I am not going to name names, but several HTML5 supporters have uttered the following lie: "Everyone just uses Webkit anyway". How is this different from Internet Explorer 6 plus Flash in 2001 ?

The reason many people use Webkit is because many billion dollar companies do not want to pay for web browser development. So they leach off some open source project instead and then call it an open platform. Even when the platform (Google Android, Palm WebOS, Apple iOS) is totally proprietary. Oracle Solaris and Microsoft .NET are partially open source, but nobody calls them open platforms. Code signing, hardware DRM and API lock-in is now more important than owning the source code itself.

Why is HTML5 winning when Webkit is the next Internet Explorer ? Several iPhone and WebOS HTML5 applications do not work in IE, Opera and Firefox. How is this "open" and "standards based" ? Some developers even check for the Webkit user agent string and then refuse to work in Firefox. The last time I saw this was when Microsoft tried to piss off Opera.

I have worked with browser incompatibility issues for over ten years. Today's browsers are amazingly similar. You just have to use standards based code. If HTML5 means Webkit only then why not use native code instead ? Almost every single mobile device uses some kind of ARM processor. The only problem is the myriad of GPU systems. Which will be replaced by CPU/GPU hybrids in the future. If HTML5 continues down the current path my C++ might become more portable than my Javascript.

I love the web. But I never code for Webkit only. Why is this even logical ? HTML5 is winning because everyone is cheating ?

Posted by JP at 08:35 PM | Permalink

Testing out the 1.6.0_21 new progress-class attribute in JNLP.

What is funny about this new release is that all JavaFX developers must PAY MONEY to run their code. Or they get this message. Or maybe I am wrong and screwing up cross domain issues. Who the heck knows. This is the second or third time they pull a move like this without writing any advisories on it.

It is also funny how clicking YES and NO both hang my software. Is someone making assumptions about threads ? Silly me ?

You can see the new DownloadServiceListener loader function here . Media player and 3D is now broken because Sun changed the rules... again. If nothing happens you might have to clean the Web Start cache. You must run Java 6u21.

Posted by JP at 03:56 AM | Permalink

This is what one gigabyte of RAM looks like on 32bit Windows Vista. The machine used to have two gigabytes but static electricity seems to have fried one of the chips when I replaced the DVD drive. I can run the Mass Effect 2 demo under Steam, but the Nike Store is a much harder challenge.

The store is awesome though. But most of the products are not for sale in my country. But I can buy a $90 t-shirt if I spend $400 on shoes !

PS
Go Spain !

Posted by JP at 06:22 PM | Permalink

A PHP shared server account costs $9 a month. A J2EE virtual dedicated costs $50. A .NET dedicated costs $250. .NET and IIS on a VM over Remote Desktop is a horrible development experience. SSH, SFTP, Dreamweaver, Eclipse and J2EE is much easier. And Apache Perl/Python/PHP is often installed by default on Linux.

Microsoft intentionally cripples their cheap server products with idiotic limitations like two (or is it one ?) Remote Desktop sessions for VPN access etc. Facebook has 60 000 servers and hundreds of developers. Think about it. .NET is great for consultants who want to bill a 100 hours for Hello World.

Microsoft has a great platform. It is just terrible to use without sitting on the same IP subnet. VPN access to VM hosted IIS is oversold middle-management-promotion price saving crap.

J2EE (Caucho/IBM/Oracle) on a VM (Xen/Vmware/Parallels) is a cheap (or expensive) slice of awesome.

Posted by JP at 04:21 PM | Permalink