Cool Trends in Web Stuff

HTML 5 is the new standard markup under development for web pages.  Based on some play areas demonstrated on this site, the HTML 5 should bring some cool new things to the web. 

For casual readers who just want to play, go here and here.  Don’t forget to draw on the screen and “pick up” the Google logo and play with it.

  

It’s not out there yet, but according to this site there’s only 4,193 days to go: http://ishtml5readyyet.com/. 

For deeper readers, HTML is the base language of web pages.  When companies build browsers, they use these standards to determine how to render things on the screen.  So Mozilla, Chrome, IE all read the standards and they all read "<a>” and say, I need to create a link.

Since the base HTML was released, there’s been lots of add-ons to make it more appealing and interactive.  CSS was added to give richer web pages and to simplify the coding.  You could specify a layout and then every page would use the same layout without having to specify the font for each paragraph.  JavaScript is the latest tool in basic interactivity.  It adds a layer to a standard HTML web page which can do interactive things.  If a menu pops, or something moves, chances are its done in JavaScript.  Ajax and Javascript combined help you so you don’t have to refresh all the time.  And then there’s the true plugins to web pages, which move you out of the rhelm of the HTML world: Java Applets, Flash, and now Silverlight.

Java applets are the oldest form of the out-of-HTML interactivity but they’re pretty sparse now.  Most people are use to Flash, which sits in a webpage but isn’t HTML.  The latest entry is Silverlight which sits in a browser like HTML and Flash, but is neither.  Combining a programming world and a rich graphical world, Silverlight is a plugin too.

Anyways, that was the primer for people who need primers.  Back to playing my HTML 5 games.

Posting from New Orleans

In the middle of the keynote presentation of the Microsoft Developers Network conference in New Orleans.  There’s a guy talking about “the cloud”.  It’s big here.

While he’s talking, I’m reading an awesome piece from Politics Daily on how evangelicals are coming around regarding the environment.  The best line :

We've had an inadequate view of human sin. Because we believe in free markets, we've acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he "believes in young people."

Thanks Grant for the recommendation on Blue like Jazz – finished it on the plane and tied in very well to this article.

Back to the cloud.  Viewing some Communicator 14 releases that seem to replace Live Meeting and Messenger and wraps together some enterprise apps into a single package.   Oh cool, people are tweeting on it from this room when I Google Communicator 14.  Whoa, stand down inner geek.