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Silverlight versus HTML, Flash – Microsoft defends its role

By tim, on September 2nd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft’s Brad Becker, Director of Product Management for Developer Platforms, has defended the role of Silverlight in the HTML 5 era. Arguing that it is natural for HTML to acquire some of the features previously provided by plug-ins – “because some of these features are so pervasive on the web that they are seen

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Open season for patent litigation makes case for reform

By tim, on August 31st, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

It seems to be open season for software patent litigation. Oracle is suing Google over its use of Java in Android. Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing is suing AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Yahoo and others – the Wall Street Journal has an illustrated discussion of the patents involved here. Let’s not forget that

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Ten things you need to know about Microsoft’s Visual Studio LightSwitch

By tim, on August 24th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has announced a new edition of Visual Studio called LightSwitch, now available in beta, and it is among the most interesting development tools I’ve seen. That does not mean it will succeed; if anything it is too radical and might fail for that reason, though it deserves better. Here’s some of the things

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Google favours big brands over diversity

By tim, on August 23rd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Google has made a change to its search algorithm that means most of the results shown for a search may now come from a single domain. Previously, it would only show a couple of results from one domain, on the assumption that users would prefer to select from a diversity of results.

The example

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Firefox 4 as Psychedelic as IE9 with Direct2D enabled

By tim, on August 11th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

IE9 is much faster than Firefox 4 beta at the Psychedelic test on the testdrive site, which demonstrates drawing fast graphics to the Canvas element. That said, a comment to an earlier post prompted me to try enabling Direct2D in Firefox 4.

As you would expect, the difference is dramatic. Here’s the before and

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Internet Explorer 9 Preview gets to 95% on Acid 3

By tim, on August 4th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has released the fourth platform preview for Internet Explorer 9, which you can download here. This is the last preview before the beta release, expected in September.

When IE9 was first previewed, back in March, it scored only 55% on the Acid3 standards test – well ahead of IE8 which scores around 20%,

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New Amazon Kindle with WebKit browser and free 3G internet

By tim, on July 29th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Never mind the books. Amazon’s new Kindle reader is offering as an “experimental feature” a web browser based on WebKit – the same engine as Apple Safari and Google Chrome – that is free to use over 3G networks:

New WebKit-Based Browser Kindle’s new web browser is based on WebKit to provide a better

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BBC News app arrives on iPhone

By tim, on July 23rd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Today the BBC received approval from the BBC Trust to create apps for mobile devices such as Apple iPhone/iPad and Google Android. Wasting no time, the corporation published a BBC News App on the App Store today.

But what is the point? Is this really better than simply going to the web

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Reviewing the Belkin Play Max wireless router

By tim, on July 20th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve just reviewed Belkin’s Play Max wireless router. It’s a Wireless N access point and router; it works, though I was disappointed with the range. That said, I’m increasingly impatient with this kind of product, good value in one sense but chucked out with technical deficiencies, inadequate documentation, and poor supporting software. It is

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Big browser and RIA news: Canvas comes to Internet Explorer 9

By tim, on June 24th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve just installed the third Internet Explorer Platform Preview (on a virtual machine just in case) and run through a few of the demos. One of the most impressive is Canvas Pad, which demonstrates the HTML 5 Canvas element.

Canvas is particularly interesting, since it provides a surface to which you can draw

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