'Net Features : html5

4 Design Frameworks Not To Miss

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:12:00 GMT

Ever since Website Magazine profiled several popular CSS and website frameworks back in late November 2012, there’s been demand from our readers for additional resources to explore. And what do you know, we managed to identify a few others!

Just like the frameworks previously mentioned, the resources listed below are definitely worthy of attention from anyone interested in developing a website quickly, easily and with as many best practices built in from the start.

Bootstrap: A now very popular framework and the inspiration for others including Workless (see below), Boostrap was built by Twitter developers and features a 12-column responsive grid, numerous components, Javascript plugins, form controls and even a Web-based tool to customize the appearance.

Workless: An HTML5/CSS3 framework which standardizes CSS, offers straightforward scaffolding, prioritizes usability and interaction, sets base typography, and adds helper classes to style elements easily.

Less Framework: A popular CSS grid system for designing adaptive websites, Less Framework contains 4 layouts and 33 sets of typography presets, all based on a single grid. If you like this one, you’ll also like its successor Frameless (http://framelessgrid.com/), a new fixed-width adaptive grid.

Skeleton: Less a UI framework than a development kit, Skeleton is a collection of CSS files for rapid site development. Skeleton uses a 960 grid base that while providing some basic styles is ideal for those wanting to implement their own design features.

Safely Deploy HTML5-Based Mobile Apps in the Cloud

Michael Garrity — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:17:00 GMT

appMobi, a provider of cloud-based HTML5 mobile development and deployment tools and services, has officially announced a licensable enterprise version of it’s mobile app development and cloud services stack.

The new service, privateStack, was built to aid businesses, government agencies and other organizations in completing mobile application deployments with end-to-end control for enhanced security and more. Many of appMobi’s enterprise customers had expressed interest in creating hybrid, Web-based mobile apps for different audiences, including sales teams, services technicians, executives, operations personnel and customers.

Hybrid apps tend to appeal to enterprises because of how much they simplify app creation and deployment using HTML5, as opposed to the more arcane languages (e.g. Objective C) used by native app developers. However, these requests were often hampered by concerns about data security, service quality and the general difficulty of distributing corporate apps in public app stores. Thus, appMobi came up with privateStack to address these problems. It will provide enterprise CTOs with the ability to support native-quality, cross-platform, HTML5-based mobile apps with total control over hosting geography, security, user authentication and gateways into corporate data silos.

privateStack comes with all of appMobi’s HTML5 development tools for hybrid development with both appMobi and PhoneGap, as well as all of the features from appMobi’s cloud services platform, including authentication, rich media push messaging, mobile app analytics, remote app updates, in-app purchasing, gamification and social network interfaces.

All privateStack applications can be built into iOS and Android store-ready apps or deployed on secure corporate intranets. The service is offered by appMobi as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for top-tier update and rapid, seamless scalability. It’s also offered in both managed and custom configurations.

Customers interested in hosting privateStack on their personal corporate data centers can do so thanks to the availability of enterprise source licensing.

HTML5 Sites Take Over the Web

Allison Howen — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:00:00 GMT

More than 1 million HTML5 websites have been added to the ’Net thanks to DIY Web publishing platform Wix.com.

This number is huge, especially considering that Wix launched its HTML5 website builder in late March 2012. The platform includes 170 website templates that cater to a variety of industries and doesn’t require users to have knowledge of coding skills in order to leverage the platform.

"Until now, HTML5 was a buzzword to describe the 'future' of the web. With Wix' 1 millionth HTML5 site built this month, it's clear that individuals and small businesses have decided it is the present and where the web is destined," says Avishai Abrahami, CEO of Wix.com. "No longer in the dark or stuck with having to outsource, the Wix HTML5 platform answers a wide market need. We provide our users with the hammer and tools to build their online real estate, and we're working 24/7 to deliver an HTML5 website builder with unmatched features flexibility and customization."

According to analytics from websites that have been created through the Wix platform, 92 percent of Wix users prefer to customize website templates rather than create a site from scratch. However, stats show that U.S. and Brazilian users are the ones who are customizing the templates to fit their specific needs the most – by adding design features, optimizing their SEO settings, embedding external add-ons and social elements to create content-rich websites.

The Wix HTML5 editor is still in beta, and has already seen a series of feature improvements, with other major product announcements expected in the coming weeks.

HTML5 Splits – Snapshot or Living Standard?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:45:00 GMT

A rather important development in the world of HTML5 has taken place. The two groups responsible for the development of HTML (the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group or WHATWG and the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C) have decided to have two versions of HTML5 – the snapshot and the living standard – making the decision on which is best to use a rather confusing one to say the least.

Since 2004, the WHATWG has been responsible for the advancement of HTML5 but there seems to be some strife among it and the W3C. In a recent post to the WHATWG list, the editor of its HTML5 specification writes:

“More recently, the goals of the W3C and the WHATWG on the HTML front have diverged a bit as well. The WHATWG effort is focused on developing the canonical description of HTML and related technologies, meaning fixing bugs as we find them adding new features as they become necessary and viable, and generally tracking implementations. The W3C effort, meanwhile, is now focused on creating a snapshot developed according to the venerable W3C process. This led to the chairs of the W3C HTML working group and myself deciding to split the work into two, with a different person responsible for editing the W3C HTML5, canvas, and microdata specifications than is editing the WHATWG specification.”

Does that mean that there will be two HTML5 standards? The likely answer, at least in the short term, is yes. The W3C is apparently planning to create a single, definitive standard (the snapshot) while the WHATWG’s living standard will continue to add new features and receive refinements.

What this means for Web professionals (designers and developers) in particular is that they will, at least for the time being, be forced to choose between the snapshot or the living standard. If you want to play it safe, use the W3C’s snapshot. If you want to test the limits, use the WHATWG’s living standard.

Why Did Web Builder Wix Drop IE8 Support?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:30:00 GMT

In what I consider a rather bold move, HTML5 Web publishing platform Wix announced that it will no longer support Internet Explorer 8, citing a general lack of support for its emerging HTML5 product.

While IE commands approximately 20-percent share of the browser market globally (according to StatCounter), Wix analyzed its 20 million-strong userbase and found that only 12 percent were using IE8. Couple that metric with IE8's widely known inability to handle HTML5's interactive elements, and the decision was likely not a difficult one to make for Wix.

But how do Wix clients feel about the decision?

Apparently, 89 percent of Wix users support the addition of HTML5 features to the website builder over the continued support of IE8. Enough said.

"By freeing the Wix platform from the constraints IE8 places on its users, Wix will continue to lead the advancement of HTML5 Web design features that aren't supported by outdated browsers today," says Avishai Abrahami, Wix CEO and Co-founder. "The Wix user demands more variety and a consistent stream of new features which will benefit their website in the long run. Advanced HTML5 Web design and IE8 support cannot co-exist."

No Coding Needed, Wix Unveils HTML5 Web Design

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:27:00 GMT

DIY website design solution Wix released a new website builder which supports HTML5.

Wix, best known for its Flash-based platform, launched in 2006 and millions of users have flocked to the system since. As the Web has evolved, Wix was obviously forced to evolve as well. Newer digital media channels such as mobile/tablets and Facebook don't support Flash which threatens to make solutions such as Wix all but extinct.

Support for HTML5 exposes a whole new digital world of possibilities for Wix and digital designers. The new tool enable users to create cross-platform compatible websites and benefit from faster loading time, better interactivity and simplified integration with other tools/platforms.

"The Web, mobile and tablet channels are highly dynamic spaces where opportunities to connect with mass audiences are endless, and people shouldn't be left out of that wave because they cannot write website code. With Wix, our HTML5 product offers unlimited opportunity to those who want the most beautiful HTML5 websites without all the technical headaches," said Avishai Abrahami, Wix' CEO and Co-founder. "Building a website should be as effortless as everything else the Web now offers, and Wix is about giving you the freedom to design the website you want with great looking results. It's your personality, with a professional quality."

Recent WM Coverage of Wix:
- Five Free Website Builders

Future-proof Mobile Apps with HTML5, DN2K

Michael Garrity — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:00:00 GMT

DN2K, a company that specializes in developing machine-to-machine (M2M) remote monitoring and management systems, has announced that it will be using HTML5 as one of the core technologies in its business and industrial application cloud platform for monitoring and analyzing mobile devices.

The company stated that the use of HTML5 will allow DN2K to "future-proof" its applications while building bridges to "technology islands" because of the prevalent use of HTML5 by so many prominent developers, including Microsoft, Apple and Google.

HTML5 also plays a huge role in mobile development, supporting Android and iOS and enabling cross-platform portability.

The DN2K solution will be aimed at helping users extend the functionality, user interface and controls of business applications that secure mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, opening up opportunities in new markets for application developers without requiring them to rewrite their applications' code.

By basing the platform around the HTML5 technology, DN2K is able to ensure that all businesses or industrial application providers using the solution will be able to extend their offering's functionality to virtually any device, including heretofore unreleased smartphones and tablets.

Developers' Toolkit Released for jQuery and HTML5

Linc Wonham — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:00:00 GMT

ComponentOne has released of a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development. The centerpiece of the release – called Wijmo – is the data visualization widgets that include more HTML5 chart types and new HTML5 gauges.

Wijmo extends jQuery UI and provides everything from interactive menus to rich charts. This v2 release offers over 40 widgets with many enhancements to existing widgets.

“This is the most complete collection of tools a Web developer may access for creating interactive websites and applications,” says ComponentOne product manager Chris Bannon. “The power of HTML5 is harnessed in the Wijmo collection and with it your Web applications will perform faster, run smoother and be more engaging than ever before.”

Wijmo.com has a live demo that lets visitors explore every widget and highlights the specific features of each. In the Grid Demo, which displays the source code used to create it, ComponentOne shows how the Wijmo Grid surfaces the filtering UI for each column of data.

Users may choose from one of the six professionally designed themes included with Wijmo, from over 30 themes from the jQuery UI project or use ThemeRoller from jQuery UI to create a custom theme to develop a consistent look and feel throughout an application.

Wijmo is split into two kits, with Wijmo Complete being a commercial kit filled with powerful application building widgets like charts and grids and Wijmo Open being completely free and open-source under the MIT/GPL licenses and includes menus, calendars and more.

Both kits ensure that the UI created works in every browser and every device without worrying about compatibility issues. Wijmo widgets support the following browsers: IE6+, Firefox 3+, Safari 3+, and Chrome.

BrightCove App Cloud Available

Administrator — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:30:00 GMT

Wouldn't it be nice if you could develop that next killer app in the cloud? Well you can! Cloud content service Brightcove has made App Cloud, an end-to-end platform for the development, deployment and operation of native apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, available to the general public.

App Cloud combines an open HTML5 Web development model with "intelligent" cloud services to accelerate app development, optimize performance, measure effectiveness, and enable dynamic updates to installed apps. Developers use HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and the App Cloud software development kit (SDK) to create apps.

“The App Cloud beta program has been very well received over the past few months, and we have been impressed by the quality, breadth and creativity of the apps developed by our beta users,” said Ashley Streb, Vice President of Technology at Brightcove. “Now, any organization can take advantage of App Cloud to easily build, deliver, and manage dynamic, custom content apps across multiple devices for a superior end user experience.”

Brightcove indicated that more than 1,200 individual users have participated in the App Cloud beta testing program and several App Cloud-powered apps are currently available for download through the iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market including apps from the U.S. Department of State and Lifetime Networks.

Adobe on Mobile Flash: "No Mas"

Michael Garrity — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:00:00 GMT

It was a valiant fight, but the outcome was inevitable. Sometimes, you just have to put the gloves down and admit defeat.

This week, Adobe officially announced that it was going to cease the development of Flash for mobile browsers. This move definitively sends the future of mobile development and the creation and deployment of mobile content towards HTML5.

Of course, most people saw this coming. The bulky Flash Player system, which at its creation was designed for desktop computers, has struggled (to say the least) in its transition to mobile. Major mobile developers noted this and almost unanimously supported HTML5 development.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple were all rooting for HTML5, especially Apple. In fact, the late Steve Jobs refused to support Flash for the iOS version of Apple's Safari browser, saying that "Flash was designed for PCs using mice."

"HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively," says Danny Winokur, Adobe's Vice President and General Manager. "This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms."

He adds, "We are excited about this, and will continue to work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers."

Following the upcoming update of mobile Flash with Flash Player 11.1, the software company will discontinue the development of the product.

Flash will always have a place, though. It will remain, indefinitely, a major part of the Web for PC users; in fact, the company is already working on Flash Player 12.

"These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash where it can have the most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video," says Winokur.

Maybe it sounds a little bit (a lot) like a concession speech, but Adobe can still hang its head high-ish. The mobile Web is the next big transition for the Internet, and it is unavoidable that there will be some casualties. There is an important lesson to be learned here, both by Adobe and future mobile Web developers. By doubling down on PC development, Flash can maintain its widespread presence on the PC-based Web, which is still where the majority of users remain (for now).

PixelMags Offers HTML5 Compatibility to Advertisers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:30:00 GMT

PixelMags, the content distribution software and publishing tools provider, has recently amped up its Ad Network, Ads by PixelMags, by introducing full HTML5 advertisements.

The company specializes in magazine application publishing and have established services for both publishers and advertisers. Ads by PixelMags is designed for the digital magazine industry.

Now, in conjunction with Starz and Anchor Bay Entertainment, PixelMags is allowing digital publishers to take advantage of their content delivery software (CDS) and HTML5 capabilities and third party companies are able to promote themsevles to PixelMags' readers. The new HTML5 pages are fully interactive and can do things like display videos and allow users to buy products without ever leaving the app.

The first advertisements displayed are for the Blu-Ray releases of the popular shows Spartacus and Camelot.

PixelMags makes it possible for advertisers to run adds in multiple magazines, rather than just one, which gives them the opportunity to reach as broad or specific of an audience as they want. The entirety of PixelMags' reader database, which includes over 200 different magazines, is now open to advertisers.

Among the new features introduced by Ads by PixelMags are enhanced ad placement opportunities, the ability to choose the ad page of an issue and allowing advertisers to control and edit their advertisements. There is also the option for advertisers to specifically target certain demographics, such as age, sex or device (iPhone or iPad).

Structured Data

Pete Prestipino — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 12:11:00 GMT

Familiarizing one’s self with the modern markup languages, semantic structures and schemas available today can yield a more engaging, easier to manage Web property. Let’s get to know markup in this edition of Website Magazine’s Small Business Lab.

Learn more now about HTML5, Microdata and the Rel=attribute now - as seen in Website Magazine August 2011 issue: Read "Getting to Know Structured Data Markup"

Charset Checkup (HTML5)

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:16:00 GMT

HTML5 is revolutioning nearly every facet of Web work - from applications to layout/design. It's importance to search engine optimization is also something to note.

Website Magazine's upcoming August issue tackles the subject of structured data but what we quickly found was that there's much more going on that Web workers (particulary those in SEO) should definitely be aware of - for example, the meta charset tag in HTML5.

Character encoding tells the browser what character set the web page is written in. Failure to specify a character set forces the browser to assume that the web page uses a default one. If the browser is read this information wrong, the page may be displayed incorrectly. Let's do a "charset" checkup and show how to set charset in HTML5.

If you've spent anytime designing web pages (or SEO'ing them) then you know that setting the character encoding on a document in HTML4 is typically done with a META element.

Here's an example:

With HTML5 however, a shortened syntax syntax is supported.

Here's an example:

Including character encoding for your web pages, even if you never use any special characters, is immensely important - and worthy of a checkup.

The character encoding information should be placed in the first line of HTML after the root and head elements. Designers can also specify the character encoding in the HTTP headers, which is even more secure than adding it to the HTML, but access to the server configurations or .htaccess files is needed.

AppsGeyser Supports HTML5

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 23:10:00 GMT

Do-it-yourself application generator AppsGeyser announced full support of HTML5 this week. There are currently more than 29,000 apps in the platform’s ecosystem.

What is so interesting about the announcement is that HTML5 allows app developers to more fully leverage the core underlying feature of mobile devices and tablets including support for location and location-based services, and extended and enhancing audio and video. Developers can create Apps with HTML5 capabilities and still use AppsGeyser’s simplified 2-step process to convert them into native apps. Mass conversion is also supported via a web call to the AppsGeyser API.

Vasily Salomatov, co-founder of AppsGeyser, while speaking at the Israel Mobile Summit with a panel of experts that included Rovio and Inneractive, said that "HTML5 brings a whole set of new capabilities that allows us to create not only informative and dynamic apps, but truly interactive location-aware apps.” He also emphasized that “it only takes very basic HTML knowledge, coupled with our web tools, and anyone can create an awesome location based app."

Is WebGL a Security Problem?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:45:00 GMT

Researchers from Context Information Security have warned that the WebGL standard undermines the security concept practiced by current operating system versions and offers up new attack surfaces. WebGL extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within compatible web browsers without requiring plugins.

WebGL, managed by the non-profit Khronos Group, is a context of the canvas HTML element that provides a 3D computer graphics API without the use of plug-ins.[2] The specification was released as version 1.0 on March 3, 2011.

The researchers report that they have been able to elicit a blue screen of death(BSOD) by using targeted overloading of the graphics cards. According to the report, this could allow an attacker to exploit any security vulnerabilities in the graphics card driver to, for example, inject malicious code onto the system. Although Windows 7 and Vista have a mechanism for resetting an overloaded graphics card after about two seconds, the researchers found that this too results in a blue screen of death after a certain number of resets. What this means is that if a graphics card driver contains vulnerabilities, WebGL could allow injection of malicious code onto a system.

The researchers have released an online demo (http://www.contextis.com/resources/blog/webgl/poc/index.html) to illustrate the problem. In the researchers' opinion, WebGL is simply not yet ready for primetime.

The Khronos group has already specified one extension to OpenGL, GL_ARB_robustness, specifically designed to prevent denial of service and out-of-range memory access attacks from WebGL content, and is continuing to rapidly iterate on security-related functionality.