Developer Software

Mozilla updated its bleeding-edge browser Firefox Aurora to version 6 just before the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S., finally giving Firefox fans the same range of in-development browsers that have been easily accessible to Chrome users for some time. Firefox Aurora 6 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, Linux, and like its Google counterpart Chrome dev, it offers fewer major changes than what people are used to, but it offers them more often.

In a blog post, Mozilla said that this first release of Firefox Aurora 6 includes an improved add-ons manager that comes with a plugin check … Read more

Step aside, Google Docs, there's a new JavaScript tour de force in town.

I'm talking about the latest project from programmer Fabrice Bellard, a JavaScript program that emulates an x86 processor fast enough to run Linux in a Web browser.

The JavaScript PC Emulator can do the work of an Intel 486 chip from the 1990s, but doesn't have a built-in floating point unit for numeric processing, Bellard said. Happily, Linux itself can emulate that, and a version of the operating system's core--2.6.20--runs on the foundation.

Bellard published a technical description of the JavaScript PC Emulator … Read more

Mozilla, taking interest in the Node.js project to run JavaScript programs on servers, not just browsers, has passed an early milestone with its own flavor of the software.

Node.js is built with the V8 JavaScript engine from Google's Chrome browser, but Mozilla is transplanting Firefox's JavaScript technology in a project called SpiderNode. (The JavaScript engine in Firefox is called SpiderMonkey, and the hybrid technology used in SpiderNode is called V8Monkey.)

"We now have a Node executable running on V8Monkey," though it still crashes at this early stage, said SpiderNode project member Paul O'Shannessy … Read more

Adobe's traditional user base of creatives are some of the most computationally resource-intensive folk I can think of (along with hard-core gamers and scientists). So how does a company like Adobe jump on the tablet money train without having to develop a host of new applications? Let others do it for them. And voila: the Photoshop Touch software developer's kit, which will make it possible to create an ecosystem of tablet-based products capable of driving Photoshop. Along with the SDK, Adobe's delivering three iPad apps designed to use it: Color Lava, Eazel, and Nav.

It's a great idea; since a tablet is too underpowered to do "real" work, why not make it the interface to a computer that does the heavy lifting? Of course, it's not a new concept--just a thin client reborn for the 21st century, or alternatively, turning your PC into a cloud. It will enable app development for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS platforms, in addition to Mac OS and Windows systems.

Plus, since the apps only work with Photoshop CS5 (with a free update patch to 12.04), it may serve as an inspiration for all those laggardly CS4 upgraders to cough up the bucks. Or subscribe. By default, the SDK communicates via iTunes and Bonjour, if you don't have either, you can configure it to operate via a peer-to-peer network. … Read more

Steve Jobs thinks that HTML5 is the future of media-rich content on the Web, and eventually he might be right. But Web designers and their clients are working with Flash now, so to address this schism between the two, Adobe Labs today unveiled a new free tool called Wallaby that will convert Flash into HTML5.

Originally demonstrated at Adobe's MAX 2010 conference, the conversion process is currently workable but rough, said Adobe Flash Professional Senior Product Manager Tom Barclay. "HTML5 will be an important technology for banner ads and Web publishing," he said but cautioned that Flash … Read more

Google has made good on a promise to release technology it hopes will curtail Android's fragmentation problem, a complication for programmers who want their software to run on diverse devices.

Yesterday, the company released a "Fragment" library for older versions of Android. The library is built into the Honeycomb version of Android, offering new tools to sidestep issues like different screen sizes more easily for those using the brand-new Android 3.0. That version of the OS appears on Motorola's new Android-based Xoom tablet and will arriving on other tablets.

Now, though, the Fragment interface will … Read more

Google has passed a significant milestone with the release of its first version of Native Client, a software foundation designed to let Web-based applications tap into a person's computer chip.

The software, called Arctic Sea, is available built into Chrome 10, which entered beta testing yesterday. "A big goal of this release is to enable developers to start building Native Client modules for Chrome applications," product manager Christian Stefansen said of the Native Client release in a blog post today.

Native Client--NaCl for short--is an unusual approach to the challenge of letting people download software over the … Read more

In the competition between native applications for mobile phones vs. Web applications, hardware support often makes native apps an obvious choice for programmers. But the World Wide Web Consortium is tackling one area, touch-screen support, in an effort that could help Web apps catch up.

The W3C published an editor's draft of a new touch-screen standard for Web apps today. The draft specification is designed also for devices such as drawing tablets that don't have a screen, but today's hot market for smartphones makes touch screens the more important focus.

A standard--if designed well and adopted--would make … Read more

Facebook has released a benchmark designed to help developers test just how powerful desktop and mobile browsers are at running a new generation of games built with a new generation of Web standards.

One of the most important of those standards is the JavaScript programming language, which is ubiquitous on the Web and ever faster in browsers. Enter Facebook's JSGameBench, designed specifically for measuring game issues such as displaying "sprites," the graphics out of which animated characters are made.

"Although there are many other benchmark suites that measure JavaScript performance, we wanted to build one focused … Read more