Windows software

Change of heart? IE11 might speed Web graphics with WebGL

Microsoft's next version of Internet Explorer might just support WebGL, a standard for accelerated 3D graphics on the Web that the company previously has attacked as a security risk.

A leaked version of the next version of Windows, code-named Blue, came with a version of IE11, and developer's scrutiny of the browser shows evidence of WebGL.

"It seems like WebGL interfaces are defined but not functional at this time," said Web developer and author Francois Remy in a blog post this week. That means that the IE11 build has some infrastructure in place to support WebGL, … Read more

Mozilla wants you to get your game on -- in your browser

SAN FRANCISCO--If you could play high-end, 3D games in your browser at the same speed as on a console, would you? Here at the annual Game Developers Conference, the maker of Firefox revealed a plan to get you to do just that.

Mozilla's current holy grail is getting the mix of HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS that powers the modern Web to run apps at speeds that rival native code, the operating system-dependent languages underpinning apps on iOS, Android, Windows 8, and other proprietary systems.

The not-so-secret weapon in Mozilla's plan is something called ASM.js, said Director of Engineering Vladimir Vukicevic. "It's a dialect of JavaScript that can optimize [code] much better. It's around two times as fast," he said.… Read more

Sick of bad spelling in your browser? So is Chrome

When Chrome's engineers sat down to plan out feature updates, who would've thought that "spell-checker" would've been anywhere on that list?

Google Chrome 26 stable for Windows (download) and Linux (download) updates the browser's ability to automatically check for spelling and homonym mistakes with new dictionaries.

Chrome 26 for Mac (download) has received the other Chrome 26 updates, but the spell-checking feature will be made available later, Google said in a blog post. The company did not specify a timeline for the feature, and unfortunately, it will not correct inaccurate spelling already published elsewhere … Read more

New Microsoft study says your software is counterfeit

In a new IDC white paper commissioned by Microsoft, cleverly titled "The Dangerous World of Counterfeit and Pirated Software: How Pirated Software Can Compromise the Cybersecurity of Consumers, Enterprises, and Nations...and the Resultant Costs in Time and Money" ( full PDF), there's a boatful of interesting statistics around "the prevalence of malicious code and unwanted software -- such as viruses, Trojan horses, keystroke-capturing software, authentication backdoors, and spyware -- in pirated software and on the Web sites and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks where such software is found."

"[U]sing information from a 10-country survey of … Read more

Google to fix some WebP image format shortcomings

Google is on the cusp of fixing some initial shortcomings of its WebP, an image format it hopes will speed up browsing.

A new version of libwebp, the library that software can use to display and create WebP images, adds support several features, some of which were the subject of criticism when Google announced WebP in 2010:

Metadata handling so people can see camera and exposure information stored in the file with the EXIF and XMP technologies.

ICC (International Color Consortium) color profiles for more accurate color rendering.

Animated WebP images, a new spin on a once-once obscure GIF technology … Read more

Adobe and Apple: Allies and rivals through the ages

When Adobe Systems revealed yesterday that Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch is leaving for Apple, it was only the latest example of an unusual combination of alliance and rivalry that has linked the Silicon Valley companies for decades.

Lynch, who came to Adobe via its acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, is notable for leading the company's battle against Apple to spread its Flash Player programming technology to Apple's iPhone and iPad. He lost that battle at Adobe, but evidently managed something more than a frosty detente with Apple.

Apple and Adobe have a long history of both agreement … Read more

Google undeletes RSS extension for Chrome browser

The 868,163 people who've installed Google's RSS-handling extension for Chrome can breathe a sigh of relief, because Google has resurrected it after its deletion last week.

"My RSS extension was removed by mistake, but it is now up again," said Finnur Thorarinsson, the extension's author, in a comment to a Chrome RSS-handling feature request. The extension detects RSS and Atom feeds on Web pages and lets people subscribe to them with feed-reading software; it's been updated so it no longer offers Google Reader as an option for subscribing.

Google's RSS extension for Chrome disappeared last week … Read more

Google Drive goes down for many users

Google Drive was having some hiccups earlier today but apparently has since recovered.

The online file storage site had been inaccessible for a large number of users today. On its status page, Google initially said that it's "investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive" as of 7:17 a.m. PT and that it will "provide more information shortly."

A second update on the status page offered a bit more information:

We're aware of a problem with Google Drive affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google … Read more

Survey: Customers happy with Adobe Creative Cloud so far

The shift by Adobe Systems toward its Creative Cloud subscription plan looks to be popular with customers, a Jefferies survey of some of them shows.

Adobe is making its entire Creative Suite of software available for an introductory price of $30 per month for annual commitments, with a regular $50 monthly price to kick in later. The subscription also includes services, software that's not part of the CS products, and early updates that traditional perpetual-license customers won't get until CS7.

Jefferies asked customers about their sentiments in a follow-up to a 2012 survey with CNET.

"The majority … Read more