standardization

The Free Software Foundation, never a friend to digital rights management, has taken issue with its arrival in the Web standards world.

In a letter from the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and other allied groups yesterday, the group called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to keep DRM out of the standards it defines.

"We write to implore the World Wide Web Consortium and its member organizations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal," the groups said. "DRM restricts the public's freedom, even beyond what overzealous copyright law requires, to the perceived … Read more

You've got plenty of options when it comes to virtual keyboard apps for your Android device, including some far-out concepts, but we always come back to those layouts with the most familiar look and feel. Big Buttons Keyboard Standard is a free Android app by Chicago Logics based on their Delta II mobile keyboard technology. With a modified QWERTY layout (and other choices) as well as options like click sound, vibrate on tap, and a resizable keypad, it kicks other keyboards' buttons. We tried it on a Samsung Galaxy S3 running Android 4.4.1.

When you install and … Read more

RuneScape, a popular massive online swords-and-sorcery game, is at last dumping Java and becoming a Web app.

Jagex Games Studio released the first RuneScape 3 beta yesterday, embracing HTML5 and related Web standards that offer programmers a more modern option for writing software that runs on a variety of operating systems.

About time, I say. Java had some potential years ago, and it still has its place elsewhere in the computing world. But as a way to extend a browser's abilities, it's history. If the plague of Java security vulnerabilities weren't enough to convince you otherwise, the … Read more

Intel has released its first version of Web-based programming tools to help developers make mobile apps for Android and iOS.

The free software, called Intel XDK, isn't brand new. It's a rebadged version of the AppMobi software that Intel acquired in February. XDK lets people create software that uses the so-called HTML5 foundation, a collection of standards designed to advance the Web beyond static documents toward dynamic applications, then convert those apps so they can be used on mobile devices.

Intel announced the XDK release at its Intel Developer Forum show in Beijing this week. The software is … Read more

Sure, technology decisions often are the result of personal predilection, political scheming, and inter-company rivalries. But cold hard data still can win the day -- and that's the main reason why Mozilla is reconsidering its earlier decision not to support Google's WebP image format.

Specifically, new data shows that Google isn't just blowing smoke when it promised that using WebP lets Web site operators save precious bytes when it's sending Web-page data to browsers. Smaller file sizes mean that browsers can show Web pages faster, that Web site operators cut bandwidth usage, and that people with … Read more

Mozilla is taking a new look at the WebP image format it once rejected after some large Web sites encouraged the Firefox developer to take a fresh look and after Google released a freshly upgraded version.

WebP, which derived from the VP8 video compression technology in the WebM project Google launched three years ago, is part of the search giant's effort to speed up the Web. In WebP's case, that speedup comes through use of an image compression technology Google says produces more compact files than either JPEG or PNG.

WebP can be used where both JPEG and … Read more

Another tantalizing tidbit has emerged from last month's leaked IE11 build: the possibility that the next version of Internet Explorer could support Google's SPDY technology for faster browser-server communications.

It's not working yet, but SPDY "is being implemented," said Rafael Rivera of the Within Windows blog. Paul Thurrot of WinSuperSite also said SPDY is coming.

The SPDY support is at the operating system level, meaning that other software besides just IE11 could take advantage of it, Rivera said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the matter.

Google has rounded up several allies to standardize SPDY technology, … Read more

The nascent WebRTC standard for video communications on the Web has become a technology battleground pitting Google against Nokia.

The reason for a war not just of words but also of actions is a lowly technology called a codec, which compresses video for efficient networking and compact storage. Google wants the Net to embrace its royalty-free, open-source VP8 codec, but Nokia is trying to quash VP8 by refusing to license patents it says are required to use it.

Google, meanwhile, has come to the aid of Android phone maker HTC in a Nokia patent-infringement case that involves VP8.

Why the … Read more

A Google patent-licensing deal two weeks ago dramatically improved the fortunes of its VP8 video technology, but Nokia has added a barricade to what has already been an arduous road to adoption.

VP8 is a codec -- technology to encode and decode video or audio data for compact storage and efficient network streaming. Despite passionate debates about VP8 vs. the incumbent codec, H.264, most people need never care about video codecs.

But as video becomes ever more deeply embedded in the Net -- TV entertainment, chatting with friends, videoconferences for business, online schooling for children -- the video codec … Read more