The PHP company Zend has announced a collaboration with Adobe to integrate AMF (Action Message Format) into the Zend Framework. AMF is an efficient binary format which is more efficient for transmitting data than text-based formats like XML or JSON. Zend and Adobe are also collaborating to improve their tools for work with applications that use PHP on the server and Flex or AIR on the client.
More info here.
I attended Aaron Boodman’s session on Google Gears, here at Developer Day in London. Boodman is an engineer on the Gears team. He gave us a quick tour of the main features, most of which was already familiar to me, but I picked up a couple of interesting things. He told us that Google hopes Gears will eventually become a standard part of HTML, implemented by every browser. Some parts of Gears just implement things that browsers should do already, such as the ability to upload multiple files in one operation. Boodman would also like to see Gears enabled by default for all sites, rather than being enabled per-site as it is at the moment.
Or is it? What I had not realised is most of the Gears API is already accessible to any site, even if it is not in your “Gears enabled” list. It is only certain features, such as the ability to create a local database, which require specific consent.
That raises the question of security. I asked about risks like sites creating malicious desktop shortcuts disguised as good ones. Boodman says that creating a shortcut always raises a dialog so the user should spot this. What about reputable sites infected with malicious code? Boodman figures that if you are browsing such a site you are in trouble anyway.
Gears is built into Chrome and part of a consistent Google theme: upgrading the browser to make it a better platform for applications.
Here at Developer Day, I couldn’t decide between the sessions on Android and App Engine, so ended up hearing Ajaxian Dion Almaer talking on the state of Ajax. Almaer also works for Google on its developer programs.
The talk was a bit fuzzy and high-level for my taste, though I enjoyed his tour of JavaScript libraries.
Following the talk I asked him why Google makes little use of Adobe Flash (which he hardly mentioned). He said it would like to, but did not regard it as an open platform. I asked him what Adobe would need to do to change that, and he said that the key things would be to open source the Flash player, and to give the community more influence over future Flash development.
Might this happen? Almaer said that it is a subject of ongoing discussion with Adobe. The implication is that if Adobe makes these changes Google will start supporting and using it more actively.
It will be an interesting subject to take up with Adobe when I next have that opportunity.
During the keynote at Google Developer Day London, Android evangelist Mike Jennings gave us what he says is the first showing of an actual device – prototype, of course – in Europe. I took a few blurry pics.
Perhaps inevitably, it seems reminiscent of Apple’s iPhone. It even has an accelerometer so you can code it to respond to tilts and turns.
The web browser is based on WebKit, of course.
We were shown a spinning cube created in Java using an OpenGL library. The Android SDK is based on JDK 1.5.
Another thing that was mentions is Gears for Mobile. Now that Gears has a geolocation API it will be particularly useful in this context.
I’m at Wembley Stadium for Google Developer Day. No, Google is not filling the entire stadium (yet); but it is a decent venue. On arrival we were given the usual USB stick though this one is distinctive:
Made me smile after reading nothing but gloomy economic news on the journey over.
I’m not expecting news announcements today; just a bit more detail on initiatives like App Engine and Gears. The agenda was put together before the Chrome announcement; but I’m hoping Google’s new browser will make an appearance as well.
If you are here and would like to chat please come and say hello – tell me what you think of Google’s developer activities.