Technology, Teaching and Learning
but not necessarily in the correct order
This week (the final one) is a catch up on some material that we didn’t manage to cover earlier in the course
HTTP and Web Servers – HTTP clients and servers
Open Source and Free Software open source 1213
The labs on Wednesday and Friday are given over to the 2nd ITB test
This session is about the history of HTML, XHTML and the way that semantic HTML can be used to clarify / simplify markup and enhance reuse, slides (PDF).
The site markup which is cluttered and messy is HTML source
Two excellent posts about Web Browsers
The first from Mozilla celebrates 5 years of Firefox and explains what’s been going on this last year and where browser technology will be going next “super fast JavaScript, modern CSS, HTML5, support for the various web-apps standards, downloadable font support, offline application support, raw graphics through canvas and WebGL, native video, advanced XHR capabilities mixed with new security tools and network capabilities”.
The second from Glyn Moody contains a potted history of the development of browser technology. His Computer World column is always worth reading.
Video from a symposium organized by Finland’s Technology Academy Foundation, found at Beet.TV
Perhaps this years most disruptive technology announcement – a way for users stuck in previous versions of Internet Explorer (which seems to be many corporate environments) to seamlessly use a Chrome frame for their browsing experience. The ACID test video seems very impressive.
Coverage on Neowin , readwriteweb and webmonkey
Google started rolling out developer invites to Google Wave and reviews and applications are starting to appear.
A larger set of invites will appear later in the year according to various articles.
Slashdot reported that “Ray Ozzie says that Google Wave is ‘anti-Web,’ which seems rather odd, as at least Google have said that it will use standard internet protocols and be open source. Rather like the internet and the web and not at all like Silverlight or the lacklustre IE8.
One way to get users off IE6 is to literally stop access to their favorite web sites unless they upgrade – Youtube has started to run a banner that indicates that time is running out for those stuck on IE6. Interestingly, in a sample study from digg, many of the sample IE 6 users surveyed indicated that they would upgrade, but they couldn’t due to corporate policies or lack of upgrade rights.
Its worth reading the history of IE6 at wikipedia, which suggests that 12% of people are still using a browser brought out in 2001.
I’m currently sourcing journal articles on Social Capital, looking for links to learning, learning communities and social networks. Finding these either involves Google Scholar or Lancaster Universities meta-lib which is a web based search engine that collates results from a variety of online journals and the other ‘consolidation’ portals that are out there.
No matter where the journals come from they all end up in Papers, which is effectively iTunes for PDFs. It offers collections (which are like playlists), embedded notes and perhaps most importantly a match facility to get meta information (title, authors, dates, journals etc.) from a variety of online sources automagically. A fantastic piece of software which is a must buy for Mac users doing research.
Well, Google finally “dropped its bomb” as the commentators would have it, with its announcement of an open sourced web powered operating system for netbooks. The question is – will Windows 7 be good enough to maintain the stranglehold that Microsoft has maintained by extending the life of Windows XP (and giving it away virtually for free to netbook manufacturers).
Coverage everywhere:-
Neowin is reporting that Firefox has jumped a couple of points (with IE dropping a few).
Internet Explorer fell from 62.09% to 59.49%, while Firefox rose from 28.75% to 30.33%
Congratulations to FF and the open source world, but what are the reasons why IE is still at 60%?
Microsoft has achieved a lock in the corporate world by binding the use of IE into its Exchange and Back Office infrastructure. Users accessing Outlook through a non Microsoft browser see a very reduced functionality (there is really no reason for this as all modern browsers support xmlhttp like functionality). Seems like a non-standard proprietary lock-in to me.
Of course one of the main reasons people don’t switch is that they don’t even know what a browser is, as demonstrated by the Google team in New York.
IE has made some improvements to get to version 8, including better CSS 2 support, although much of the functionality seems to have borrowed from the other browsers. Any reasonable analysis indicates that innovation is taking place in Chrome, FF or Opera.
Techmeme is also reporting some stats