibility of creating RIA based purely on Open Standards.

While SVG has been there for a really long time and FireFox has inbuilt support for it not many use it for animation. I did a bit of hunting around and found some cool SVG Applications. These are built using only SVG hence you can view them only in FireFox.

Blobular – Check out this amazing demo using SVG. If you play around with it you can see how powerful SVG is.
Photos – If you have seen Microsoft Surface then this demo will Wow you.
CanvasScape – How about a 3D game
An MS Paint Application

source: Mozillalinks

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Open Source, Software, Technology Tags: FireFox, Silverlight, Web-Development

The SilverLight Poster and more on Silverlight and Microsoft

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:58:25 +0000

SilverLight has launched its community site with a list of blogs and a Forum. Dare found a really cool Silverlight Poster which shows how and what the silverlight framework is built of. It shows the list of class libraries from the .Net Framework which make up silverlight. Click the picture below to see the full poster.

There have been changes to commercial API as Steve Clayton points out.

For basic usage, the API will always be free
Usage up to one million unique users is free, except for:
Windows Live Search is free up to 750,000 searches per months
Virtual Earth (Live Maps) is free up to 3 million map tiles per month
Silverlight video streaming is free up to 4 gig, with free unlimited streaming, and no limits on users
Above one million unique users, sites will have to pay 25 cents per user per year
For Search and Virtual Earth, sites will need to negotiate a commercial agreement with Microsoft
No beta services will charge for usage of the API. You will only have to pay after it leaves beta
Users will be averaged out per quarter, so if you have a big spike one month, you won’t have to pay for it

Source Inside Microsoft

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Microsoft, Software, Technology Tags: .NET, Microsoft, Programming, Silverlight