This RSS News Reader is a very simple and effective one for the iPhone. Using clean and simple to understand code, this comes as a blessing to many. This is an Open Source product and therefore you are welcome to download and add your own code to it.

The newer version 2.0 is released with the following changes

• Updated the views to use UITabBarController
• Loads rss subscription from plist file
• More fun to learn

» Download RSSReader 2.0 for iPhone with complete source code.

To see complete list of changes visit RSSReader on Github

Note: This source code does not have any license nor warranty. Please feel free to use this in any of your projects.

And thus, with Plus, Google owns us whole.

That is, of course, only one way of looking at Google’s labour of over one year, when the team guys sat writing codes, eager to make as big an impact in the social media sector as in the mail, search, photo and document storage domains.

This time, they were also hoping to do one better than Orkut, which was literally steamrollered by Facebook in popularity and functionality, and certainly better than its disastrous Wave. The idea, one supposes, was to create a product that would make a mash of its prime competitors Facebook and Twitter and wipe them out. Will Google + do that?

Google + is still in its snooty, exclusive, I-will-call-you-don’t-call-me phase, but let us remember that was Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy initially as well. Facebook was the privy of exclusive Ivy League schools in the U.S. and the U.K. until the blitz happened. So, invitations are still scarce to come by, not all those in the Plus can extend invitations to friends who are still nonplussed. However, for sure, there are many more being added to my circles every night, nearly thrice the number than I started off with.

But when you are in, you may not notice this; it automatically signs you in on a secure (https) server, significant if you consider the recent controversies over Facebook taking liberties with users’ privacy. So far, so good.

Even if you missed that, there is no way you cannot pause at the nearly spartan, neat, user interface. As yet uncluttered in comparison to FB, and only four silos (Home, Photos, Profile, Circles) to click on. Yeah, no games, and thankfully, no Farmville! On the face of it, it is simple; yet, it takes some initially to figure out the Google +. The ‘Stream’ is the equivalent of FB’s scroll newsfeed, and there are similar options — to share, edit, host photos and videos, and delete them. You can also ‘mute’ those annoying conversations on your Stream. Phew! There is also the ‘Sparks’ component, which according to Plus, “…looks for videos and articles that it thinks you’ll like, so that when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read and share.” Your grandpa will approve, it adds, but who is looking for Grandpa’s approval rating on social media?

What is utterly out of the box for social media is the ‘Circle’ concept. Literally, you can create your own social spheres, including friends, acquaintances, colleagues and contacts in different circles that are more than faintly reminiscent of school-level Set Theory. You can choose who you want to share specific information with, hiving off various groups that may be in conflict with each other: a boss versus someone to whom you are bitching about him.

A thumb tack aids you to transfer multiple persons on to the circles; and every circle you delete merrily jigs away out of the screen. Will subsets of intersecting Venn diagrams soon come to play, where diagrammatic impressions mapping friends who belong to more than one circle? It certainly will jazz Plus up. ‘Hangout’ is Google’s version of ‘teleportation,’ a.k.a. ‘video chat’ and is certainly cool thus far.

Mobile Google Plus is adapted finely for Apple’s iOS and is functional on the Android platform (tried on HTC phones), but does not deign to work on the Symbian platform (tried on two of Nokia’s E-series). Snooty again? Because even as the migration to Android or iOS gathers steam, there are still millions of users on Symbian, and everyone knows the link between Twitter’s phenomenal growth and the facility of mobile phones.

Even if you are in, there is the fact that Plus is about a week old.

Designed and developed by Abdul Ravoof, head developer for goldcrab.com, the site, which was created almost eight years ago, drew in many people who are members of the club till date. Lagoon Toastmasters were the pioneers in Sharjah and Dubai to be the only club in the UAE to actually run their own website. Naturally it attracted a lot of attention and it soon became on of the most sought out website for information on Toastmasters. Although the site did generate a lot of interest, there was no interaction from its members and practically became just an information site.

With the boom of online activity and networking taking over, it was decided that Lagoon Toastmasters needed a revamp fast. Today, the site’s new fresh look, offers members and visitors updated news every minute, what’s happening in and around the Toastmasters circle as well as the latest local chapter news. While blogging, socializing, sharing and networking catching on like wild fire with the likes of WordPress, Blogger, Facebook and Twitter; Lagoon Toastmasters has all of this and more for its users.

Members can now interact with each other in the comments area, share articles and anything of interest in their social sites or catch up on the latest in all of its new and improved sections. The new site is more search-engine friendly and has been optimized for maximum use for member to search for just about anything.

“Another first for Toastmastes in the Middle East region, we hope the website will be a huge success,” said Abdul Ravoof, developer of the site.

- Natashya Roberts is a freelance editor for goldcrab.com

This plugin was developed by a brilliant programmer, Imthiaz Rafiq (imthi.com)  now currently working as the Technical Lead for Molile applications in Flip Media, Dubai. His primary focus is programming for iPhone, Android, Windows and mobile web applications. A passion for innovation has always driven Imthiaz (Imthi to friends) to be ahead of the curve, and he has contributed greatly to the regional mobile community. His experience developing framework and CRM applications, coupled with his in-depth knowledge of multiple platforms, has proven valuable to all his ventures. He is one of the key members at Flip driving the technology front. Recently he spoke at the Arabnet Shift summit in Beirut, Lebanon.

It is a really simple plugin which detects the browser agent and loads a simple theme on fly. The plugin comes with a theme folder which acts like a normal theme with all the functionality of a wordpress theme.

The plugin doesn’t have any advanced options to control. If you want to customize you can do it with the theme files.

Installation of this plugin is simple and straight forward. Just extract the files in to your wordpress plugins folder and activate the plugin

Once activated just browse and check websites in your PDA, iPhones etc . After installing the plugin in imthi.com, this is how it looks from a PDA browser.

Windows Mobile

Blog Home on iPhone

Categories List on iPhone

Blog Post on iPhone

To enable your blog for PDA users just download and activate.

Visit Imthiaz PDA blog – http://imthi.com/wp-pda

Get more details/Download the plugin here – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pda/

Is +1 (pronounced “Plus One”) part of the new social network that Google’s long been rumored to be building? Or is +1 simply that “social layer” that Google has said would come and isn’t really meant as a rival to Facebook?

Yes.

Come along — let’s see how it works now, where it might go, and we’ll get into the bigger picture stuff at the end.

+1 Your Favorite Google Search Results

Beginning today, a small percentage of Google search users on Google.com in the United States searching in English will now see a +1 button next to search listings, when they are logged in. An example of this is shown below:

Don’t see it? Don’t panic. Unlike the iPad 2, +1 buttons are in plentiful supply. Just visit Google Experimental, where you can select an option to force it to appear in your searches.

Click on the button, and it lights up all colorfully:

When you’re done, you’ve “+1′d” it, as Google says, to your social network. Arguably, it might be correct to say “+1d” rather than “+1′d” — but I’ll save the Grammar Girl ruling for another time.

You’re also given an option to undo your +1ing, and you’re reminded that you’ve shared your liking of the result publicly to your social network.

There’s that mention of your social network again! Which social network? Your +1 social network, which is different than your Google Social Search network, which is different again from your Facebook network, your Twitter network and so on.

Don’t worry. I’ll get back to all this.

+1 Results From Your Network In Search

When you do a search when logged into Google, any results that you’ve +1′d — or which have been +1′d by those in your network — will be enhanced:

In the example above, you can see how one of the results coming up in a search for “nintendo” has two names attached to it. Those are two people in the searcher’s network who have liked this particular listing, plus the searcher is told there are 16 others in their network who like it.

In addition, if a search result has gained a lot of +1s but not from people in your network, you’ll still be told the total without anyone being named. That way, you can get a sense of how popular the page might be generally with +1 users.

Improving Search Results With Recommendations

The idea makes a lot of sense. If you’re searching, it’s nice to see if there are any answers that are recommended by your friends. Indeed, it makes so much sense that Google’s already been kind of offering this already through Google Social Search for nearly two years. But now these explicit recommendations become part of that.

“The primary benefit is that search gets better. It gets better in the user interface immediately, and we’ll look at it as a potential signal to improve search quality as well. I find social search extremely useful, especially with the recent updates. This change continues the evolution of social search, and it’s a natural progression to improve the search experience,” said Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who is most known for leading Google’s search spam fighting team but who also helped launch Google Social Search in 2009.

I’ll get back to how this fits into Google Social Search further below, as well as Bing’s Facebook-powered rival to that. But for now, let’s press on with more about how the new +1 works.

+1 For AdWords

Aside from Google’s search listings, you can also favorite ads from Google AdWords that show up in search results. Just click on the +1 buttons that will now show up next to them:

As with regular search results, any +1 favoring you do will show next to those ads, if others in your social network see them. And any +1s that they do on ads will be displayed for you.

Some FAQ For Advertisers & Site Owners

At this point, I can hear some advertisers going “Whaaaaat?!” We’ll have some follow-up articles soon here on Search Engine Land that look at what advertisers think about these +1 buttons showing up next to their ads.

For its part, Google tells me that it thinks advertisers will love this, that in testing it has done, clickthrough rates on +1′d ads go up, and that the company feels it’s unlikely that people will accidentally hit the ad link (costing the advertiser money) rather than the +1 button. Some other facts from Google:

• All ads will be getting these buttons
• There’s no way for advertisers to turn them off
• Clicks on the +1 button next to ads do NOT count as a paid ad click
• Advertisers will be able to see stats about which ads are getting the most +1s

Non-advertisers feeling left out on the stat front? Hang in there. Google told me that “soon after launch,” anyone registered with Google Webmaster Central will be able to see +1 stats for their non-paid or “organic” search listings.

Coming Soon: +1 For Web Sites

So far, I’ve covered how the +1 buttons work in Google’s search results. At the moment, that’s the only place you’ll see them. But “coming soon” (Google tells me in months, rather than weeks), publishers will be able to put these buttons on their web pages.

Yes, that’s right. Soon you’ll be able to add Google +1 buttons to your collection, along with Facebook’s Like buttons and Twitter’s Tweet buttons.

Google wouldn’t say much about how +1 buttons will work on web sites. For instance, if you come to a web site while logged in at Google, will you see if others in your network have +1′d a page you’re on, in the way Facebook Like buttons work?

No answer. Google is, I was told, is more focused on how +1 integrates with search right now.

Google did say that if someone does a +1 on a web page, then that will show up to others who find that page in search results. That’s going to be a huge bribe, in my view, for getting wide adoption of these buttons on web sites.

Still can’t wait? There’s a sign-up page at Google, where you can request being notified when the button is available.

Postscript: Clearly, Google does intend to personalize content on other sites. You can see this in the sign-up box below, in the Getting Started section. But Tom Critchlow also spotted how the personalization page provides more about this:

This sounds very similar to how Facebook Instant Personalization works, for the select sites that Facebook partners with, as well as how more broadly, a Facebook Like button will draw personalized content about friends from Facebook into a third-party web site.

Getting Started With +1

Ready to start +1ing things? You’ll need a Google Profile, to start. Chances are, you have one already, though you might not have pimped it out.

From your profile page, you’ll need to opt-in to +1:

As I said earlier, if you don’t have this option showing automatically, visit Google Experimental, where you can make it appear for you.

After you’re enrolled, you’ll be able to manage all your +1s on a special “tab” of your profile that only you can see (unless you chose to make it public):

Now Google’s redesign of profile pages earlier this month of profile pages makes sense, eh?

Your +1 Social Network…

Let’s talk about your +1 social network now. When you enable +1, it will be made up of:

• People in your Gmail & Google Talk chat list
• People in your “My Contacts” group in Google Contacts
• People you follow in Google Reader or Google Buzz

What’s missing are people you are connected to via non-Google services, such as Twitter, Flickr or Quora. That’s something that will come in the future, Google says.

Indeed, we know that there are some “hidden” options that were added to Google Profiles recently, allowing you to connect those profiles to other social networking accounts. It could be that these will be enabled soon, as part of the +1 rollout.

Your Google Social Search Network

What’s confusing, perplexing or otherwise odd is that Google already allows you to create a social network that combines contacts from Google-based services (such as Google Buzz) with your networks from third-party sites like Twitter.

Google does this as part of its Google Social Search service. This combined network used to be called your “Social Circle” on Google, back when Google Social Search launched formally in January 2010 (it was an experiment before that). That launch also provided a way to view your social circle.

You can still view your social circle here on Google, but now these are called your “social connections.” I’m not sure when the name was changed, but I suspect it was dropped fairly recently, in the wake of a rumor earlier this month that Google was about to launch a “Google Circles” social network. Google’s help page still talks about your “social circle.”

All your social connections are used to help power Google Social Search results. But only your Google-based connections, right now, will power +1 matches within Social Search. Officially, Google says this is because it wants to start conservatively with +1, ramp up slowly and make sure everything works.

Google Social Search, Now With +1 Recommendations

It was just over a month ago that Google massively overhauled Google Social Search, which is a way that Google shows things that those in your social network have created or shared that are relevant to searches you do.

Here’s an example of how Google Social Search works:

In that example, I did a search for “Corona del Mar bakery.” One of the pages that came up had been shared by someone I know and follow on Twitter, Amy Senk, so this was highlighted to me with a little “Amy Senk shared this on Twitter” message.

There were no buttons involved. Amy didn’t explicitly choose to recommend this page to others on her social network, via Google. Instead, Google Social Search saw she shared it through another network and used that, along with her connection to me, to highlight the page.

Now Google Social Search will gain +1 recommendations, content that people are explicitly recommending using Google’s +1 buttons. Google Social Search remains, but in addition to the first two items below, it now gains a third feature:

1. Show content created by those in your social network
2. Show content shared by those in your social network
3. Show content recommended by those in your Google +1 network

Social search signals, including the new +1 recommendations, will also continue to influence the first two things below plus power the new, third option:

1. Influence the ranking of results, causing you to see things others might not, based on your social connections
2. Influence the look of results, showing names of those in your social network who created, shared or now recommend a link
3. Influence the look of results, showing an aggregate number of +1s from all people, not just your social network, for some links

What Happens To Google Buzz?

Just over a year ago, Google launched Google Buzz, which initially looked to be Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare all wrapped into one. That is, it allowed for:

• Foursquare-like “check-ins”
• Facebook-like “newsfeed” of activity by friends
• Quick Twitter-like “updates”

None of this really took off. For example, consider that since the beginning of the year until now, according to figures from Google Buzz that I track:

• Mashable has gained about 100,000 Twitter followers versus about 100 Buzz followers
• TechCrunch has gained about 100,000 Twitter followers versus about 90 Buzz followers
• Robert Scoble has gained about 17,000 Twitter followers versus about 300 Buzz followers
• Search Engine Land has gained about 8,000 Twitter followers versus 51 Buzz followers

I wouldn’t say Buzz is dead, but it certainly isn’t buzzing. Any Foursquare-like pretensions seems to have been off-loaded onto the on-going location battle between Google Latitude, Google Hotpot, Google Places and Google Maps. Google itself isn’t sure which will win there, or even if there will be one winner.

Buzz does continue to provide a way to issue updates and get them from your network. But it clearly has nowhere near the activity of either Twitter or Facebook.

I suspect Buzz will be allowed to sit doing not much of anything, as +1 starts to build around in and perhaps replace it. Certainly one of the first things to go will be the Buzz buttons that you occasionally spot on the web.

Using +1 buttons is far more compelling. Those promise to increase your site’s visibility in Google’s incredibly popular search results, rather than in the little used Google Buzz area.

Finally, there’s giant irony. Earlier today, Google agreed to have its privacy controls audited over the next 20 years, in a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over privacy mistakes with the Google Buzz launch.

What About Google Me Or Emerald Sea?

Meanwhile, we’ve had rumor-after-rumor that Google is building a new social network beyond Google Buzz, one especially meant to challenge Facebook.

There was Google Me, said to be a full-blown Facebook challenger, in the middle of last year. By the end of the year, an internal product name of Emerald Sea started floating around. It wasalso rumored to be called +1. There was speculation that +1 would be the name of a new toolbar for the Google site — or a Chrome extension — or related to video conferencing.

Google’s standard response for about the past six months or so now has been to deny that it’s building a social network at all. Instead, the company has talked about adding social “layers” into everything at Google.

When I asked about the various past rumors, and how they relate to today’s launch, I got back a statement continuing the “layers” theme:

As we’ve already been saying, we’re committed to making the web more people-centric, and we’ve been gradually giving people new ways to share things and interact within our products. This is just another example of how we’re centering our products around the millions of people who use them every day.Our focus is on improving our search results–to ensure we get the most relevant results to our users as quickly as possible. Relationships and recommendations are one way to help us achieve that goal–and this is what today’s announcement is all about.

Reading Between The Lines

Here’s the thing about Google’s claim that it’s not building a rival social network. When rumors started emerging about Google Checkout, Google made similar claims about how it wasn’t some type of PayPal rival. It was.

Google might have convinced itself it’s not building a social network, but +1 certainly seems to be a good start toward one. While it is beginning as a “layer” that’s part of search, those +1 buttons — when they hit the web — will put Google directly alongside Facebook in the “liking” game.

All the excitement that some had — and still have — about how Facebook’s Like buttons were going to give the company amazing insight about the web? Now Google’s on track to potentially get the same.

The New PageRank?

Google, of course, has already had more insight into the entire web than Facebook, even without having a Like button rival. That’s because despite the popularity of Facebook’s buttons, not every page on the web has Like buttons. There are tens of billions of web pages out there. The web is huge! Nor does everyone on the web push those buttons.

In contrast, Google’s toolbar data alone gives it insight into how much people “like” particular pages just by measuring time on site. It can also measure things like bounce rate from its search results to sites, and counting links to measure popularity still isn’t dead. These are just some of the tools Google has.

Still, recording explicit likes (or +1s,  or whatever) has value, especially in a time when the way Google has primarily relied on determining if a page is good — looking at links — has become very creaky. People continue buy links, spam links or not give links to sites that deserve them (Wikipedia takes, but none of its outbound links give back to deserving sites).

If links were like votes originally, then likes are also votes — but more trusted ones, especially when they are heavily used within someone’s specific social network (friends don’t generally spam friends).

In short, +1 becomes the new PageRank. OK, that’s kind of catchy, but more accurately, +1 recommendations can become an important new signal for Google to use as part of its overall ranking algorithm, during a time when it desperately needs new signals.

Facebook Versus Google

Beyond web page ranking, the new +1 button potentially allows Google to leverage search to build its own robust “social graph” or “view” of how people are connected to each other. Right now, Google can see some connections, such as people who tweet to each other. But +1 may allow Google to see more direct connections.

Google has been especially hobbled in that Facebook is unwilling to let people export their contacts directly to Google. Meanwhile, Google keeps saying that there’s something in Facebook’s terms and conditions that prevent it from using Facebook Connect to link to Facebook’s social data in the way that even tiny Blekko does.

That something, as best I can tell, is that Google doesn’t want Facebook to see inside its network, in the way that Facebook would like. But getting a straight answer from either company just doesn’t work. They remain at a standoff.

+1 Won’t Kill Facebook

What’s +1 mean for Facebook? A very good chance that Facebook’s seeming monopoly on how people “like” pages will be over. Facebook’s Like buttons have a big bribe. Get liked and potentially get substantial traffic from Facebook.

Google +1 has the same compelling bribe. Get +1s, and potentially get more search traffic from Google. Expect +1 buttons to go up right alongside Facebook buttons, all over the web. But +1 is unlikely to supplant Facebook, which is far more than just putting out Like buttons.

Facebook is a compelling destination that offers many reasons for people to stay with it, perhaps the most important being that everyone seems to be there already. Plenty of your friends are there, if you want to interact that way. And going to Google is hard, because not only doesn’t Facebook let you “export” those friends, but even if it did — the friends might not want to come over.

In the end, Google seems to be making a smart play. Rather than aiming head-on at Facebook, a tough battle, Google’s using its strongest product to cherry pick one of the things it’s probably most envious about Facebook having, recommendation data.

If +1 works, it will not only improve search quality. It might make search ads more engaging,  potentially improves Google’s contextual ads and eventually may turn into a core social product that can expand in new directions.

But it does feel pretty odd for a search engine to give its new search tool an unsearchable name.

The study estimated that the number of smartphones in use this year will reach roughly 450 million, some 147 million more than in 2010.

Devices running Google’s Android OS will dominate with a 39.5-per-cent market share, rising to 45.4 per cent by 2015. Apple’s iOS devices will decline slightly from 15.7 per cent this year to 15.3 per cent in 2015.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will gain the benefits of an alliance with Nokia to jump from a market share of just 5.5 per cent this year to 20.9 per cent in 2015, making it the number two mobile OS in the world after Android, the study predicted.

Most of that gain will come at the expense of Nokia’s Symbian OS, which is predicted to go from 20.9 per cent to just 0.2 per cent in 2015. Blackberry’s share will decline from 14.9 per cent in 2011 to 13.7 per cent by mid-decade.

“Overall market growth in 2010 was exceptional,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “Last year’s high market growth was due in part to pent-up demand from a challenging 2009, when many buyers held off on mobile phone purchases. The expected market growth for 2011, while still notable, will taper off somewhat from what we saw in 2010.”

In this article, we’ll look at what the future Web might look like and how we can adapt our current skills to this new environment, as well as how to create fluid websites that are built around a consistent core and that adapt to the limitations and features of the device on which they are viewed. We’ll also look at how our conceptual approach to designing websites should evolve: designing from the simplest design upwards, and not from the richest website down.

But before we get to that, let’s start with a question. What do we mean by the “future Web”?

What Is The Future Web?

Back in the old days: analogous Google queries would have taken 30 days. Image: dullhunk

The one word that I hear more than any other at the moment is mobile. Mobile websites, mobile devices, mobile apps: the list seems to go on and on. In fact, a large swell of opinion says that the future Web ismobile.

But despite all this, focusing just on mobile isn’t the answer.

The way we access the Internet is changing, of that we can be certain. And in the short term, this does mean more mobile devices. But in the long term, we have to look a little wider. Thomas Husson, senior analyst for Forrester, summed it up nicely in his 2011 Mobile Trends report when he said, “The term mobilewill mean a lot more than mobile phones.” In the long term, the word we should use instead of mobile isportable.

Why Portable? How Has the Internet Changed to Make It So?

First, the physical infrastructure of the Internet is spreading rapidly, so that our ability to access the Internet wherever we are grows daily. In the last 10 years, the number of Internet users has grown by 444.8% and now includes 28.7% of the population. That’s nearly 2 billion people, the majority of whom are in Asia. This growth is fuelled by investment in the underlying hardware that gives us access to the Internet: millions and millions of computers, millions of miles of cables, hundreds of thousands of wireless hotspots and, on top of all this, growing 3G coverage around the globe (around 21% by the end of 2010according to Morgan Stanley).

Secondly, the way we use the Internet is changing. We are increasingly orienting our online experience around services rather than search engines. Services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are becoming the hub for our online life, and we are blending them to create our own unique Web of content: Facebook for our social life, LinkedIn for our professional life, Spotify for music, Netflix for television and film. We’re seeing a very different form of information consumption here, one in which we expect information to be pushed to us through our social circle, the people whom we trust. We’re moving away from the old paradigm of information retrieval, in which we are expected to seek information using search engines and links.

Some of these services are tied to a single device, but increasingly they are available across multiple platforms, including the desktop, mobile apps, Internet-enabled TVs and others. Only last month, Samsung created the first tweeting refrigerator. Okay, that might not be the greatest use of an Internet connection, but it is an example of how these services are starting to spread out, away from the desktop and into our everyday lives. Evrythng, a start-up currently in beta, is working on a platform that would give any physical object an online presence, effectively making the Internet an ubiquitous entity containing data that can be consumed anywhere and by anything.

Given these changes, it’s important that we not be overly rigid in our approach to creating new Web content; we mustn’t allow ourselves to think in terms of devices. Right now, we are producing mobile apps and standard websites to deliver our services, but in a few years’ time, we may be looking at a completely different landscape, one where knowing exactly where and how our content is being viewed is impossible. Our content must be portable in the sense that it can be displayed anywhere.

Media marketers have responded to the increasing use of mobile media. (Image: birgerking)

We may also find ourselves having to decide whether to concentrate on particular devices and channels at the expense of audience numbers or to take a less tailored approach and serve the widest spectrum possible.

Regardless of the route we take, the ability to deliver a consistent experience across all channels is paramount, and our ability as designers and developers to understand the options and deliver this consistency to our clients will be crucial.

So, this is the future Web, a mish-mash of devices and channels. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Let’s go back to the key word, portability.

How Do We Design For The Portable Web?

Ask yourself, how would your latest project cope in the following scenarios:

1. The user is watching House on their new Internet TV. Hugh Laurie’s not on screen, so the user decides to check their email. A friend has sent a link to your website, which the user opens in a sidebar and views simultaneously with the program.
2. The user is on a train back from work, probably delayed somewhere, accessing your website via 3G on an iPad
3. The user is on a client’s website. They need to access your website to read an article, but they have only a company-supplied Sony Ericsson with Opera Mini installed.

Each of these scenarios presents us with a different problem to solve: (1) an odd aspect-ratio and browser combination, (2) a good display area but slow connection and (3) a very small display area. And they are all very possible scenarios. The first Internet TVs by big brands are now available from the big retailers. Opera Mini has over 85.5 million users and is the dominant browser in many areas of the world; in fact, in Asia, Opera and Nokia (with their combined 66.33% market share) are way ahead of the third-place browser (which is BlackBerry, with a 9.81% share). And Deloitte has predicted that 2011 will be the year of the tablet and that 50% of the “computing devices” sold will not be PCs.

Chances are that, unless you’ve really thought about it (and if you have, then you probably don’t need to read this article), your website won’t work in all of those cases.

When designing for the portable Web, we need to be aware of three things: design, content and integration. Approached in the right way, we can create websites that are accessible across the widest user base and that provide a consistent experience regardless of access method.

Consistent? How?

When faced with a multitude of devices to design for, all with varying specifications, the last goal that might come to mind is consistency, and with good reason. And yet we should be striving to achieve consistency. Not in design but in experience.

Conceptually, we should be thinking about our design in two layers: the core content or service, and then the display layer. The core of our website should not change from device to device, and it should deliver a consistent experience. As we shall see shortly, this means that we must ensure that elements such as the content and the navigation patterns work the same way always.

The web’s future consists of vast possibilities, considering them all is virtually impossible. That is why we need consistency! Image: Juhan Sonin

Let’s say our user is at work and is browsing our website on an iPad. They work through the carefully designed navigation hierarchy to get to the piece of content that they want to read, but they are interrupted by a phone call and have to stop browsing. Later, on the train home, they access the website again, this time via their phone. The visual elements of the design will be different—by necessity—but crucially, the routes they took to find the content should be exactly the same, as should the content they read when they got there.

This consistency of experience is what will allow us to create great websites for the portable Web and a complete user experience.

Where Do I Start? And How Will I Know When I Get There?

If a single consistent experience is our goal, this begs the question, should we create a mobile website that scales up or a desktop website that degrades?

The answer is neither. We should try to create a single design that can be used across all devices without alteration. But in practice, at least for the moment, we should start with the simplest website and work up.

Why? Let’s go back to the introduction. On the portable Web, we have no control over how our content will be used or viewed, and as such we must throw out the idea that we are designing for a particular device or device size. We must approach the design of our website in a different way, one in which we create the core content or service first. After all, this will define our website in the end, not the visual elements. This may seem difficult initially, but as we shall see, many of the best practices for desktop website development hold true for the portable Web, especially with regard to content structure.

To recap, here are the key rules to bear in mind when working through a design for the portable Web:

1. The website should be available to as wide an audience as possible;
2. The website should contain the same content wherever it is viewed, where feasible;
3. The website’s structure should be the same wherever it is viewed;
4. The content should be displayed in a manner that is appropriate to its environment.

A website that meets all of these criteria would fit snugly in the future portable Web. But how do we go about making our websites do this?

Designing For The Portable Web

Design Using Web Standards: That Means HTML5

The good news is that the two most common browser engines on mobile, Webkit and Opera, both support HTML5 very well; Webkit has supported HTML5 at least partially since November 2007.

Using standard and descriptive mark-up throughout our websites will have the benefit of delivering consistent output across most devices. And the extended capabilities of HTML5 to deliver media, animation and local storage make it a great choice for mobile applications.

These three abilities allow HTML5 websites to reproduce behaviours usually associated with native mobile applications, closing the experience gap between the two. Video can now be played natively through HTML5 using the video tag, while animations can be played using the HTML5 canvas. Finally, local storage allows a website to store database-like information on the device, allowing for fully functional offline use of the website.

YouTube, Netflix and Gmail all have HTML5 versions of their websites that are designed for the mobile experience and that take advantage of the new capabilities of HTML5. They’re a great starting point for any developer who wants to see what can be achieved.

HTML5 is now ready to be used for development, and there’s no reason why you can’t start right away. Many excellent resources and tutorials are available to help you get started:

• Dive into HTML5
  An overview of the HTML5 standard and a great starting point.
• HTML5 Demos and Examples
  A series of demonstrations showing the capabilities of HTML5, with source code.
• HTML5 Gallery
  A showcase of websites created in HTML5.

To get started using HTML5 in your projects, you can take advantage of any one of the number of development environments that support it. The most complete implementation is through Adobe’s Dreamweaver CS5; an HTML5 support pack can be downloaded that extends the built-in editor. Aptana also supports HTML5 in its beta of Aptana Studio 3. Links are provided at the end of this article.

Start Simple, Work Up

Thinking portable means thinking clean and simple. The wide variation in screen sizes—from a 40-inch LCD running at 1920 × 1080 pixels to a portrait-orientation mobile screen at 320 × 240 pixels—means that we must create designs that are scalable and adaptive. We must also be aware that someone may be interacting via a remote control or a fat stubby finger on a touchscreen. The simpler the design, the more adaptable it will be.

Bottom up conceptualizing males sense. Concentrate on the basic elements and let the context evolve around them. Image: Andrei Bocan

Create your basic website structure first and add only your core styles, the ones that are applicable to all devices and layouts. Starting simple gives us a great base on which to build. Essentially, we are starting from the most basic experience, available on even the smallest mobile device, and working our way up to the more capable desktop browsers.

Using @media queries in the CSS will enable your website to recognize the additional capabilities of desktop browsers and scale up for these environments, presenting a fuller and more interactive experience where possible.

A word of caution and a reason why we don’t work the other way around by degrading a desktop website to a mobile one: @media queries are not supported by every mobile device. Rachel Andrews provides agood overview of @media queries here on Smashing Magazine, albeit working from desktop to mobile, rather than the other way round.

Forget About Proprietary

Whatever you do, stay away from the proprietary technologies, because that’s the one way to guarantee an inconsistent experience. Flash and Silverlight as development platforms are living on borrowed time. Microsoft has already indicated that it will discontinue Silverlight development to concentrate on HTML5, while Flash is being used mainly as a game development platform and video-delivery mechanism. If we are going to create truly cross-platform websites that display consistently across all devices, then Flash and Silverlight are not wise choices because we cannot be certain that they will be installed on the user’s device. Not to say that Flash doesn’t have its place; as a platform for Web-based games, it is currently unrivalled. It’s about choosing the best technologies for the job at hand.

Be Wary of JavaScript… for the Time Being

The bad news is that we may have to sacrifice some of the things we take for granted now. We must learn to design for unknown screen sizes and ratios and allow content to flow as required. Think less about design structure and page layout and more about content structure.

We may have to forgo using JavaScript and AJAX (both staples of desktop development) to create more involving user experiences, because some lower-end devices will not have the hardware muscle to deal with complex libraries. Trimming page weight will also be a priority because we cannot be certain that end users will have broadband-speed access to the Internet, so large libraries will be unacceptable overhead.

This is particularly important in light of the recent “hash bang” trend, started with Gawker Media’s controversial redesign of its websites. The websites (including Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Gawker) present a more application-like experience to users, but do so by relying on JavaScript for content delivery. In effect, the websites consist of a single page that is loaded with dynamic content on request, instead of the multiple pages that they consisted of previously. Any users whose browsers cannot process the JavaScript, for whatever reason, will be unable to browse the website; they are greeted with only a blank page.

However, a number of libraries are being developed to be lightweight and usable on portable devices. jQuery has an alpha of its mobile library available for testing. The project has the backing of industry players such as BlackBerry, Mozilla and Adobe, so it is worth keeping an eye on.

JavaScript support will mature as devices worldwide move onto more modern platforms and as older devices are taken out of service. But for the time being, a conservative approach to its use will mean a wider potential audience for your work.

Test, Test, Then Test Again

On the portable Web, there’s a good chance we won’t be able to test against every possible platform on which our content will be viewed. But that doesn’t take away the need to test. And test we must.

Opera Mini’s emulator lets you test your website in a virtual browser.

Buying a device from each platform would be prohibitive for the majority of designers. But alternatives are available. For most of the main platforms, device emulators are available that simulate the browsing experience. See the resources section at the end of this article for links.

At the other end of the scale, a paid service is available from DeviceAnywhere, which enables you to test your website on over 2000 handsets.

Unfortunately, there are no Internet TV emulators so far, but Google has released a guide to designing for Google TV.

Finally, of course, we mustn’t forget to test on our desktop browsers, too. The aim of designing for the portable Web is to create a single experience across as wide a set of devices as possible. Just because users are able to browse the Web in many ways doesn’t mean they will stop using their desktop, laptop or netbook. Use this to your advantage when testing simply by resizing your browser to ensure that your design scales and flows appropriately. The emulators will provide you with an exact rendering of your website on other devices.

The Ugly Duckling?

So, does the portable Web defy beauty and kick sand in the face of outstanding design? Of course not. Great design is not only about visual imagery, but about presenting information clearly, which involves hierarchy and importance through innovative and well-thought out typography, layouts and navigation. Which brings us to…

Content For The Portable Web

Content is once again king. The rise of Quora should be enough to convince anyone of that; it is a service based solely on content. On the portable Web, this is doubly true. By paring down the design elements, you leave even more focus on the content.

Understand What’s Important

Identifying what is most critical to users should be your first task when developing a portable website. There may not be room for complex navigation, especially on smaller screens, so keep it simple. Compare the mobile and desktop versions of YouTube’s start page:

YouTube’s standard home page.

YouTube’s HTML5-based home page works brilliantly on small screens.

Create a Solid Information Hierarchy

Structuring our content is important, for both readability and SEO. Understanding the content that we are presenting is essential to creating clear information hierarchies that guide users through it.

Map the user’s possible journeys through your content. There should be a clear route to every piece of content, starting with the top-level information categories and getting more granular with each click.

John Lewis’ mobile website has a clear information hierarchy to aid navigation.

A good example of this is the mobile website of John Lewis, a UK-based department store. From the home page, you can easily drill down to each department, and from there to individual products. It’s simple, and it also means that the amount of information on any given page is not overwhelming and that you know exactly where you are in the hierarchy at all times.

Keep Content Available

Even if users aren’t on a desktop, don’t treat them as second-class citizens. Provide as much content as is feasible. And for what content there is, present it appropriately. Remove the following:

• Superfluous images
  If an image isn’t essential to the content, get rid of it.
• Unsupported file formats
  Don’t include Flash or even the Flash placeholder if the file likely can’t be played.
• Unnecessary text
  Good desktop copy doesn’t necessarily make for good portable copy. Is that second customer testimonial absolutely necessary? If not, remove it.

While we want to remove unnecessary content, we don’t want to remove too much. In the example below, we have a simple accessible website, but one that has no depth. The first level of information is presented well, but the headings for the company’s services at the bottom of the page should link to the next level of information. The way it is, if I want to find out more, I’m forced to visit the non-optimized website. This is a poor user experience, because it makes finding what I need more difficult.

Sapient Nitro’s mobile website displays really well but cuts a lot of information from the full website.

Integration And The Portable Web

If services are to become the new hub of the Internet, keeping our websites linked to these services becomes paramount.

Keep It Modular

Services will come and go (although the main ones will certainly remain for a long time yet… yes, I’m looking at you, Facebook), so keep your design modular. Being able to integrate with new services as they come online and to prune away those that have fallen by the wayside will ensure that your content is available to the widest possible audience.

The goal is to make it easy to push your content across multiple services and thus integrate your content into the fabric of the Web. Primarily, this will be through search engine optimization and social sharing.

Make Your Content Search-Engine Friendly

While the way people access content is becoming more social and less search-based, search engines are still a massive source of traffic. Keeping your content formatted for easy retrieval is a must. Quora has done this extremely well, leading to high rankings across the major search engines and generating traffic for its next-generation Q&A service. SEO may be old hat for some, but as quality of content becomes increasingly important, it will gain new life.

Quora plays nice with search engines, with great results.

Make Sharing Easy

SEO is important, but so are direct connections to other services through OAuth, OpenGraph and OpenID. If this isn’t an option for you, then at the very least give users some way to share your content. Services like AddThis and ShareThis make it simple to add sharing capabilities; take advantage of them. A single tweet can generate a lot of activity. Of course, modern development and content platforms such as WordPress have this functionality built in.

Bringing these three elements together will create websites that are discoverable, consistent and usable. Just one question now is raising its ugly head…

What About Apps? Aren’t They The Way Forward?

Apps are big business. Gartner forecasts that mobile app store revenue will top $15 billion in 2011. It’s no surprise that Google, Microsoft, Nokia and others are trying to get in on the act. But just because app stores are commercially successful, does it mean they should be our first point of call when designing for the future Web?

Let’s look at why one might want to create an app:

• Easy to purchase, install, use and throw away
  Apps are so usable that even your granny could use them. Installing them on a smartphone is a smooth process that requires minimal involvement from the user. And when you’ve had enough, you simply delete it and no trace of the app remains. This is a great user experience, period. That’s why Apple is now pushing the same concept for full-blown Mac apps through the Mac App Store. Apps also provide, in most cases, a good user experience, with their native controls and design patterns.
• Brand association and lock-in
  Apps are designed to do one thing and do it well. The most successful apps are exercises in brand association: “I want to search the Web, so I’ll use the Google app,” or “I want to check up on my friends, so I’ll use the Facebook app.” You experience the brand through the app. I could easily use the Safari browser on the iPhone to access both Facebook and Google, but the apps make it easy for me. I’m locked into the experience, which is great for the companies because their brands get planted square in the middle of my home screen; in this case, a big F and a big G.
• Money
  The most attractive thing about apps to many companies is the profit. Apple’s App Store has shown that monetizing content is possible. Even for independent developers, making a lot of money in a relatively short period of time is possible.

What’s remarkable about all of these points is that they have nothing to do with information consumption. They are all about brand and user experience. However, there are also reasons why you should think twice:

• Apps are information silos:
  Apps do what they do well. But they don’t do a good job of bringing in the wider Web. Want to follow a link? You might be able to view the page in app, but you’re just as likely to get thrown out into the browser. That’s not a good user experience. You also lose control of the user’s actions and their focus on your content.
• Apps are platform-specific:
  Writing an app automatically ties you to the platform you are writing it for. This immediately limits your potential audience. Smartphone penetration is growing but is still a small segment of the overall Internet-enabled phone market. To take the US market as an example, even though 31% of the population have smartphones, only 6% of the population have iPhones. That’s 19 million out 307 million. If you released an iOS-only app in the US, you would immediately lose 76.17 million potential users.
• Apps work best for big brands and services:
  Regardless of how good the app is, you have to find a way to get it discovered among the tidal wave of apps that are released into app stores every day. Big brands can push their apps through their existing Web presence, but that’s a lot more difficult for smaller brands. And unless you can generate a lot of relevant content regularly, as the major services do, your app will be consigned to the trash very quickly. Research by Pinch Media (now Flurry) shows that free apps are used primarily in the first 10 days following installation, and then rapidly trail off to around 2% of the installation base after 70 days. Paid application usage drops off even more quickly.
• Mobile users prefer browsers over apps:
  A study by Keynote Systems in October 2010 shows that users prefer mobile websites for nearly all types of Web content. The only categories in which apps came out on top were social networking, music and games, which makes sense because these apps usually take full advantage of a native platform’s capabilities.

So, if we want to create something with more permanence, that can evolve at a speed that suits us and our clients, then we need to look away from mobile apps and towards the mobile Web. We must execute good design, thoughtful content and solid integration to tie our portable websites into the social infrastructure of the Web.

Conclusion

The fully portable Web may not be here right now, but it will be before we know it. As it was with the browser wars, developers and designers must re-educate themselves to become the driving force behind these changes and be brave enough to let go of current design thinking and work to set new standards. Understanding how to create online presences that take full advantage of all platforms and preparing for the future shape of the Web will position us not just as technicians, but as people who can provide real value to our clients.

Resources

The HTML5 editors and device emulators mentioned above can be downloaded from the following websites.

HTML5 development environments:

• CS5 HTML5 Support Pack (part of the CS5 11.0.3 Updater), plus tutorial
• Aptana 3 beta

Device emulators:

• Android
• Opera Mini
• Apple iPhone (via iOS SDK)
• Windows Mobile (look for the latest Windows Phone Developer Tools)
• BlackBerry
• Nokia Mobile Browser

James Gardner

James Gardner is a digital strategist working at Volume, one of the largest independent B2B digital marketing agencies in the UK. As Head of Innovation, and also with responsibility for Information Services, he deals with everything from social media to cloud computing, Storage Area Networks to Virtualization. In his spare time he can be found making cars out of Lego – with his two kids obviously – or dreaming of a walk on part in a Romero zombie movie.

Per centage of respondents who access Internet to do their shopping grew from 29 per cent in 2009 to 42 per cent, according the findings of a study on online shopping by MasterCard.

Consumers in the age group of 25-44 years are the driving force behind the surge in on-line shopping, the study reveals. Those in the 35-44 years age group also purchased more items and more frequently than others, the survey reveals.

Online shopping also gained increased currency among women in the UAE, with 40 per cent of respondents accessing the Internet for shopping in 2010, compared to 33 per cent in 2011.

The survey was conducted from 3 September to 1 October 2010 and reached 8,500 consumers from 15 markets in the region. Categories leading the growth in the UAE in 2010 include airline tickets (74 per cent) and hotel bookings (66 per cent), followed by home appliances and electronic products (32 per cent), clothing & accessories (34 per cent), restaurants/home delivery of food (32 per cent) and supermarkets/superstores (32 per cent). Eyad Al Kourdi, vice president and country manager, UAE, MasterCard Worldwide, said online and mobile shopping in the UAE shows the positive trends. “We are seeing more UAE consumers go online for lifestyle purchases as well as day-to-day household items. This trend in consumer behavior shows that today’s tech savvy shoppers are diversifying not only what they buy, but how and where. A desire for convenience and value for money continue to be important to UAE consumers as they proactively seek better and more personal ways to shop online,” said Al Kourdi. He said MasterCard is committed to contribute towards the development of the UAE as a leading global hub for retail and the latest MasterCard findings emphasise the market’s growing retail sophistication.

In terms of attitudes towards online shopping, 64 per cent of respondents in the UAE stated that when they shop online, they would prefer to have a hotline number for enquiry versus 55 per cent in 2009. Additionally, 48 per cent of the respondents stated that most goods are much cheaper online than they are offline, versus 37 per cent in 2009. “The perception of online shopping as fun also continues to increase (46 per cent in 2010 versus 39 per cent in 2009). However, 45 per cent of UAE consumers still do not feel secure shopping online,” MasterCard said in a statement.

Two thirds of the UAE consumers,especially Dubai, suggested that no requirement of additional service charges and enhancement of payment security would improve online shopping in future. In terms of mobile shopping trends, the survey indicates strong potential for growth in the UAE. Only about one in eight individuals made purchases through their mobile phones in the past three months; however, among those who did not purchase through their mobile phone recently, about one-fourth are likely to do so over the next six months.

Airline tickets (31 per cent), phone applications/software (24 per cent) and products/services in online games/virtual world (18 per cent) were the top three categories purchased by UAE consumers through their mobile phones.

According to the survey, online shopping is also gaining popularity in emerging markets across Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa (Ampea).

The survey revealed a narrowing gap between emerging and mature markets in Ampea with consumers turning to online shopping sites for event tickets, online gaming, downloading music, purchasing books, and for travel.

Music lovers will be able to upload most of their existing music library – including tracks bought through Apple’s iTunes – to Amazon, as well as buy new songs for digital playback.

The online retailer has stolen a march on rivals Apple and Google with the service, known as Amazon Cloud Player, with both internet giants planning their own forays into music streaming. The move also represents Amazon’s repositioning as an entertainment destination, rather than just an online marketplace.

Another element of the service, Amazon Cloud Drive, works like a “digital music locker” where users can upload thousands of songs and listen to them via Cloud Player on any computer or Android smartphone.

“Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices,” said the Amazon vice-president of music and movies, Bill Carr. “Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere.”

As an introductory offer, Cloud Player is free to Amazon account holders, although users can pay to increase the amount of music able to be stored on Cloud Drive. Customers start with 5GB of storage space – equivalent to just over 1,000 songs – and those who buy an MP3 album from the Amazon store will be upgraded to the larger 20GB service.

Apple and Google are said to be planning similar ventures, while Sony’s Music Unlimited also offers a digital music locker, but charges upwards of £4 a month. Agreements with all four major record labels are thought to be the sticking point for Apple’s and Google’s streaming services, with rights owners apparently unhappy with the idea of a one-off payment each time a track is played on any device.

Beyond Oblivion, an online music site partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is proposing to woo rights holders by paying them a royalty each time their music is played. The service, which secured $77m (£47m) on investment earlier this month, is yet to launch and negotiations with music labels said to be at a “very advanced stage“.

Amazon said it has sidestepped legal uncertainties about allowing users to upload music from their computer – some of which may have been downloaded illegally – by being the equivalent of any other storage device, such as an external hard drive.

The Amazon director of music, Craig Pape, said: “We don’t need a licence to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive.”

• Amazon’s online retail rival eBay yesterday stepped up its attempt to become the primary destination for internet shopping by buying GSI Commerce, an online services firm, for $2.4bn. The acquisition will allow eBay to expand beyond its network of small retailers into the larger retail market.

Firefox 4 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in more than 80 languages. Firefox 4 will also be available on Android and Maemo devices soon.

Firefox 4 is the fastest Firefox yet. With dramatic speed and performance advancements across the board, Firefox is between two and six times faster than previous releases. Major enhancements to the JavaScript engine make everything from startup time to page load speed to graphics and JavaScript performance screaming fast in Firefox.

The latest version of Firefox introduces a sleek new look that lets Web content take center stage. With features like App Tabs and Panorama, Firefox makes it easier and more efficient to navigate the Web. Firefox delivers industry-leading privacy and security features like Do Not Track and Content Security Policy to give users control over their personal data and protect them online.

Firefox Sync gives users access to their Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs and passwords across computers and mobile devices. Firefox also offers hundreds of thousands of add-ons, extensions and Personas and a new Firefox Add-ons Manager to make it easy for users to manage and discover add-ons to customize their Web experience.

Firefox supports modern Web technologies, including HTML5. These technologies are the foundation for building amazing websites and Web applications. Go to Web O’ Wonder and check out the incredible online experiences developers can now create.

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What’s New in Firefox 4:

Fastest Firefox Ever

• Performance: Firefox is up to six times faster than the previous release. With improved start-up and page load times, speedy Web app performance and hardware accelerated graphics, Firefox is optimized for rich, interactive websites.

Streamlined Interface

• App Tabs: give a permanent home to frequently visited sites like Web mail, Twitter, Pandora, Flickr.
• Switch to Tab: easily find and switch to any open tab from your Awesome Bar without opening duplicate tabs.
• Panorama: drag and drop tabs into manageable groups to save time while navigating many open tabs.

Private and Secure Synchronization

• Firefox Sync: access your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices.

Most Customizable

• New Add-ons Manager: easily discover and install more than 200,000 add-ons to customize the features, functionality and look of Firefox.

Private and Secure

• Do Not Track: Firefox is leading the Web towards a universal standard Do Not Track feature that allows users to opt-out of tracking used for behavioral advertising.
• Firefox puts privacy first, fixing flaws in some Web standards to prevent others from accessing your browser history.
• HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): automatically establishes secure connections to stop “man in the middle” attacks and keep sensitive data safe from interception during the log-in process.
• Content Security Policy (CSP): prevent cross-scripting attacks by allowing sites to explicitly tell the browser which content is legitimate.

Cutting Edge Tools for Web Developers:

• The JavaScript engine incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter for faster page-load speed and better performance of Web apps and games.
• HTML5 support in Firefox includes hardware accelerated, high-definition video (WebM), 3D graphics, offline data storage, professional typography, touchscreen interfaces and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound and more.
• Firefox 4 also improves existing tools like CSS, Canvas and SVG to enable developers to make exciting Web pages.
• Firefox provides uninterrupted browsing when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If one of these plugins crashes or freezes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Simply reload the page to restart the plugin.