Recently in New Technologies Category

It is a great time to be a web developer! We recently mentioned how Opera had released version 9.5 of the Opera browser. Today, the mozilla foundation will release version 3 of Firefox.

To celebrate the release of Firefox version 3, I thought I would provide you with a list of interesting articles and a download of FireFox 3 - Revealed courtesy of Sitepoint.com.

First up, get the most out of Firefox 3 — with this FREE eBook from sitepoint.com!

Next up, webmonkey (yes, they are back!) has a great article on Why You Should Download Firefox 3 Right Now

Last, LifeHacker speed tested the 4 major browsers (Opera 9.5, Safari for windows 3.1.1, Firefox v3 RC3, IE 7) to see which was the fastest in 3 major categories: startup time, Javascript & CSS, and memory use. Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers

Regardless of which browser you find to be your favorite, the fact that all the major browser vendors are updating their browsers to better support CSS, HTML standards and Javascript will surely make our lives as developers easier and more efficient!

Yesterday we learned that Firefox version 3 finally has an official launch date. But what does that mean to those of us who develop for the Web, and for the end user?

Instead of creating an exhaustive list of the details of version 3, I’ll instead point you to the Field Guide to Firefox 3, by far THE best guide I have seen so far on the new (and in some cases, improved) features in FireFox3.

Testing your web pages/sites in multiple versions of IE has always been a pain. Mostly because you can only have one version of IE installed on your computer at a time (yes, I know there are some hacks you can use to have more than one installed, but they are buggy, prone to crashing and dont give you accurate results). And, if you upgrade your XP installation to SP3, it comes with IE7 with no ability to downgrade back to version 6.

I have long been a proponent of using Microsoft’s Virtual PC and their free Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images. These allow you to run virtual machines with XP and a specific version of IE (6, 7 or 8; no version of 5.5 available). While this works and is certainly handy, it means that if you want to see how your site looks on all the versions simultaneously, you will have to load up at least two VM’s. Depending on how much system memory your computer has, this can bog things down quite a bit. There’s also the annoying fact that these VM’s expire every 3 months.

So the method works, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. Looks like someone felt the same way, but actually had the know-how and motivation to do something about it!

Released earlier this year, IETester allows you to view your site in IE version 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 and 8.0 beta1 all within a single “window” in different tabs. You can now quickly tab through all 4 versions of IE to see how they compare!

Note that this is alpha software, so don’t be surprised if you experience some bugginess. For example, when I switched from tabs to a side-by-side comparison (similar to the image above) and tried to scroll horizontally, the screen for that IE version went blank and took about 10 seconds to come back. But once they can get these minor annoyances worked out, I can see IETester easily becoming a top-10 indispensable WebDev tool.

Firefox 3 has been in beta testing for a while now and it seems as though a bona fide release candidate is available. Remember this is only for testing and not a full release, so if you’re not into testing then wait just a bit longer for a full relase. If you’re interested in what’s in store, Lifehacker details the top ten features added to Firefox 3.

Being a usability weirdo myself, I find the feature that removes the back button entirely when there is no page to go back to especially ingenious. Now why in the world didn’t I think of that?

If you remember back to my New Technologies on the Horizon post, I talked about how I thought mash-ups, or simply combing disparate sources of information to create a richer experience, is going to be very important in the coming years. I came across an article today about a new project coming out of the Yahoo! labs that is a very good example of how this new method will change the current landscape.

SearchMonkey

SearchMonkey, through the use of php snippets, can take an ordinary search result like this

and turn it into something like this

Imagine being able to have the main missouri.edu search feature able to display not only the results of your search but also other relevant information, like a picture, contact information, etc. right inside the search results listing, thereby greatly enhancing the end users’ experiece!

Opera recently announced the release of their Dragonfly Web Developer application, that will be built directly into the Opera Browser.

From their website

Opera Dragonfly is Opera’s all-new set of developer tools, designed to give developers a lightweight-but-powerful application that provides effective mechanisms for web standards debugging and problem solving without slowing down the browser, and fits in nicely with the development workflow.

To evaluate it, you will need to download the 9.5 beta 2 version of the Opera browser. Once installed, launch the browser and go to Tools/Advanced/Developer Tools.

It appears that with Dragonfly, Opera is taking aim at Firebug. Although similar, Dragonfly is not yet as robust as Firebug, though it is easy to see that it has potential. This is a very early release, so it will be interesting to see what features Opera decides to add to this tool.

Of course, as a developer, ANY tool that helps us do our job in a faster, more efficient manner is appreciated.

I often get requests to put audio or video files on Web sites and turn them into “podcasts.” Unfortunately, an audio or video file alone does not a podcast make. I often don’t have the communication skills or the time to easily explain that you need more to make a podcast, so I just put the files up.

Now, thanks to CommonCraft there’s a fun and easy video to explain what podcasting is to anybody. Thanks guys!

More videos explaining other Web technologies at the CommonCraft Show.

I have to admit, Amy (Reeter)'s question during our Web Dev meeting on Tuesday, of what I think are the next new technologies, caught me a little off guard. Because of that, I don't think my response was as complete as it should have been. I'd like to expand a bit on what I stated.

The next new technology that will affect our jobs, in my opinion (and this is PURELY speculation), is mash-ups. If you are unfamiliar with mash-ups, it is a new breed of interactive web application. It takes data from multiple, external/internal sources (using web services and/or online application APIs), and "mashes" that data into a brand new online service.

With the development of Mizzou Wire, Mizzou’s news and features Web site, we knew we were going to want to have multimedia with our stories — including slide shows, audio, video and other kinds of media we haven’t thought of yet. The challenge was finding a way to present all this information in a uniform way so the end user could easily view it, but also make it manageable for us to update using our content management system.

It took a bit of research and trial and error, but I think we’ve found a system that covers all the bases and doesn’t require a lot of money or programming time.