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Intel CEO (Krzanich) and president (James) combo to assure manufacturing and next-gen cross-platform lead
Update: excerpts from Intel’s CEO Presents at Annual Shareholder Meeting Conference (Transcript) [Seeking Alpha, May 17, 2013]
Andy D. Bryant – Chairman of the Board:
In his most recent role as Chief Operating Officer, Brian [Krzanich] led an organization of more than 50,000 people. This included Intel’s technology and manufacturing group, its foundry and memory businesses, its human resources and information technology groups, and its China strategy.
Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer:
I thought I would start off our conversation this morning talking about three main topics. First, I thought I give just a brief update on our business conditions, just a quick financial look at the company, and really what it returns to shareholders.
The next topic I thought I would talk about are what is really the mega trends that are driving our industry and technology. And that really will lead into the final section, I’ll try and talk about, which is, what are our imperatives for growth as a company and what’s the response from these mega trends? So hopefully today, you’ll get a picture of a great foundation, how we see the trends driving where we’re headed, and what it takes for us to grow moving forward.
Let’s start with just where are we as a business. And as you probably saw in our earnings announcement and as we’ve been watching the company over the last couple of years, we really had a solid foundation. We had net income of over $53 billion, excuse me, net revenue of over $53 billion, 62% margin, and an operating profit of over almost $15 billion. That puts us in the top 15 of the S&P 500 for net income.
…. So this foundation, this financial picture is what we will use now to move forward and really drive additional growth. And so I’d like to transition now to what are these mega trends? Where is the industry headed? And as a result, how does that drive our imperatives for growth moving forward?
I don’t think we can start a discussion like that without first, having a quick discussion about one of the key real trends that have occurred over the last couple of years. And that’s really this ultra-mobile and move to tablets and phones that has occurred in our industry. We see that we’ve been a bit slow to move into that space, but what I want to show you today is that, we see the movement, we’re well positioned already and the base of assets that we have will allow us to really grow in this area at a much faster rate moving forward.
So let’s start with mega trend number one, which is just that, it’s about ultra-mobile. We see the is becoming more and more a connected computing environment. The people want their computing next to them. They want to carry it with them. And that really means you have to have connectivity, you have to have more power, you have to have integration, and you have to be in these new markets and new devices that are moving towards more and more connectivity, we see it. We believe we are well positioned. We have 15 phones in 22 countries already, excuse me, 12 phones in 22 countries, 15 tablets both Android and Windows, and so we’ve got a good base. We see this trend, and I’ll show you in a little bit with our imperatives, we’re well positioned to move forward.
The next one is one that I think is really driving great growth and is a great opportunity, in some place we’ve really established well, is really that the Datacenter is continuing to grow at phenomenal rates. It’s growing because of the move to cloud and tied to that connective computing environment, people want to keep more and more and have more and more access to the cloud.
And then you’re also seeing a move in the Datacenter around big data, that as all of these connective devices continue to grow, it provides a relative information that companies can now use to offer better services and better understanding of what consumers want, and that’s really what big data is about. It’s about providing answers as you increase the data rate that’s available to you. We see that, again, we believe our products and our services are well positioned for this, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in our imperatives moving forward.
And the third trend is really around the foundation of Intel. It’s around integration and innovation, and I believe this is really what Intel does best. When you look at our name and where we came from, Intel is Integrated Electronics, that’s what the name stands for and this is what we’ve always done best. This allows us to combine our silicon technology, our architecture, our software and services to really drive the SOC or the System-On-A-Chip environment to levels that nobody has seen before we believe moving forward.
It means really going out and bringing in new innovations, new technologies, new communication capabilities, bringing those into silicon and using that more as long leading edge technology to allow us to drive these in a way faster than anybody else on the planet can. So those are the three big mega trends that we see driving technology and the industry moving forward.
And what I’m going to show you now is that, we have the assets that we can apply towards these mega trends and then how those drive the imperatives for the company moving forward. Let’s first take a look at the assets. And I believe this is an asset base that any company in the world would be end user.
We have our manufacturing assets, something that’s been near and dear to my heart over the years, 4 million square feet of manufacturing clean room. We have leading edge technology. We have 22-nanometers in production, the world’s only Tri-Gate FinFET technology is our third generation of High-k Metal Gate. We’re in the final stages of development prior to production or 14-nanometers, our second generation of Tri-Gate transistors, our fourth generation of High-k Metal Gate, that’s an asset that everybody on the planet would love to have at – to apply towards those mega trends that we just talked about.
We have our architecture, which really ranges from the Xeon architecture for data center and servers all the way down to the Atom Architecture, which allows us into microservers, but into that connected computing, and what you will see is a move more and more as we go forward to continue to drive that continuum of computing capability into more and more markets. That’s really an asset, again, very few companies if any have.
And the last is to tie it all together, software and services, we’ve talked – you’ve seen our acquisition of McAfee and Wind River, we’ve built a services business. What this allows us to do is take all of those assets and apply into each one of those markets that I talked about in the mega trend. And what it allows us to do is provide more than just silicon. It allows us to provide a platform and a user experience that nobody else can, and that’s a secure and user-friendly experience that allows us to provide everything to the OEM, who wants to bring a product to market.
All of those are surrounded by the 105,000 employees that are always Intel’s greatest asset. The ability of these employees is to have, when we apply them towards these markets and these imperatives that you will see in a second here, is by far the greatest asset Intel has and we will continue to be moving forward. So I’ve shown you our base, I’ve shown you the mega trends, I’ve shown you what I believe is the greatest assets of the world to apply to those, and so let’s talk about what the imperatives are then moving forward.
The first one is to drive PC innovation. We’ve talked a bit about this. It’s the foundation of that financial picture that I showed you at the beginning. With Haswell coming out this year, it’s launching actually right now and throughout the year as the Haswell products come out, with ultrabooks, we have the greatest level of innovation in the PC in its history. You’re going to see ultrabooks, you see two in ones, which are convertibles, which are bringing that tablet and a PC together.
And with Haswell, you see the largest improvement in battery life and continuing capability that Intel has ever brought to production. So we believe that we are well positioned for what will be truly the PCs greatest time of innovation that we’ve all seen in our life.
The next imperative is that aggressively move into this ultra-mobile space. As I said at the beginning, we’re well positioned. We’re already shipping 12 phones in 22 countries. We have 15 tablets out there both windows and Android. We’ve got products that are specifically designed for this ultra-mobile space that have been in the works for a couple of years, now you saw the Silvermont announcement [SEE SECTION 6. ON ‘Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture’ IN THE DETAILS PART BELOW] earlier this week.
You are going to see, you see the Bay Trail will come out in the fourth quarter, which is really a product targeted towards tablets and low-power
CRAM[C-RAN: Cloud Radio Access Network] cells and convertible devices. You can see Merrifield, which is our next generation phone device. And just as important is our LTE technology, which is critical for that second part of connecting computing, which is the communication. We have data-based LTE coming out this summer, and we have multi-mode LTE, which allows voice, data, and voice over data at the end of this year, and that really opens up all the rest to the markets to our phones and our connected devices.So we believe we’re well positioned. We’ve made the move, but we believe also that our architecture and the moves we’ve made allow us to move even quicker into this market down moving forward.
The third one again tied to the trends I showed you at the beginning is to accelerate growth in the Datacenter. We have a great position in the Datacenter already. We believe that real trends like big data, movement to the cloud, software to find networks, all of those things allow for phenomenal growth in this space, and we believe our product line is well positioned to let us lead there.
We have the Haswell, which I talked about, our second generation of 22-nanometer architecture, we’ll be shipping Xeon level or server level class product in mid-2013. We have Avoton, which is Atom from microservers. We’ll be the first to this microserver trend. You hear a lot about it. You hear a lot of people talking about it. You should know that Intel was first to this space. We didn’t wait for it to be created. We’re going to go move that space.
We’re going to go define that microserver space, and we have Rangeley, which is product for network in comps infrastructure, which really allows us to move into the other sides of the Datacenter, where communications and that networking infrastructure occur. So those products combined, we believe we are well positioned to accelerate this growth into the Datacenter.
And then lastly, is to continue our silicon leadership, talked early on about 22-nanometers, the first technology to bring out the target transistor, but more importantly as we have a roadmap of Morris Law that continues, that we see us growing further in along the Morris Law transitions. We have 14-nanometer in its final stages of development, ready for production at the end of this year and moving into next year.
We understand what is beyond 14-nanometers for Morris Law. That silicon leadership allows us to drive the innovation in every one of these other areas and really bring it together in tri-sector of cost, battery, and performance that allows us to bring products to anyone of these markets that’s required.
So to bring this to closure, as my – this is my first presentation as CEO I guess. I’ve shown you that we have a great basis from which to grow on, but financially the company is sound in a very strong position. I’ve shown you that, we understand the mega trends and then we understand exactly how the market is moving into these data center areas, the connected computing and ultra-mobility, and I try to show you we have laid out the imperatives and assets to really allow these as to move into these new areas.
And so with that, I would just like to bring this to closure to show you that, I believe we’re well positioned. I believe that we have the best position in Intel’s history and a long last while to grow into these areas, and we really look forward to the coming years.
And with that, I would like to call back up Andy and Renée for Q&A.
Q: Question one, it has been two years since we purchased McAfee. How has McAfee contributed to the bottom line? What is the long-term plan with this company?
A: from Renée James – President
When McAfee and the acquisition of McAfee is hot of a broader strategy that we’ve had to increase the overall security not only of our products, but as we move into cloud-based computing, and into ultra-mobility that Brian talked about. We believe that one of the opportunities faces for Intel is to provide a more secure solution, more secure platforms around your data, around the devices that we build, and around your own personal identity and privacy.So McAfee is one of many assets that we have acquired, they have been doing a very good job, and you may have read that we’ve added two McAfee over the course of the last two years. We’ve recently announced a week ago that we made an additional acquisition, which was always part of our strategy to grow what McAfee offered around the network and the cloud, and we continued to evolve their product line and this week we made an announcement around a personal identity and data security products for consumers that is bundled with our new platforms. So we’re very happy with them. It is part of a much broader strategy that’s consistent with what Brian just talked about, and we should look for more in that area.
Q: Over the last decade, our stock has been flat. It’s more or less tracked Microsoft has underperformed S&P 500 compared to QUALCOMM. QUALCOMM is up 300%; Apple, up 6,000%. QUALCOMM, for example, is now worth as much as Intel. Apple and QUALCOMM focus on communication products and mobile products, whereas we mostly use the market.
What’s worse is that we have the huge manufacturing capability that you talked about, maybe 3.5-year lead on competitors. So if weren’t just now coming out with Haswell, sophomore products et cetera, our design side of the house must be behind by 3.5 years or so, and that’s not good, because now we’re in catchup mode, and that’s risky. And this isn’t the first time in the last dozen years I missed the industry trend. So I’m very concerned about the product design side of the house. This company has been very focused on manufacturing from pub noise aren’t down, the microprocessor, the 4004 was afterthought.
The products mattered to this company. So I’m wondering if you think that the Board, the top management and the comp packages focus on product development well enough and if you’ve seen any improvements in last few years to improve the effectiveness of product design likely to be true?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
So I started my presentation with an acknowledgment that we were slow to the mobile market. And I wanted to do that purposely to let the shareholders know we saw, but they were moving much more aggressively now moving forward, and we believe we have the right products. What we have to do is really make some decisions around; you see we bought assets to allow us to get into the LTE space. We’ve made transitions in what we design for Atom, and we’ve looked at how do we design our silicon technologies to allow integration of those, because COMs and the CPU are a little bit different in the silicon technologies they require.So we do believe we are positioned well moving forward. But you are asking a more fundamental question about how do we see market trends and how do we really make sure that we understand how the market is moving. And actually we spent a lot of time with the board over the last several months, partly in just the normal discussions with the board, and partly in this process of selection. And both Renée and I talked about how we’re going to build a much more outward sensing environment for Intel, so that we understand where our architecture needs to move first.
We actually understand that integration is occurring more and more, that it’s important more about integration than almost anything else right now, and that’s really how these new devices are occurring. We have plans to build a structure that allows us to have consultants and people from the outside to help us look at these trends and look at our architectural choices and make sure we’re making the right decisions. And we’re trying to build a much closer relationship with our customers, so that we understand where they want to go. We spent, actually Renée and I over the last week, a lot of time with and they are all showing us here is where the market is moving and here is where we need Intel to move.
We are going to make adjustments in our architecture, and our product choices to align to those much, much closure moving forward. So we do believe, we see what you’re talking about how we made those choices, but we believe we’ve made the right decisions and we have the right process moving forward to make sure, I wish they are aligned.
Q: … question is about the Software and Services Group as compared to the PC Client Group. The Software and Services is certainly expected to grow and I’m particularly interested in the gross margin contribution not just today, I’m interested in your vision three to five years from now, how you see the gross margin contribution of the Software Group, comparing and either increasing or decreasing relative to the PCCG Group?
A: from Renée James – President
The Software and Services Group as you know is a new reportable segment in the last several years for us. Software business, in general, are good opportunities for growth and once that are aligned with the market segments that we’re going to provide products into or provide products into today is a good opportunity for us to enhance our offering to our customers.In general, we have a very, very good business. Brian talked about the margin profile business we have today. The businesses that we are pursuing in Software and Services are equally good opportunities, and we expect that those businesses will continue to contribute as software companies do in the market and about the same way that they do in the market today.
Q: For the first time as a shareholder of Intel, I’m kind of wondering and curious about and look forward a decade from now, and here is a context to the question.
The CapEx spending has more than doubled in the last two years. R&D has gone up by 53%, you are making a really significant investment in the future that you talked about CEO Brian, okay. And you’ve made a transition over the FinFET, last week as preparation for the meeting, I looked at the ITRS road map and about 2020, it indicates that gate lines would be running around 10-nanometers.
When I look realistically of that, the question I have is one, what device architecture would you be using there more than likely? And number two, isn’t it time for a transition, an inflection point as Andy might have said to either switching photons or quantum computing or something else. So maybe part of the question is directed towards you Brian, and the other part could we possibly hear from your CTO or Head of TD?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
I’ll start. It was a pretty long question, so I’m going to see if I can get most of your points. Your first point was CapEx has gone up, we’re spending a lot more on technology and is there a time for a transition in that technology, and I would tell you that we are the – we typically have about a 10-year view of Moore’s Law and we’ve always had a 10-year view. If you went back 10 years ago, we had a 10-year view. If you went back five years ago, we have a 10-year view, that’s about as far out as you can see, and we believe that we have the right architectures to continue to grow Moore’s Law in a silicon environment for at least that period of time.That’s not to say we don’t have efforts in photonics, we actually have efforts in photonics and we’re going to bring products to markets in photonics, more about switching in the datacenter [SEE SECTION 7. ON ‘PHOTONIC ARCHITECTURES’ IN THE DETAILS PART BELOW], but the fundamental silicon technology and our ability to continue to drive it beyond 10 nanometers, to be honest with you, we plan to be on 10 nanometers much earlier than 2020, I can tell you that, is we believe sound and fundamental and it’s why we made investments you saw us make an investment in ASML last year for almost $4 billion in total. That was really to drive EV technology for lithography to allow to keep pushing well below 10 nanometers from the Moore’s Law standpoint. So we think we are pretty well positioned to keep moving at least for the next decade in the current technologies. I don’t know if Bill…
A: from William M. Holt – Executive Vice President
General Manager, Technology and Manufacturing Group [“semiconductor CTO”]But if you look back at the last three or four generation each one has come with a substantial innovation or change, there is no simple scaling in our business anymore. And that will continue, and so each time we plan to advance the technology, we have to make changes relative to photonics and our quantum computing. We do have – Brian said, have efforts in those, but those are clearly not something that are anytime in the near horizon. There is lots of interesting work going on there, but none of it really is practical to turn into a real computing devices.
Q: How do you expect the foundry market to impact margins short and long-term?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
So I think Stacy has talked in some of the earnings calls that we currently see margins to be in the range looking forward to 55% to, I believe, 65% was the range she gave. Those were inclusive of our foundry business. So I would tell you that we’ve already built the foundry growth into our current projections for margin, and we actually believe we are being selective, we’re not going into the general foundry business, we’re not opening up to anybody. We’re really looking for partners that can utilize and make it take advantage of our leading edge silicon and that’s why we are able to stay in that range we believe moving forward.Q: I agree with the President’s vision of future is the customer interface and have LTE and good processing that all make sense. [SEE ‘TRANSPARENT COMPUTING’ AS THE OVERALL VISION, AND PERCEPTUAL COMPUTING AS AN ADDITIONAL ONE IN THE BELOW DETAILS, PARTICULARLY SECTIONS 5.+8. AND SECTION 4. RESPECTIVELY.] I would rather usher with these executions. If you look at the mobile world right now the ARMs Holdings, they have 95% of the market share. I understand Intel has 1,000, I think 1,000 researchers I think they are doing purely basic research.
And how come interference see this mobile way coming and that the ARM Holdings taking maybe 5% market share. On top of that, Microsoft going to RT, it’s high this Windows RT, which are ARM Holding and HP just announced a new tablet with NVIDIA tablet processor, also based on ARM. So everybody is trying to take the CPU share away from you. And I understand Intel is having this Haswell should coming out in June, some questions, are you confident this Haswell can hold ARMs Holding back?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
First, I’d say, in my presentation I talked about the fact that yes, we missed it. We were slow to tablets and some of the mobile computing. We do believe we have a good base right, 12 phones, 20 countries, 15 tablets, Android and Windows 8, it gets important that we’ve looked at both of those, and then we have these products moving forward. I would tell you that it’s more than just Haswell.
Haswell is a key product. It’s going to extend quorum much further on both ends from a high performance Xeon space to the low power space. You are going to see single digit power levels on a core product, which will allow it move into very mobile spaces, but that alone would not go beat ARM or go beat the competition into those spaces you talked about. What you really have to do is extend into that Atom space as well, and that’s where you see products like Clover Trail and Clover Trail+ today, Silvermont [SEE SECTION 6. ON ‘Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture’ IN THE DETAILS PART BELOW] and then moving into the rest of this year you see, Bay Trail.
Bay Trail will be one of the biggest advances we made in Atom that allows us to move into the mobile space much stronger.
And then thirdly, with the assets we purchased a few years back, which was the Infineon mobile group, which gave us the comp side of this. And I told you that we have comps’ LTE data in the middle of this summer and multimode at the end of this year. We’ll actually be the next meeting person in LTE space and that’s critical to get into those markets. You don’t want to have to dependent on others to provide that comp and then as we move into next year, you’ll see us integrating that, which we believe allow us to move back on to that leading edge. So stitch back to that, do we have a good product roadmap to allow us to go, win share in that space, we believe we do.
Next question is do we have a good ability to view that space moving forward because whatever it is today won’t be what it is five years from now, and that’s what Renée and I are committed to go, put in together because we absolutely believe this connected computing will continue to move down and we’ll continue on the products going forward.
End of [May 17, 2013] update
Intel Chairman Interview on New Intel CEO Brian Krzanich [SBARTSTV YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Intel’s CEO Pick Is Predictable, but Not Its No. 2 [The Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2013]
The selection of Mr. Krzanich, who is 52 and joined Intel in 1982, suggests that Intel will continue to try to use its manufacturing muscle to play a broader role in mobile chips.
But he said that the board was mainly convinced by a new strategy—devised with Ms. James—to help take Intel chips into new devices.
“That is absolutely what won them the job,” said Andy Bryant, the Intel chairman and former finance chief who led the search. “Brian and Renee delivered a strategy for Intel that is pretty dramatic.”
…
While Mr. Krzanich doesn’t expect the “full strategy” to become visible until later this year, he said it would help move Intel chips beyond computers and mobile devices into more novel fields, including wearable technology.
The strategy “went from the very low end of computing to the very top end of computing,” Mr. Bryant said.
…
Intel directors met last weekend for a final round of interviews and then vote on Mr. Krzanich’s selection, the person close to the situation said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Krzanich suggested to Mr. Bryant the appointment of Ms. James, which the board approved Wednesday, the Intel spokesman said.
Mr. Bryant, who is 63 years old, said he has helped mentor both executives and agreed to stay on in his position for an indefinite period to help them in their new roles.
What already available from recently accepted by Intel board strategy is detailed in the below sections of this post, namely:
- Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit) with the Intel® Cloud Services Platform (CSP)
- Porting native code into HTML5 JavaScript
- Parallel JavaScript (the River Trail project)
- Perceptual Computing
- HTML5 and transparent computing
- Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture
- Photonic achitectures to drive the future of computing
- The two-person Executive Office and Intel’s transparent computing strategy as presented so far
I am quite impressed with all of those pieces, just to give my conclusion ahead.
There is, however, a huge challenge for the management as the new two-person Executive Office of Brian M. Krzanich as CEO and Renée J. James as president is to lead the company:
– out of Intel’s biggest flop: at least 3-month delay in delivering the power management solution for its first tablet SoC [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 20, 2012]
– then Saving Intel: next-gen Intel ultrabooks for enterprise and professional markets from $500; next-gen Intel notebooks, other value devices and tablets for entry level computing and consumer markets from $300 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 17, 2013] in short-term
– also capitalising on Intel Media: 10-20 year leap in television this year [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 16, 2013] as a huge mid-term opportunity (with Windows Azure Media Services OR Intel & Microsoft going together in the consumer space (again)? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 17, 2013] or not)
– as well as further strengthening its position in the Software defined server without Microsoft: HP Moonshot [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 10, 2013] effort
– but first and foremost proving that the Urgent search for an Intel savior [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 21 – Dec 11, 2012] did indeed end with this decision by the Intel board
– for which the litmus test is the company success against the phenomenon of the $99 Android 4.0.3 7” IPS tablet with an Allwinner SoC capable of 2160p Quad HD and built-in HDMI–another inflection point, from China again [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 3, 2012] which is based on The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 13, 2012] being a more and more viable alternative to the closed Intel system of design and manufacturing.
Indeed, Intel completely missed the huge opportunities presented by the explosion in the mobile computing end of the market during the last 3 years resulting in entry level smartphone prices as low as $72+, only 77% higher than Intel’s latest available in products Atom Z2760 processor chip for smartphones and tablets at $41, and 71% lower than Intel’s latest available Core™ i3-3229Y processor chip for lowest power consumption ultrabooks at $250, so by now Intel’s whole business model is in jeopardy:
despite sufficiently early warnings by:
More information: Apple’s Consumer Computing System: 5 years of “revolutionary” iPhone and “magical” iPad[‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 9, 2012]:
1. Overall picture at the moment
2. Current iPhone and iPad products
3. Earlier products
4. iCloud
5. iTunes
6. App Store
Let’s see now in detail how the Intel Board decision could be the right one based on deep analysis of the available information so far:
1. Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit) with the Intel® Cloud Services Platform (CSP)
The Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit) can be used to create applications using HTML5 and web services. One such set of services are the Intel® Cloud Services Platform (CSP). The Intel® XDK supports the full spectrum of HTML5 mobile development strategies, including:
- Classic Web Apps – No device interface, no on-device caching (only works online)
- Mobile Web Apps – HTML5 Caching (works online/offline), some device interface (GPS, Accelerometer)
- Hybrid Native Apps – Full device interface, identical to native apps
Each of these strategies has pros and cons – Intel makes it easy to develop using HTML5 and JavaScript, regardless of the precise deployment strategy you choose. Intel’s App Dev Center makes it easy to build and manage deployments to all popular app stores.
With the Intel® XDK, developers really can “write it once, deploy to many.” Currently build for iOS Tablets, iOS Smartphones, Android Tablets, Android Smartphones, Google Play Store, Amazon App Store, Mozilla App Store, Facebook App Center, and the Google Chrome store.
Intel® HTML5 XDK Demo [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, March 25, 2013]
More information:
– Create World Class HTML5 Apps & Web Apps with the XDK [Intel’s App Learning Center, March 1, 2013]
– The XDK turbocharges PhoneGap [Intel’s App Learning Center, March 1, 2013]
– Developing Applications for Multiple Devices [Intel HTML5 development documentation, March 15, 2013]
It is likely that any of your apps fall into one of two broad categories. The first category of apps includes fixed position apps, like a game or interactive app where the layout is fixed and all the assets are placed in a static position. The second app category is a dynamic layout app, like an RSS reader or similar app where you may have content that is in a long list and viewing a specific item just shows a scrolling view to acommodate varying content size. For the second category, positioning and scrolling can usually be handled by simple CSS. Setting your div and body widths to “width=100%” instead of “width=768px” is an example of an approach that should help you use the entire screen regardless of resolution and aspect ratio.
The first category is a lot more complicated and we have added some functions to help you deal with this issue. It should be noted that there is no magic “silver bullet” solution. However, if you design your app with certain things in mind and have a plan for other resolutions, we can take care of some complicated calculations and make sure things are scaled for the best user experience possible.
Before we explain how to use our functions to help with these issues, let’s look at some real devices and their resolutions to get a clearer picture of the issues.
…
Conclusion
Scaling a single codebase for use on multiple devices and resolutions is a formidable challenge, particularly if your app is in the category of apps that are fixed position apps rather than an app that uses a dynamic layout. By designing your app’s layout for the smallest screen ratio expected, you can rely on us to help by performing proper scaling and letting you know the new virtual available screen size. From there you can easily pad your app’s background or reset your application’s world bounds to adapt to different screens on the fly.
For more information, documentation is available at http://www.html5devsoftware.intel.com/documentation. Please email html5tools@intel.com with any questions or post on our forums at http://forums.html5dev-software.intel.com .
App Game Interfaces is a JavaScript execution environment that includes a minimal DOM, primarily to provide access to a partial implementation of HTML5 canvas that is optimized for the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. The App Game Interfaces augment the Canvas object with multi-channel sound, accelerated physics, and accelerated canvas to provide more realistic modeling and smoother gameplay, more like native capabilities and performance – with HTML5!
The Intel® HTML5 Game Development Experience at GDC 2013 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, April 5, 2013]
More information:
– HTML5 and Mobile are the Future of Gaming [Intel’s App Learning Center, March 1, 2013]
– Graphics Acceleration for HTML5 and Java Script Engine JIT Optimization for Mobile Devices [Intel Developer Zone article, Jan 4, 2013]
– Convert an App Using HTML5 Canvas to Use App Game Interfaces [Intel HTML5 development documentation, March 4, 2013]
– Application Game Interfaces [Intel HTML5 development Readme, March 1, 2013]
App Game Interfaces uses: 1. Ejecta - Dominic Szablewski - MIT X11 license
(http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) 2. Box2D - Erin Catto - Box2D License 3. JavaScriptCore - The WebKit Open Source Project - GNU LGPL 2.1
(http://opensource.org/licenses/LGPL-2.1) 4. V8 JavaScript Engine - Google - New BSD license
(http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause) 5. IJG JPEG - Independent JPEG Group – None
(http://www.ijg.org/files/README) 6. libpng - PNG Development Group - zlib/libpng License
(http://opensource.org/licenses/Zlib) 7. FreeType - The FreeType Project - The FreeType License
(http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/freetype/freetype2.git/tree/docs/FTL.TXT) 8. v8 build script - Appcelerator Inc - Apache License 2.0
(http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
The Intel Cloud Services Platform beta provides a set of identity-based services designed for rich interoperability and seamless experiences that cut across devices, operating systems, and platforms. The initial set of services accessed via RESTful APIs provide key capabilities such as identity, location, and context to developers for use in server, desktop, and mobile applications aimed at both consumers and businesses.
For more information, please visit the Intel Cloud Services Platform beta.
Intel® Developer Zone Cloud Services Platform [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, March 26, 2013]
Plucky rebels: Being agile in an un-agile place – Peter Biddle at TED@Intel [TEDInstitute YouTube channel, published May 6, 2013, filmed March 2013]
Intel® Cloud Services Platform Demo at GDC 2013 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, April 5, 2013]
Intel® Cloud Services Platform [CSP] Technical Overview [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, May 3, 2013]
More information:
– Intel® Cloud Services Platform Overview (video by Norman Chou on Intel Developer Zone, March 19, 2013)
– Intel® Cloud Service Platform beta Overview (presentation by Norman Chou on GSMA OneAPI Developer Day, Feb 26, 2013), see the GSMA page as well
Build apps that seamlessly span devices, operating systems, and platforms.
Learn how you can easily build apps with this collection of identity-based, affiliated services. Services available include Intel Identity Services, Location Based Services, Context Services and Commerce Services. This session will cover the RESTful APIs available for each service, walk you through the easy sign up process and answer your questions. Want to know more? Visit http://software.intel.com/en-us/cloud-services-platform.
2. Porting native code into HTML5 JavaScript
Currently porting native iOS code to HTML5 is supported but via an abstract format which potentially will allow portinf from other OS code in the futures as well:
This app porting relies (or would soon rely, see later) on App Framework (formerly jqMobi) as the “definitive JS library for HTML5 app development” for which Intel is stating:
Create the mobile apps you want with the tools you are comfortable with. Build hybrid mobile apps and web apps using the App Framework and App UI Library, a jQuery-compatible framework that gives you developers all the UX you want in a tight, fast package.
The Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool Demo at GDC 2013 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, April 5, 2013]
More information: Intel HTML5 Porter Tool Introduction for Android Developer [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 5, 2013] which presents the tool as:
and adds the following important information (note here that instead of App Framework/jqMobi that version relies on the less suitable jQuery Mobile):
The next release is expected to have better integration with Intel® XDK (Intel’s HTML5 cross platform development kit) and have more iOS API coverage in terms of planned features.
2. Porting translated application to different OSs
A translated HTML5 project has a jsproj file for Visual Studio 2012 JavaScript project in Windows Store apps which you are able to open on Windows* 8 in order to run in case of successfully translated application (100% translated API) or continue development in case of placeholders in the code.
While in the associated Technical Reference – Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool – BETA [Intel Developer Zone article, Jan 17, 2013] you will find all the relevant additional details, from which it is important to add here the following section:
About target HTML5 APIs and libraries
The Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool – BETA both translates the syntax and semantics of the source language (Objective-C*) into JavaScript and maps the iOS* SDK API calls into an equivalent functionality in HTML5. In order to map iOS* API types and calls into HTML5, we use the following libraries and APIs:
The standard HTML5 API: The tool maps iOS* types and calls into plain standard objects and functions of HTML5 API as its main target. Most notably, considerable portions of supported Foundation framework APIs are mapped directly into standard HTML5. When that is not possible, the tool provides a small adaptation layer as part of its library.
- The jQuery Mobile library: Most of the UIKit widgets are mapped jQuery Mobile widgets or a composite of them and standard HTML5 markup. Layouts from XIB files are also mapped to jQuery Mobile widgets or other standard HTML5 markup.
The Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool – BETA library: This is a ‘thin-layer’ library build on top of jQuery Mobile and HTML5 APIs and implements functionality that is no directly available in those libraries, including Controller objects, Delegates, and logic to encapsulate jQuery Mobile widgets. The library provides a facade very similar to the original APIs that should be familiar to iOS* developers. This library is distributed with the tool and included as part of the translated code in the
lib
folder.You should expect that future versions of the tool will incrementally add more support for API mapping, based on further statistical analysis and user feedback.
3. Parallel JavaScript (the River Trail project)
RiverTrail Wiki [on GitHub edited by Stephan Herhut, April 2313, 2013 version] [April 23]
Background
The goal of Intel Lab’s River Trail project is to enable data-parallelism in web applications. In a world where the web browser is the user’s window into computing, browser applications must leverage all available computing resources to provide the best possible user experience. Today web applications do not take full advantage of parallel client hardware due to the lack of appropriate programming models. River Trail puts the parallel compute power of client’s hardware into the hands of the web developer while staying within the safe and secure boundaries of the familiar JavaScript programming paradigm. River Trail gently extends JavaScript with simple deterministic data-parallel constructs that are translated at runtime into a low-level hardware abstraction layer. By leveraging multiple CPU cores and vector instructions, River Trail achieves significant speedup over sequential JavaScript.
Getting Started
To get a feeling for the programming model and experiment with the API, take a look at our interactive River Trail shell. The shell runs in any current version of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. If you are using Firefox and have installed the River Trail extension (see below on how to), your code will be executed in parallel. If you are using other browsers or have not installed the extension for Firefox, the shell will use a sequential library implementation and you won’t see any speedup.
You need to install our Firefox extension to use our prototype compiler that enables execution of River Trail on parallel hardware. You can download a prebuilt version for Firefox 20.x [April 23] running on Windows and MacOS (older versions for older browsers can be found here). We no longer provide a prebuilt Linux version. However, you can easily build it yourself. We have written a README that explains the process. If you are running Firefox on Windows or Linux, you additionally need to install Intel’s OpenCL SDK (Please note the SDK’s hardware requirements.).
…
River Trail – Parallel Computing in JavaScript [by Stephan Herhut from Intel Labs, delivered on April 2, 2012 at JSConf 2012, published on JSConf EU YouTube channel on Jan 20, 2013]
River Trail Demos at IDF 2012 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, Sept 24, 2012]
More information:
– River Trail – Parallel Programming in JavaScript [Stephan Herhut on InfoQ, March 29, 2013] a collection which is based on his latest recorded presentation (embedded there) that was delivered at Strange Loop 2012 on Sept 24, 2012 (you can follow his Twitter for further information)
– River Trail: Bringing Parallel JavaScript* to the Web [Intel Developer Zone article by Stephan Herhut, Oct 17, 2012]
– Tour de Blocks: Preview the Benefits of Parallel JavaScript* Technology by Intel Labs [Intel Developer Zone article by Stephan Herhut, Oct 17, 2012]
– Parallel JS Lands [Baby Steps blog by Niko Matsakis at Mozilla, March 20, 2013], see all of his posts in PJs category since January 2009, particularly ‘A Tour of the Parallel JS Implementation’ Part 1 [March 20] and Part 2 [April 4], while from the announcement:
The first version of our work on ParallelJS has just been promoted to mozilla-central and thus will soon be appearing in a Nightly Firefox build near you. … Once Nightly builds are available, users will be able to run what is essentially a “first draft” of Parallel JS. The code that will be landing first is not really ready for general use yet. It supports a limited set of JavaScript and there is no good feedback mechanism to tell you whether you got parallel execution and, if not, why not. Moreover, it is not heavily optimized, and the performance can be uneven. Sometimes we see linear speedups and zero overhead, but in other cases the overhead can be substantial, meaning that it takes several cores to gain from parallelism. …
…
Looking at the medium term, the main focus is on ensuring that there is a large, usable subset of JavaScript that can be reliably parallelized. Moreover, there should be a good feedback mechanism to tell you when you are not getting parallel execution and why not.
…
The code we are landing now is a very significant step in that direction, though there is a long road ahead.
I want to see a day where there are a variety of parallel APIs for a variety of situations. I want to see a day where you can write arbitrary JS and know that it will parallelize and run efficiently across all browsers.
– Parallel javascript (River Trail) combine is not a function [Stack Overflow, April 16-25, 2013] from which it is important to include Stephan Herhut’s answer:
There are actually two APIs:
the River Trail API as described in the GitHub prototype documentation
the Parallel JavaScript API described in the ECMAScript proposal
The two differ slightly, one difference being that the ECMAScript proposal no longer has a combine method but uses a flavor of map that offers the same functionality. Another difference is that the GitHub prototype uses index vectors whereas the proposal version uses multiple scalar indices. Your example, for the prototype, would be written as
var par_A = new ParallelArray([3,3], function(iv) {return iv[1]}); par_A.combine(2, function(i) {return this.get(i) + 1} );
In the proposal version, you instead would need to write
var par_A = new ParallelArray([3,3], function(i,j) {return j}); par_A.map(2, function(e, i) { return this.get(i) + 1; });
Unfortunately, multi-dimensional map is not yet implemented in Firefox, yet. You can watch bug 862897 on Mozilla’s bug tracker for progress on that front.
Although we believe that the API in the proposal is the overall nicer design, we cannot implement that API in the prototype for technical reasons. So, instead of evolving the prototype half way, we have decided to keep its API stable.
One important thing to note: the web console in Firefox seems to always use the builtin version of ParallelArray and not the one used by a particular website. As a result, if you want to play with the GitHub prototype, you best use the interactive shell from our GitHub website.
Hope this clears up the confusion.
4. Perceptual Computing
Intel is supporting developers interested in adding perceptual computing to their apps with theIntel® Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 Beta. This allows developers to use perceptual computing to create immersive applications that incorporate close-range hand and finger tracking, speech recognition, facial analysis, and 2D/3D object tracking on 2nd and 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor-powered Ultrabook devices and PCs. Intel has also released the Creative Interactive Gesture Camera as part of the SDK, which allows developers to create the next generation of natural, immersive, innovative software applications on Intel Core processor-powered Ultrabook devices, laptops, and PCs.
How to drive experience with perceptual computing – Achin Bhowmik at TED@Intel [TEDInstitute YouTube channel, published May 6, 2013, filmed March 2013]
Head Coupled Perspective with the Intel® Perceptual Computing SDK [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, March 25, 2013]
Perceptual Computing Challenge Phase 1 Trailer [IntelPerceptual YouTube channel, March 28, 2013]
More information:
– GDC 2013: Perceptual Computing, HTML5, Havok, and More [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 2, 2013]
– Introducing the Intel® Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 5, 2013]
– Perceptual Computing: Ten Top Resources for Developers [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Jan 4, 2013]
5. HTML5 and transparent computing
Why Intel Loves HTML5 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, Dec 20, 2012]
App Development Without Boundaries [Intel Software Adrenaline article, April 1, 2013]
HTML5 Reaches More Devices and More Users, More Effectively
There are a lot of reasons to like HTML5. It’s advanced. It’s open. It’s everywhere. And, it’s versatile.
But Intel loves HTML5 because our vision for the future is a world where developers can create amazing cross-platform experiences that flow freely from device to device, and screen to screen—a world where apps can reach more customers and get to market faster, without boundaries.
HTML5 helps make that world possible.
…
Many Devices, One Platform [Intel Software Adrenaline article, Dec 11, 2012]
The Three Design Pillars of Transparent Computing
Welcome to the new, transparent future, where users expect software apps to work equally well no matter what device they run on, whether on an Ultrabook™ device or an Android* phone, a netbook or a tablet. This is the concept of transparent computing: with the assumed level of mobility expected, today’s consumers demand seamless transitions for a single app on multiple platforms. Developers must deliver code that works just about everywhere, with standard usability, and with strong security measures.
It’s a tall order, but help is available. As long as teams understand some of the simple design considerations and usability frameworks, which are outlined in this article, they can expand their app appeal across many profitable niches and embrace transparent computing.
There are three key design principles that comprise the transparent computing development model:
Cross-platform support
Standard usability themes
Enhanced security features
If developers can think in these broad strokes and plan accordingly, the enhanced effect of multiple platform revenues and word-of-mouth marketing can result in the income streams that your entire app portfolio will appreciate.
…
More information:
– Transparent Computing: One Platform to Develop Them All [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Sept 13, 2012]
– Transparent Computing with Freedom Engine – HTML5 and Beyond [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Oct 15, 2012]
– Intel Cloud Services Platform Private Beta [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Oct 18, 2012]
– App Show 33: A Recap of Day Two at IDF 2012 [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Nov 9, 2012]
– Cross-Platform Development: What The Stats Say [Intel Developer Zone blog post, March 7, 2013]
– Intel’s Industry Expert Examines Cross-platform Challenges and Solutions [Intel Software Adrenaline article, April 16, 2013]
– Security Lets You Make the Most of the Cloud [Intel Software Adrenaline infographic, April 10, 2013]
– Mechanisms to Protect Data in the Open Cloud [Intel Software Adrenaline whitepaper, April 10, 2013]
– Intel and VMware security solutions for business computing in the cloud [Intel Software Adrenaline solution brief, April 10, 2013]
– The Intel® HTML5 Game Development Experience at GDC 2013 [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 5, 2013]
– Intel Developer Forum 2012 Keynote, Renée James Transcript (PDF 190KB)
… transparent computing is really about allowing experiences to seamlessly cross across different platforms, both architectures and operating system platform boundaries. It makes extensive use of technologies like HTML5 – which we’re going to talk a lot more about in a second – and in house cloud services. It represents for us the direction that we believe we need to go as an industry. And it’s the next step really beyond ubiquitous computing.
…
We need three things. We need a programming environment that crosses across platforms and architectures and the boundaries. We need a flexible and secure cloud infrastructure. And we need a more robust security architecture from client to the data center.
…
We believe that HTML5 as the application programming language is what can deliver a seamless and consistent environment across the different platforms – across PCs, tablets, telephones, and into the car.
… transparent computing obviously relies on the cloud to provide the developer and the application transparent services that move across platforms and ecosystem boundaries.
…
Intel is working on an integrated set of cloud services for developers that we would host that would give some of the core elements required to really realize our vision around transparent computing. Some of them would be location services, like Peter demonstrated this morning; digital storefronts, federated identity attestation, some of the things that are required to know who’s where on which device, sensor and context APIs for our platforms, and, of course, business analytics and business intelligence.
We will continue to roll these things out over the course of the year, so you should look for more from us on that. And as I said, these will be predominantly developer services, backend services for developers as they create application.
…
For the cloud, as we migrate resources across these different datacenters and different environments, as we move applications and workloads, we have to do it in a secure way. And one of the ways that you can do that on our platforms, on Intel’s servers, is using Trusted Execution, or TXT. TXT allows data operations to occur isolated in their own execution environment from the rest of the system and safe from malware.
…
In transparent computing, the security of the device is going to be largely around identity management. In addition to device management and application and software security, which we’ve been working on for a while, we have a lot of work to do in the area of identity and how we protect people – not only their data, but who they are at transactions, as they move these experiences across these different devices.
Identity and attestation we believe will become key underpinnings for all mobile transparent computing across different platforms and the cloud. Underneath it all, we’re going to have to have a very robust set of hardware features, which we plan to have, to secure that information. It’s going to be even more critical especially as we think about mobile devices and we think about identity and attestation that we’re able to truly secure and know that it is as safe and as known good as possible.
…
We will continue to provide direct distribution support for your applications and services through AppUp, and those of you that know about it, fabulous. If you don’t, AppUp is the opportunity to distribute through a digital storefront across 45 countries, around Intel platforms. We support Windows and Tizen and HTML5, both native and other apps.
In addition to all of that, we will be revitalizing the software business network, which we’ve used to pair you up with other Intel distributors and Intel hardware partners for exclusive offers and bundles. As we see more and more solutions in our industry, we want to make sure our developers are able to connect with people building on Intel platforms. And other additional marketing programs and that kind of thing are all going to be in the same place.
And in Q4, we will have a specific program launched on HTML5. That program will help you write applications across multiple environments. We’ll be doing training, we’ll have SDKs, there will be tools. We will be working on how you run across IOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and Tizen. So, please stay tuned and go to the developer’s center for that.
Finally, today is just the start of our discussion on transparent computing. In the era of ubiquitous computing, we had that industry vision for a decade, and now that’s become a reality. And just like when we first predicted there was going to be a billion connected computers – I still remember it, it sounded so farfetched at that point in time decades ago – transparent computing seems pretty far away from where we stand today, but we have always believed that the future of computing is what we make it. And we believe that the developers, our developers around our platform, can embrace a new paradigm for computing, a paradigm that users want us to go solve. And we look forward to being your partner for the next era of computing, and delivering it transparently.
Chip Shot: Intel Extends HTML5 Capabilities for App Developers [Intel Newsroom, Feb 25, 2013]
To complement and grow its HTML5 capabilities, Intel has acquired the developer tools and build system from appMobi. Intel also hired the tool-related technical staff to help extend Intel’s existing HTML5 capabilities and accelerate innovation and delivery of HTML5 tools for cross platform app developers. Software developers continue to embrace HTML5 as an easy to use language to create cross platform apps. Evans Data finds 43 percent of all mobile developers indicate current use of HTML5 and an additional 38 percent plan to use HTML5 in the coming year. App developers can get started building HTML5 cross-platform apps today at: software.intel.com/html5. Visit the Intel Extends HTML5 Capabilities blog post for more information.
Intel extends HTML5 capabilities [Intel Developer Zone, Feb 22, 2013]
Developers continue to tell Intel they are looking to HTML5 to help improve time to market and reduce cost for developing and deploying cross-platform apps. At the same time, app developers want to maximize reach to customers and put their apps into multiple stores. Intel is dedicated to delivering software development tools and services that can assist these developers. I am pleased to let you know that Intel recently acquired the developer tools and build system from appMobi. While we’ve changed the names of the tools, the same capabilities will be there for you. You can check these tools out and get started writing your own cross platform apps now by visiting http://software.intel.com/html5 and registering to access the tools. Developers already using the appMobi tools will be able to access their work and files as well. If you weren’t already using appMobi development tools, I invite you to try them out and see if they fit your HTML5 app development needs. You will find no usage or licensing fees for using the tools.
We are also excited to bring many of the engineers who created these tools to Intel. These talented tool engineers complement Intel’s existing HTML5 capabilities and accelerate innovation and delivery of HTML5 tools for cross platform app developers.
I hope you will visit http://software.intel.com/html5 soon to check out the tools and return often to learn about the latest HTML5 developments from Intel.
One Code Base to Rule Them All: Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment [Intel Developer Zone, March 12, 2013]
If you’re a developer searching for a great tool to add to your repertoire, you’ll want to check out Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment, an HTML5-based development platform that enables developers to create one code base and port it to multiple platforms. Intel recently purchased the developer tools and build system from appMobi:
“While we’ve changed the names of the tools, the same capabilities will be there for you. You can check these tools out and get started writing your own cross platform apps now by visiting http://software.intel.com/html5 and registering to access the tools. Developers already using the appMobi tools will be able to access their work and files as well. If you weren’t already using appMobi development tools, I invite you to try them out and see if they fit your HTML5 app development needs. You will find no usage or licensing fees for using the tools.”
You can view the video below to see what this purchase means for developers who have previously used AppMobi’s tools:
For appMobi Developers: How Does Intel’s Acquisition Affect Me? [appMobi YouTube channel, Feb 22, 2013]
What is the HTML5 Development Environment?
Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment is a cloud-based, cross-platform HTML5 application development interface that makes it as easy as possible to build an app and get it out quickly to a wide variety of software platforms. It’s easy to use, free to get started, and everything is based right within the Web browser. Developers can create their apps, test functions, and debug their projects easily, putting apps through their virtual paces in the XDK which mimics real world functionality from within the Web browser.
This environment makes it as simple as possible to develop with HTML5, but by far the biggest advantage of using this service is the ability to build one app on whatever platform that developers are comfortable with and then deploy that app across multiple platforms to all major app stores. The same code foundation can be built for iOS, Web apps, Android, etc. using just one tool to create, debug, and deploy.
As appMobi is also the most popular HTML5 application development tool on the market with over 55,000 active developers using it every month to create, debug, and deploy, this tool is especially welcome. The HTML5 Development Environment makes it easy to create one set of code and seed it across multiple cross-platforms, making the process of development – including getting apps to market – more efficient for developers.
HTML5 is quickly becoming a unifying code platform for both mobile and desktop development. Because of this, Intel and appMobi have teamed up to support quick HTML5 app development for both PCs and Ultrabook™ devices. The XDK makes developing apps as easy as possible, but the best part about it is how fast apps can go from the drawing board to consumer-facing stores. Developers can also employ the XDK to reach an ever-growing base of Ultrabook users with new apps that utilize such features as touch, accelerometer, and GPS.
The Intel HTML5 XDK tools can be used to create apps for a whole new market of consumers looking to access all the best features that an HTML5-based app for Ultrabook devices has to offer. For example, every 16 seconds, an app is downloaded via Intel’s AppUp store, and there are over 2.6 billion potential PCs reachable from this platform. Many potential monetization opportunities exist for developers by utilizing Intel Ultrabook-specific features in their apps such as touch, accelerometer, and GPS, features traditionally seen only in mobile and tablet devices. Intel’s HTML5 development tools give developers the tools to quickly create, test, and deploy HTML5-based apps that in turn can be easily funneled right into app stores and thus into the hands of PC and Ultrabook device users.
Easy build process
The App Starter offers an interactive wizard to guide developers gently through the entire build process. This includes giving developers a list of the required plugins, any certificates that might be lacking, and any assets that might need to be pulled together. It will generate the App Framework code for you.
Developers can upload their own projects; a default template is also available. A demo app is automatically generated. Once an app is ready to build, developers are given an array of different services to choose from. Click on “build now”, supply a title, description and icon in advance, and the App Starter creates an app bundle that can then be submitted to different app stores/platforms.
The XDK
One of the HTML5 Development Environment’s most appealing features is the XDK (cross-platform development kit). This powerful interface supports robust HTML5 mobile development, which includes hybrid native apps, enhanced Web apps, mobile Web apps, and classic Web apps to give developers the full range of options.
The XDK makes testing HTML5 apps as easy as possible. Various form factors – phones, tablets, laptops, etc. – can be framed around an app to simulate how it would function on a variety of devices. In addition to tablet, phone, and PC emulations, there is also a full screen simulation of different Ultrabook device displays within the XDK. This is an incredibly useful way to test specific Ultrabook features in order to make sure that they are at maximum usability for consumers. The XDK for Ultrabook apps enables testing for mouse, keyboard, and touch-enabled input, which takes the guesswork out of developing for touch-based Ultrabook devices.
One tool, multiple uses
Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment is a cross-platform development service and packaging tool. It enables HTML5 developers to package their applications, optimize those applications, test with features, and deploy to multiple services.
Rather than building separate applications for all the different platforms out there, this framework makes it possible to build just one with HTML5 and port an app to multiple platforms. This is a major timesaver, to say the very least. Developers looking for ways to streamline their work flow and get their apps quickly to end users will appreciate the user-friendly interface, rich features, and in-browser feature testing. However, the most appealing benefit is the ability to build one app instead of several different versions of one app and deploy it across multiple platforms for maximum market exposure.
Chip Shot: Intel Expands Support of HTML5 with Launch of App Development Environment [Intel Newsroom, April 10, 2013]
At IDF Beijing, Intel launched the Intel® HTML5 Development Environment that provides a cross-platform environment to develop, test and deploy applications that can run across multiple device types and operating system environments as well as be available in various application stores. Based on web standards and supported by W3C, HTML5 makes it easier for software developers to create applications once to run across multiple platforms. Intel continues to invest in HTML5 to help mobile application developers lower total costs and improve time-to-market for cross-platform app development and deployment. Developers can access the Intel HTML5 Development Environment from the Intel® Developer Zone at no cost.
Intel Cloud Services Platform Open beta [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Dec 13, 2012]
Doors to our beta open today. Welcome! For those who participated in our private beta, thank you. Your feedback and ideas were awesome and will clearly make our services more useful for other developers. We are continuing to work out the kinks in our Wave 1 Services (Identity, Location and Context) and your ideas help us build what you want to use. We are at a point where we feel ready to invite others to try our services. So, today we open the doors to the broader developer community.
Our enduring mission with the Intel Cloud Services Platform beta is to give you key building blocks to deliver transparent computing experiences that seamlessly span devices, operating systems, stores and even ecosystems. With this release, “Wave 2”, we introduce a collection of Commerce Services that provide a common billing provider for apps and services deployed on the Intel Cloud Services Platform. Other cool stuff we’ve added includes Geo Messaging and Geo Fencing to Location Based Services and Behavioral Models for cuisine preferences and destination probability to Context Services.
For the open beta, we are introducing a Technical Preview of Curation, Catalog and Security. These are early releases, so some features may change, but we want to get you coding around these, so you can tell us what you think. We know building apps that provide users with a high degree of personalization often means spending WEEKS of valuable development time. Also, developing apps that are truly cross platform, cross domain and cross industry is still extremely difficult to do. So, our objective with Curation and Catalog Services is to make it really easy for you to create complex functionalities such as schemaless catalogs, developer- or user-curated lists, and secure client-side storage of data at rest. Play around with these services and give us feedback.
In addition to new services, we have invested heavily in a scalable and robust infrastructure. You need to be able to trust that our services will just work. To help you out, we have created a support team that you’ll want to call and talk to. We have 24×7 support and various ways you can reach out to us. You can contact us by phone (1-800-257-5404, option 4), email or our community forums.
To get the latest on what’s new and useful, check out our community. If you haven’t checked out our Services – remember the door is open. Try them. If you have thoughts about our platform, I want to hear them. Find me on twitter (@PNBLive).
6. Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture
Intel’s new Atom chips peak on performance, power consumption [computerworld YouTube channel, May 7, 2013]
Intel Launches Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture [press release, May 6, 2013]
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS:
- Intel announces Silvermont microarchitecture, a new design in Intel’s 22nm Tri-Gate SoC process delivering significant increases in performance and energy efficiency.
- Silvermont microarchitecture delivers ~3x more peak performance or the same performance at ~5x lower power over current-generation Intel® Atom™ processor core.1
- Silvermont to serve as the foundation for a breadth of 22nm products targeted at tablets, smartphones, microservers, network infrastructure, storage and other market segments including entry laptops and in-vehicle infotainment.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 6, 2013 – Intel Corporation today took the wraps off its brand new, low-power, high-performance microarchitecture named Silvermont.
The technology is aimed squarely at low-power requirements in market segments from smartphones to the data center. Silvermont will be the foundation for a range of innovative products beginning to come to market later this year, and will also be manufactured using the company’s leading-edge, 22nm Tri-Gate SoC manufacturing process, which brings significant performance increases and improved energy efficiency.
“Silvermont is a leap forward and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments,” said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer. “Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including “Bay Trail” and “Avoton” is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence.”
The Silvermont microarchitecture delivers industry-leading performance-per-watt efficiency.2 The highly balanced design brings increased support for a wider dynamic range and seamlessly scales up and down in performance and power efficiency. On a variety of standard metrics, Silvermont also enables ~3x peak performance or the same performance at ~5x lower power over the current-generation Intel® Atom™ processor core.1
Silvermont: Next-Generation Microarchitecture
Intel’s Silvermont microarchitecture was designed and co-optimized with Intel’s 22nm SoC process using revolutionary 3-D Tri-gate transistors. By taking advantage of this industry-leading technology, Intel is able to provide a significant performance increase and improved energy efficiency.
Additional highlights of the Silvermont microarchitecture include:
A new out-of-order execution engine enables best-in-class, single-threaded performance.1
A new multi-core and system fabric architecture scalable up to eight cores and enabling greater performance for higher bandwidth, lower latency and more efficient out-of-order support for a more balanced and responsive system.
New IA instructions and technologies bringing enhanced performance, virtualization and security management capabilities to support a wide range of products. These instructions build on Intel’s existing support for 64-bit and the breadth of the IA software installed base.
Enhanced power management capabilities including a new intelligent burst technology, low– power C states and a wider dynamic range of operation taking advantage of Intel’s 3-D transistors. Intel® Burst Technology 2.0 support for single- and multi-core offers great responsiveness scaled for power efficiency.
“Through our design and process technology co-optimization we exceeded our goals for Silvermont,” said Belli Kuttanna, Intel Fellow and chief architect. “By taking advantage of our strengths in microarchitecture development and leading-edge process technology, we delivered a technology package that enables significantly improved performance and power efficiency – all while delivering higher frequencies. We’re proud of this accomplishment and believe that Silvermont will offer a strong and flexible foundation for a range of new, low-power Intel SoCs.”
Architecting Across a Spectrum of Computing
Silvermont will serve as the foundation for a breadth of 22nm products expected in market later this year. The performance-per-watt improvements with the new microarchitecture will enable a significant difference in performance and responsiveness for the compute devices built around these products.
Intel’s quad-core “Bay Trail” SoC is scheduled for holiday 2013 tablets and will more than double the compute performance capability of Intel’s current-generation tablet offering1. Due to the flexibility of Silvermont, variants of the “Bay Trail” platform will also be used in market segments including entry laptop and desktop computers in innovative form factors.
Intel’s “Merrifield” [aimed at high-end smartphones, successor to Medfield] is scheduled to ship to customers by the end of this year. It will enable increased performance and battery life over current-generation products1 and brings support for context aware and personal services, ultra-fast connections for Web streaming, and increased data, device and privacy protection.
Intel’s “Avoton” will enable industry-leading energy efficiency and performance-per-watt for microservers2, storage and scale out workloads in the data center. “Avoton” is Intel’s second-generation Intel® Atom™ processor SoC to provide full server product capability that customers require including 64-bit, integrated fabric, error code correction, Intel virtualization technologies and software compatibility. “Rangeley” is aimed at the network and communication infrastructure, specifically for entry-level to mid-range routers, switches and security appliances. Both products are scheduled for the second half of this year.
Concurrently, Intel is delivering industry-leading advancements on its next-generation, 22nm Haswell microarchitecture for Intel® Core™ processors to enable full-PC performance at lower power levels for innovative “2-in-1” form factors, and other mobile devices available later this year. Intel also plans to refresh its line of Intel® Xeon® processor families across the data center on 22nm technology, delivering better performance-per-watt and other features.
“By taking advantage of both the Silvermont and Haswell microarchitectures, Intel is well positioned to enable great products and experiences across the full spectrum of computing,” Perlmutter said.
1 Based on the geometric mean of a variety of power and performance measurements across various benchmarks. Benchmarks included in this geomean are measurements on browsing benchmarks and workloads including SunSpider* and page load tests on Internet Explorer*, FireFox*, & Chrome*; Dhrystone*; EEMBC* workloads including CoreMark*; Android* workloads including CaffineMark*, AnTutu*, Linpack* and Quadrant* as well as measured estimates on SPECint* rate_base2000 & SPECfp* rate_base2000; on Silvermont preproduction systems compared to Atom processor Z2580. Individual results will vary. SPEC* CPU2000* is a retired benchmark. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
2 Based on a geometric mean of the measured and projected power and performance of SPECint* rate_base2000 on Silvermont compared to expected configurations of main ARM*-based mobile competitors using descriptions of the architectures; assumes similar configurations. Numbers may be subject to change once verified with the actual parts. Individual results will vary. SPEC* CPU2000* is a retired benchmark; results are estimates. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to: www.intel.com/performance.
For more information see the “Intel Atom Silvermont” Google search between May 6 and 8. From the accompanying Intel Next Generation Low Power Micro-Architecture webcast presentation I will include here the following slide only:
about which it was noted in the Deep inside Intel’s new ARM killer: Silvermont [The Register, May 8, 203] report that:
Now that Intel has created an implementation of the Tri-Gate transistor technology specifically designed for low-power system-on-chip (SoC) use – and not just using the Tri-Gate process it employs for big boys such as Core and Xeon – it’s ready to rumble.
Tri-Gate has a number of significant advantages over tried-and-true planar transistors, but the one that’s of particular significance to Silvermont is that when it’s coupled with clever power management, Tri-Gate can be used to create chips that exhibit an exceptionally wide dynamic range – meaning that they can be turned waaay down to low power when performance needs aren’t great, then cranked back up when heavy lifting is required.
This wide dynamic range, Kuttanna said, obviates the need for what ARM has dubbed a big.LITTLE architecture, in which a low-power core handles low-performance tasks, then hands off processing to a more powerful core – or cores – when the need arises for more oomph.
“In our case,” he said, “because of the combination of architecture techniques as well as the process technology, we don’t really need to do that. We can go up and down the range and cover the entire performance range.” In addition, he said, Silvermont doesn’t need to crank up its power as high as some of those competitors to achieve the same amount of performance.
Or, as Perlmutter put it more succinctly, “We do big and small in one shot.”
Equally important is the fact that a wide dynamic range allows for a seamless transition from low-power, low-performance operation to high-power, high-performance operation without the need to hand off processing between core types. “That requires the state that you have been operating on in one of the cores to be transferred between the two cores,” Kuttanna said. “That requires extra time. And the long switching time translates to either a loss in performance … or it translates to lower battery life.”
Intel’s 1h20m long Intel Next Generation Low Power Micro-Architecture – Webcast is available online for further details about Silvermont. The technical overview starts at [21:50] (Slide 15) and you can also read a summary of some of the most interesting points by CNXSoft.
7. Photonic achitectures to drive the future of computing
TED and Intel microdocumentary – Mission (Im)possible: Silicon photonics featuring Mario Paniccia [TEDInstitute YouTube channel, published May 6, 2013; first shown publicly in March 2013]
[2:14] You can do now a 100 gig, you can do 200 gig. You can imagine doing a terabit per second in the next couple of years. At a terabit per second you’re talking about transferring or downloading a season of HDTV from one device to another in less than a second. It’s going to allow us to keep up with Moore’s law, and allow us to move information and constantly feed Moore’s law in our processors and so we will not be limited anymore by the interconnect, or the connectivity. [2:44]
Intel considered this innovation an inflection point already back in 2010, see:
Justin Rattner, Mario Paniccia and John Bowers describe the impact and significance of the 50G Silicon Photonics Link [channelintel YouTube channel, July 26, 2010]
Now as the technology is ready for commercialisation this year Intel is even more enthuasiastic: Justin Rattner IDF Beijing 2013 Keynote-Excerpt: Silicon Photonics [channelintel YouTube channel, May 6, 2013]
Silicon photonics uses light (photons) to move huge amounts of data at extremely high speeds over a thin optical fiber rather than using electrical signals over a copper cable. But that is not all: Silicon Photonics: Disrupting Server Design [DataCenterVideos YouTube channel, Jan 22, 2013, Recorded at the Open Compute Summit, Jan 17, 2013, Santa Clara, California]
More information:
– Intel, Facebook Collaborate on Future Data Center Rack Technologies [press release, Jan 16, 2013]
New Photonic Architecture Promises to Dramatically Change Next Decade of Disaggregated, Rack-Scale Server Designs
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Intel and Facebook* are collaborating to define the next generation of rack technologies that enables the disaggregation of compute, network and storage resources.
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Quanta Computer* unveiled a mechanical prototype of the rack architecture to show the total cost, design and reliability improvement potential of disaggregation.
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The mechanical prototype includes Intel Silicon Photonics Technology, distributed input/output using Intel Ethernet switch silicon, and supports the Intel® Xeon® processor and the next-generation system-on-chip Intel® Atom™ processor code named “Avoton.”
-
Intel has moved its silicon photonics efforts beyond research and development, and the company has produced engineering samples that run at speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).
– Silicon Photonics Research [Intel Labs microsite]
– The Facebook Special: How Intel Builds Custom Chips for Giants of the Web [Wired, May 6, 2013]
– Meet the Future of Data Center Rack Technologies [Data Center Knowledge, Feb 20, 2013] by Raejeanne Skillern, Intel’s director of marketing for cloud computing
… Let’s now drill down into some of all-important details that shed light on what this announcement means in terms of the future of data center rack technologies.
What is Rack Disaggregation and Why is It Important?
Rack disaggregation refers to the separation of resources that currently exist in a rack, including compute, storage, networking and power distribution, into discrete modules. Traditionally, a server within a rack would each have its own group of resources. When disaggregated, resource types can then be grouped together, distributed throughout the rack, and upgraded on their own cadence without being coupled to the others. This provides increased lifespan for each resource and enables IT managers to replace individual resources instead of the entire system. This increased serviceability and flexibility drives improved total cost for infrastructure investments as well as higher levels of resiliency. There are also thermal efficiency opportunities by allowing more optimal component placement within a rack.
Intel’s photonic rack architecture, and the underlying Intel silicon photonics technologies, will be used for interconnecting the various computing resources within the rack. We expect these innovations to be a key enabler of rack disaggregation.
Why Design a New Connector?
Today’s optical interconnects typically use an optical connector called MTP. The MTP connector was designed in the mid-1980s for telecommunications and not optimized for data communications applications. At the time, it was designed with state-of-the-art materials manufacturing techniques and know-how. However, it includes many parts, is expensive, and is prone to contamination from dust.
The industry has seen significant changes over the last 25 years in terms of manufacturing and materials science. Building on these advances, Intel teamed up with Corning, a leader in optical fiber and cables, to design a totally new connector that includes state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques and abilities; a telescoping lens feature to make dust contamination much less likely; with up to 64 fibers in a smaller form factor; fewer parts – all at less cost.
What Specific Innovations Were Unveiled?
The mechanical prototype includes not only Intel silicon photonics technology, but also distributed input/output (I/O) using Intel Ethernet switch silicon, and supports Intel Xeon processor and next-generation system-on-chip Intel Atom processors code named “Avoton.” …
In fact this will lead to a CPU – Memory – Storage … disaggregation as shown by the following Intel slide:which will lead to new “Photonic Architectures”, or more precisely “Photonic Many-Core Architectures” (or later on even “Photonic/Optical Computing”), much more efficient than anything so far. For possibilities see these starting documents in academic architecture research:
– Photonic Many-Core Architecture Study Abstract [HPEC 2008, May 29, 2008]
– Photonic Many-Core Architecture Study Presentation [HPEC 2008, Sept 23, 2008]
– Building Manycore Processor-to-DRAM Networks Using Monolithic Silicon Photonics Abstract [HPEC 2008, Sept 23, 2008]
– Building Manycore Processor-to-DRAM Networks Using Monolithic Silicon Photonics Presentation [HPEC 2008, Sept 23, 2008]
Intel made available the following Design Guide for Photonic Architecture Draft Document v 0.5 [Jan 16, 2013] where we can find the following three architectures:
3.2 Interconnect Topology with a ToR [Top of Rack] Switch
One particular implementation of the Photonically Enabled Architecture which is supported by the New Photonic Connector is shown below in Figure 3.1. In this implementation the New Photonic Connector cables are used to connect the compute systems arrayed throughout the rack to a Top of Rack switch. These intra-rack connections are currently made through electrical cabling, often using Ethernet signaling protocols at various line rates. The Photonically Enabled Architecture envisions a system where the bandwidth density, line rate scalability and easier cable routing provide value in this implementation model. One key feature of this architecture is that the line rate and optical technology are not dictated; rather the lowest cost technology which can support the bandwidth demands and provide the functionality required to support future high speed and dense applications can be deployed in this model consistent with the physical implementation model. This scalability of the architecture is a key value proposition of the design. Not only is the architecture scalable for data rate in the optical cable, but scalability of port count in each connection is also possible by altering the physical cabling and optical modules.
Figure 3.1: Open Rack with Optical Interconnect.
In this architectural concept the green lines represent optical fiber cables terminated with the New Photonic Connector. They connect the various compute systems within the rack to the Top of Rack (TOR) switch. The optical fibers could contain up to 64 fibers and still support the described New Photonic Connector mechanical guidelines.One key advantage of the optically enabled architecture is that it supports disaggregation in the rack based design of the various system functionality, which means separate and discrete portions of the system resources may be brought together. One approach to disaggregation is shown below in Figure 3.2; in the design shown here the New Photonic Connector optical cables are still connecting a computing platform to a Top of Rack switch, but the configuration of the components has been altered to allow for a more modular approach to system upgrade and serviceability. In this design the computing systems have been configured in ‘trays’ containing a single CPU die and the associated memory and control, while communication is aggregated between three of these trays through a Silicon Photonics module to a Top of Rack switch. The Top of Rack switch now communicates to the individual compute elements through a Network Interface Chip (NIC) while also supporting an array of Solid State Disk Drives (SSD’s) and potentially additional computing hardware to support the networking interfaces. This approach would allow for the modular upgrade of the computing and memory infrastructure without burdening the user with the cost of upgrading the SSD infrastructure simultaneously provided the IO infrastructure remains constant. Other options for the disaggregated system architecture are of course also possible, potentially leading to the disaggregation of the memory system as well.
Figure 3-2: Disaggregated Photonic Architecture Topology
with a ToR Switch.
This design shows 3 compute trays connected through a single New Photonic Connector enabled optical cable to a Top of Rack (TOR) switch supporting Network Interface Chip (NIC) elements, Solid State Disk Drives (SSD’s), Switching functionality and additional compute resources.3.3 Interconnect Topology with Distributed Switch Functionality
The Photonically Enabled Architecture which is supported by the New Photonic Connector cable and connector concept can support several different types of architectures, each with specific advantages. One particular type of architecture, which also takes advantage of the functionality of another Intel component, an Intel Switch Chip, is shown in Figure 3.3, shown below. In this architecture the Intel Switch Chip is configured in such a way as to support both aggregation of data streams to reduce overall fiber and cabling burden as well as a distributed switching functionality.
The distributed switch functionality supports the modular architecture which was discussed in previous sections. This concept allows for a very granular approach to the deployment of resources throughout the data center infrastructure which supports greater resiliency through a smaller impact from a failure event. The concept also supports a more granular approach to upgradability and potentially could enable re-partitioning of the architecture in such a way that system resources can be better shared between different compute elements.
In Figure 3.3 an example is shown of 100Gbps links between compute systems and a remote storage node. Both PCIe and Ethernet networking protocols may be used in the same rack system, all enabled by the functionality of the Intel Switch Chip (or Device). It should be understood that the components in this vision could be swapped dynamically and asymmetrically so that improvements in bandwidth between particular nodes could be upgraded individually or new functionality could be incorporated as it becomes available.
Figure 3.3: An example of a Photonically Enabled Architecture
relying upon the New Photonic Connector concept, Silicon Photonics
and the Intel Switch Chip (or Device).
In this example the switching between the rack nodes is accomplished in a distributed manner through the use of these switch chips.
Note that there is very little information about Kranich’s manufacturing technology winning cards. I found only this one although there might be several others as well.
8. The two-person Executive Office and Intel’s transparent computing strategy as presented so far
Newly Elected Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich Talks About His New Job [channelintel YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Intel Board Elects Brian Krzanich as CEO [Intel Newsroom, May 2, 2013]
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 2, 2013 – Intel Corporation announced today that the board of directors has unanimously elected Brian Krzanich as its next chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding Paul Otellini. Krzanich will assume his new role at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on May 16.
Krzanich, Intel’s chief operating officer since January 2012, will become the sixth CEO in Intel’s history. As previously announced, Otellini will step down as CEO and from the board of directors on May 16.
“After a thorough and deliberate selection process, the board of directors is delighted that Krzanich will lead Intel as we define and invent the next generation of technology that will shape the future of computing,” said Andy Bryant, chairman of Intel.
“Brian is a strong leader with a passion for technology and deep understanding of the business,” Bryant added. “His track record of execution and strategic leadership, combined with his open-minded approach to problem solving has earned him the respect of employees, customers and partners worldwide. He has the right combination of knowledge, depth and experience to lead the company during this period of rapid technology and industry change.”
Krzanich, 52, has progressed through a series of technical and leadership roles since joining Intel in 1982.
“I am deeply honored by the opportunity to lead Intel,” said Krzanich. “We have amazing assets, tremendous talent, and an unmatched legacy of innovation and execution. I look forward to working with our leadership team and employees worldwide to continue our proud legacy, while moving even faster into ultra-mobility, to lead Intel into the next era.”
The board of directors elected Renée James, 48, to be president of Intel. She will also assume her new role on May 16, joining Krzanich in Intel’s executive office.
“I look forward to partnering with Renée as we begin a new chapter in Intel’s history,” said Krzanich. “Her deep understanding and vision for the future of computing architecture, combined with her broad experience running product R&D and one of the world’s largest software organizations, are extraordinary assets for Intel.”
As chief operating officer, Krzanich led an organization of more than 50,000 employees spanning Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, Intel Custom Foundry, NAND Solutions group, Human Resources, Information Technology and Intel’s China strategy.
James, 48, has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, security, software and services, which she developed through leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries — Havok, McAfee and Wind River. She also currently serves on the board of directors of Vodafone Group Plc and VMware Inc. and was chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.
Additional career background on both executives is available at newsroom.intel.com.
The prominent first external reaction to that: Intel Promotes From Within, Naming Brian Krzanich CEO [Bloomberg YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Intel’s Krzanich the 6th Inside Man to Be CEO [Bloomberg YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Can Intel Reinvent Itself… Again? [Bloomberg YouTube channel, May 3, 2013]
Brian M. Krzanich, Chief Executive Officer (Elect), Executive Office
Brian M. Krzanich will become the chief executive officer of Intel Corporation on May 16. He will be the sixth CEO in the company’s history, succeeding Paul S. Otellini.
Krzanich has progressed through a series of technical and leadership roles at Intel, most recently serving as the chief operating officer (COO) since January 2012. As COO, his responsibilities included leading an organization of more than 50,000 employees spanning Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, Intel Custom Foundry, supply chain operations, the NAND Solutions group, human resources, information technology and Intel’s China strategy.
His open-minded approach to problem solving and listening to customers’ needs has extended the company’s product and technology leadership and created billions of dollars in value for the company. In 2006, he drove a broad transformation of Intel’s factories and supply chain, improving factory velocity by more than 60 percent and doubling customer responsiveness. Krzanich is also involved in advancing the industry’s transition to lower cost 450mm wafer manufacturing through the Global 450 Consortium as well as leading Intel’s strategic investment in lithography supplier ASML.
Prior to becoming COO, Krzanich held senior leadership positions within Intel’s manufacturing organization. He was responsible for Fab/Sort Manufacturing from 2007-2011 and Assembly and Test from 2003 to 2007. From 2001 to 2003, he was responsible for the implementation of the 0.13-micron logic process technology across Intel’s global factory network. From 1997 to 2001, Krzanich served as the Fab 17 plant manager, where he oversaw the integration of Digital Equipment Corporation’s semiconductor manufacturing operations into Intel’s manufacturing network. The assignment included building updated facilities as well as initiating and ramping 0.18-micron and 0.13-micron process technologies. Prior to this role, Krzanich held plant and manufacturing manager roles at multiple Intel factories.
Krzanich began his career at Intel in 1982 in New Mexico as a process engineer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from San Jose State University and has one patent for semiconductor processing. Krzanich is also a member of the Board of Directors of Lilliputian Corporation and the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Renée J. James, President (Elect), Executive Office
Renée J. James is president of Intel Corporation and, with the CEO, is part of the company’s two-person Executive Office.
James has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, security, software and services, which she developed through product R&D leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries — Havok, McAfee and Wind River.
During her 25-year career at Intel, James has spearheaded the company’s strategic expansion into providing proprietary and open source software and services for applications in security, cloud-based computing, and importantly, smartphones. In her most recent role as executive vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, she was responsible for Intel’s global software and services strategy, revenue, profit, and product R&D. In this role, James led Intel’s strategic relationships with the world’s leading device and enterprise operating systems companies. Previously, she was the director and COO of Intel Online Services, Intel’s datacenter services business. James was also part of the pioneering team working with independent software vendors to port applications to Intel Architecture and served as chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.
James began her career with Intel through the company’s acquisition of Bell Technologies. She holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Oregon.
James also serves as a non-executive director on the Vodafone Group Plc Board of Directors and is a member of the Remuneration Committee. She is an independent director on the VMware Inc. Board of Directors and is a member of the Audit Committee. She is also a member of the C200.
Chip Shot: Renée James Selected as Recipient of C200’s STEM Innovator Luminary Award [IntelPR in Intel Newsroom, April 13, 2013]
Renée J. James, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, has earned the prestigious honor of being the recipient of the STEM Innovator Luminary Award, presented by the Committee of 200 (C200). C200 is an international, non-profit organization of the most powerful women who own or run companies, or who lead major divisions of large corporations. A STEM Innovator is the leader of a technology-based business who has exemplified unique vision and success in science, technology, engineering or math-based industries, which James has continually demonstrated throughout her career at Intel. This includes growing Intel’s software and services business worldwide, driving open standards within the software ecosystem and providing leadership as chairman for both McAfee and Wind River Systems, Intel wholly owned subsidiaries.
Renée James keynote delivering Intel’s new strategy called ‘Transparent Computing’ at the IDF 2012 [TomsHardwareItalia YouTube channel, Sept 13, 2012]
IDF 2012 Day 2:
– Intel Developer Forum 2012 Keynote, Renée James Transcript (PDF 190KB)
– Intel Developer Forum 2012 Keynote, Renée James Presentation (PDF 7MB)
Intel to Software Developers: Embrace Era of Transparent Computing [press release, Sept 12, 2012]
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
- Intel reinforces commitment to ensuring HTML5 adoption accelerates and remains an open standard, providing developers a robust application environment that will run best on Intel® architecture.
- New McAfee Anti-Theft product is designed to protect consumers’ property and personal information on Ultrabook™ devices.
- The Intel® Developer Zone is a new program designed to provide software developers and businesses with a single point of access to tools, communities and resources to help them engage with peers.
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 12, 2012 – Today at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Renée James, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel Corporation, outlined her vision for transparent computing. This concept is made possible only through an “open” development ecosystem where software developers write code that will run across multiple environments and devices. This approach will lessen the financial and technical compromises developers make today.
“With transparent computing, software developers no longer must choose one environment over another in order to maintain profitability and continue to innovate,” said James. “Consumers and businesses are challenged with the multitude of wonderful, yet incompatible devices and environments available today. It’s not about just mobility, the cloud or the PC. What really matters is when all of these elements come together in a compelling and transparent cross-platform user experience that spans environments and hardware architectures. Developers who embrace this reality are the ones who will remain relevant.”
Software developers are currently forced to choose between market reach, delivering innovation or staying profitable. By delivering the best performance with Intel’s cross-platform tools, security solutions and economically favorable distribution channels, the company continues to take a leadership position in defining and driving the open software ecosystem.
Develop to Run Many Places
While developers regularly express their desire to write once and run on multiple platforms, currently there is little incentive for any of the curators of these environments to provide cross-platform support. Central to Intel’s operating system of choice strategy, the company believes a solution to the cross-platform challenge is HTML5. With it, developers no longer have to make trade-offs between profitability, market participation or delivering innovation in their products. Consumers benefit by enabling their data, applications and identity to seamlessly transition from one operating system or device environment to another.
During her keynote, James emphasized the importance of HTML5 and related standards and that the implementation of this technology by developers should remain open to provide a robust application development environment. James reinforced Intel’s commitment to HTML5 and JavaScript by announcing that Mozilla, in collaboration with Intel, is working on a native implementation of River Trail technology. It is available now for download as a plug-in and will become native in Firefox browsers to bring the power of parallel computing to Web applications in 2013.
Security at Intel Provides an Inherent Advantage
Security at Intel provides an inherent advantage in terms of its approach. For over a decade, Intel has applied its technology leadership to security platform features aimed at keeping computing safe, from devices and networks to the data center. Today, the company extends the efficacy of security by combining hardware and software security solutions and co-designing products with McAfee. James invited McAfee Co-President Michael DeCesare to join her onstage to emphasize the important role security takes as the threat landscape continues to become more complex both in terms of volume and sophistication. DeCesare also highlighted the opportunity for developers to participate in securing the industry.
Touching on where McAfee is heading with Intel, DeCesare discussed the importance of understanding where computing is going overall. He noted examples including applications moving to the cloud, as well as IT seeking ways to reduce power consumption and wrestling with challenges associated with big data and the consumerization of IT. DeCesare also highlighted the value of maintaining the user experience and introduced McAfee Anti-Theft security software. Designed to protect consumers’ property and personal information for Ultrabook™ devices, this latest product enhancement is a collaborative effort with Intel to develop anti-theft software using Intel technologies that provide device and data protection.
DeCesare reiterated the opportunity for developers through the McAfee Security Innovation Alliance (SIA). The technology partnering program helps accelerate development of interoperable- security products, simplify integration of these products and delivers solutions to maximize the value of existing customer investments. The program also is intended to reduce both time-to-problem resolution and operational costs.
Developers’ Access to Resources Made Easy
James also announced the Intel® Developer Zone, a program designed to provide software developers and businesses with a single point of access to tools, communities and resources to help them engage with peers. Today’s software ecosystem is full of challenges and opportunities in such areas as technology powering new user experiences, expectations from touchscreens, battery life requirements, data security and cloud accessibility. The program is focused on providing resources to help developers learn and embrace these evolving market shifts and maximize development efforts across many form factors, platforms and operating systems.
Development Resources: Software tools, training, developer guides, sample code and support will help developers create new user experiences across many platforms. In the fourth quarter of this year, Intel Developer Zone will introduce an HTML5 Developer Zone focused on cross-platform apps, guiding developers through actual deployments of HTML5 apps on Apple* iOS*, Google* Android*, Microsoft* Windows* and Tizen*.
Business Resources: Global software distribution and sales opportunities will be available via the Intel AppUp® center and co-marketing resources. Developers can submit and publish apps to multiple Intel AppUp center affiliate stores for Ultrabook devices, tablets and desktop systems. The Intel Developer Zone also provides opportunities for increased awareness and discoverability through the Software Business Network, product showcases and marketing programs.
Active Communities: With Intel Developer Zone, developers can engage with experts in their field – both from Intel and the industry – to share knowledge, get support and build relationships. In the Ultrabook community, users will find leading developers sharing ideas and recommendations on how to create compelling Microsoft* Windows* 8 apps for the latest touch- and sensor-enabled Ultrabook devices.
Mobile Insights: Emerging Technologies [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 26, 2013]
Mobile Insights: Software Development in Africa [channelintel YouTube channel, March 5, 2013]
Intel Developer Forum: Executives Talk Evolution of Computing with Devices that Touch People’s Daily Lives [press release, April 11, 2011]
…
Renée James: Creating the Ultimate User Experience
During her keynote, James discussed Intel’s transition from a semiconductor company to a personal computing company, and emphasized the importance of delivering compelling user experiences across a range of personal computing devices. To develop and enable the best experiences, James announced a strategic relationship with Tencent*, China’s largest Internet company, to create a joint innovation center dedicated to delivering best-in-class mobile Internet experiences. Engineers from both companies will work together to further the mobile computing platforms and other technologies.James also announced new collaborations for the Intel AppUpSM center and the Intel AppUp Developer Program in China to help assist in the creation of innovative applications for Intel Atom processor-based devices. Chinese partners supporting this effort include Neusoft*, Haier* and Hasee* and Shenzhen Software Park*.
…
Related presentation: Renee James: The Intel User Experience (English PDF 9.1MB)
How Intel’s new president Renee James learned the ropes from the legendary Andy Grove [VentureBeat, May 2, 2013]
Renee James became the president of Intel today. That’s the highest position a woman has ever held at the world’s largest chip maker. Alongside new CEO Brian Krzanich, James will be part of the two-person executive office running Intel. She rose to that position through tenacity and leadership during a career at Intel, but she was also part of a very exclusive club.
The 25-year Intel veteran was one of the early young employees who served as “technical assistant ” to former chief executive Andy Grove, the hard-charging leader who went by the motto “Only the Paranoid Survive.” In that position, she was not just an executive assistant. Rather, her job was to make sure that Grove always looked good and was up-to-speed on his personal use of technology. She helped him prepare his PowerPoint presentations and orchestrated his speeches. As a close confidant, she had close access to one of the most brilliant leaders of the tech industry.
Intel’s executives needed technical assistants in the way that contemporaries like Bill Gates, who grew up as a programmer, did not. Intel’s leaders were technically savvy manufacturing and chip experts, but they were not born as masters of the ins and outs of operating PowerPoint. So the company developed the technical assistant as a formal position, and each top executive had one. That position has turned out to be an important one; executives mentored younger, more promising employees. These employees then moved on to positions of great authority within Intel.
What makes James’s career so interesting — and a stand out — is that unlike Intel’s early leaders, she wasn’t a chip engineer or manufacturing executive. She has an MBA from the University of Oregon, and she pitched no-chip businesses for Intel to enter and became chief operating officer of Intel Online Services.
James will start her new position on May 16 and will report to Krzanich.
James served under Grove for a longer time than most technical assistants did, as she proved indispensable to him. James said that she learned a huge amount from Grove, and she took lots of notes on the things that he said that made an impression on her. Paul Otellini, the retiring CEO of Intel, also served as a technical assistant for Grove. The technical assistant job was one of those unsung positions that required a lot of wits. James had to pull together lots of Intel resources to set up, rehearse, and execute Grove’s major keynote speeches.
She was eventually given the more impressive title of “chief of staff.” During the dotcom era, she moved out on her own to set up an ill-fated business. She was in charge of Intel’s move into operating data centers that could be outsourced to other companies.
Under James’ plan, Intel would set up data centers with the same discipline and precision that it did with its chip manufacturing plants. It would build out the huge server rooms in giant warehouses and then rent the computing power to smaller companies. The business was much like Amazon’s huge web services business today. But Intel was too early and on the wrong side of the dotcom crash. When things fell apart in 2001, so did Intel’s appetite for noncore businesses. Intel shut down James’ baby.
But she went on to manage a variety of other businsses, including Intel’s security, software, services, and other nonchip businesses that have become more important as Intel takes on its mantle as a leader of the technology industry rather than just a component maker. That’s one of the legacies of Grove, who saw that Intel had to do a lot of the fundamental research and development in the computer industry, in part because nobody except Microsoft had the profits to invest in R&D.
As executive vice president of software and services, James managed Intel software businesses, including Havok, McAfee, and Wind River. During her tenure over software, Intel struggled in its alliance with Nokia to create the Meego mobile operating system, and it eventually gave up on it.
Among the other technical assistants at Intel were Sean Maloney, a rising star who retired last year after having a a stroke in 2010; venture capitalist Alex Wong; and Anand Chandrasekher, who left Intel and is now the chief marketing officer at rival Qualcomm.
Nokia HERE Maps for everything, for FireFox OS in a strategic partnership with Mozilla
A highly recommended prerequisite reading: The Where Platform from Nokia: a company move to taking data as a raw material to build products [April 7, 2012]
So, while Microsoft was struggling today with Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [this same blog, Nov 13, 2012] Nokia made a big leap forward on its 2 year’s to counter the lethal dangers of Be aware of ZTE et al. and white-box (Shanzhai) vendors: Wake up call now for Nokia, soon for Microsoft, Intel, RIM and even Apple! [Feb 21, 2011] phenomenon it recognized earlier than every other high-tech company in the “western world”.
Below there is the collection of the information made public today which shows quite well that in mid-term they could even become the most successful “western” high-tech company to overcome the tide raising from China towards the legacy high-tech companies. Their strategic partnership with Mozilla for the FireFox OS is even showing that they are not stupid at all to put all their eggs in the Windows Phone bag (albeit it is publicly only to bring HERE to that OS). They have already a very well positioned Asha and Asha Touch product line in the lower end (see With Asha Touch starting at $83 and Lumia at $186 Nokia targeting the entry-level and low-end smartphone markets [this same blog, Nov 1, 2012]), and now with FireFox OS they could have a 3d one positioned for what they called “taking advantage of future technology disruptions and trends” (see Nokia under transition (as reported by the company) [this same blog, March 11, 2012]).
Nokia redefines digital map landscape by introducing HERE as new brand for its location and mapping service [Nokia press release, Nov 13, 2012]
Nokia extends its service across devices and operating systems
Nokia announces new partnership with Mozilla and planned acquisition of 3D capture company, earthmine
San Francisco, California – Today Nokia introduced HERE, the first location cloud to deliver the world’s best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems. With the new brand, HERE, Nokia aims to inspire a new generation of location services and devices that make the mobile experience more personally significant for people everywhere.
“People want great maps, and with HERE we can bring together Nokia’s location offering to deliver people a better way to explore, discover and share their world,” said Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop. “Additionally, with HERE we can extend our 20 years of location expertise to new devices and operating systems that reach beyond Nokia. As a result, we believe that more people benefit from and contribute to our leading mapping and location service.”
Pushing location beyond Nokia
To further extend its location services, Nokia is launching a maps application for iOS under the HERE brand. Based on HTML5, it will include offline capabilities, voice-guided walk navigation, and public transport directions. The application is scheduled to be available for free download from Apple’s App Store in the coming weeks.Nokia further announced a strategic partnership with Mozilla to bring new location experiences to the Firefox OS. Nokia plans to debut a mobile Web version of HERE Maps for the new Firefox OS next year. The companies are working together to give people the best mapping experience on Firefox OS.
“Mozilla is a leader in HTML5, building the Web as a platform for developing compelling applications, and location is a key part of that platform,” said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla Vice President of Products. “We are excited to work with Nokia as the combination of Firefox OS and HERE’s location platform provides rich possibilities for mobile application developers to create amazing experiences for users.”
Nokia also demonstrated an Android OS-based reference application and announced plans for the availability of a HERE SDK for Android OEMs in early 2013. This is aimed at enabling partners to create location-based applications for Android devices with Nokia’s leading content.
Innovating modern mapmaking
To advance the 3D capabilities of HERE, Nokia announced the planned acquisition of Berkeley, Calif. company earthmine. The company’s reality capture and processing technologies will become integral parts of HERE’s 3D map making capabilities.Nokia expects the transaction to close by the end of 2012.
“Maps are hard to get right – but location is revolutionizing how we use technology to engage with the real world,” said Michael Halbherr, Executive Vice President of Location & Commerce and responsible for the HERE brand. “That’s why we have been investing and will continue to invest in building the world’s most powerful location offering, one that is unlike anything in the market today.”
Using LiveSight(TM) to see more of the real world
As part of its announcement, Nokia introduced LiveSight(TM), a technology based on a highly accurate, 3D map of the world. LiveSight(TM) provides the most precise and intuitive augmented reality experience and uses a phone’s camera viewfinder to make discovering the world as easy as lifting up a phone. Nokia City Lens, which was developed exclusively for Nokia Lumia devices, is the first application providing a LiveSight-enabled experience.“Establishing a new brand is the right move for Nokia in the map and location business. Nokia’s assets in this space are world class. We believe mapping and location will be increasingly important to developing next generation devices and services across a wide array of segments,” said Crawford Del Prete, Executive Vice President and Head of worldwide research at IDC.
iOS, Android, Firefox OS: HERE is available everywhere [Nokia Conversations, Nov 13, 2012]
Today’s announcement means that we’re bringing HERE to all devices and operating systems to give more people, with any type of device the ability to use the best location platform in the world. This openness is what sets HERE apart from other digital maps in the world. And with HERE, location will set Nokia apart.
Introducing HERE Maps for iOS
We’re making HERE Maps available in the Apple App Store: iOS users can more easily access our rich mapping experience with a single tap on their home screen. The app has been developed with the same HTML5 technology that powers the mobile web and is therefore very versatile and optimized for mobile use.
With HERE Maps for iOS you can get smart directions to navigate your way around town, whether you’re driving, walking or taking public transportation, so let’s have a closer look at all the features available.
What is HERE Maps for iOS?
With HERE Maps for iOS you can save an area to your device, so you can explore even without data coverage. You can save an area in advance and use it later at up to 4 different zoom levels.
Since you don’t walk on the same routes you drive, HERE Maps for iOS gives you dedicated voice guided turn-by-turn walk navigation that guides you along the best route for walking there: pedestrian routes, through parks, down alleyways, and more. With voice navigation, you will spend less time looking at your phone and more time enjoying getting there.
Because HERE Maps for iOS has been designed for urban use, the voice navigation only works for journeys on foot. However, there’s also public transportation and driving directions in over 500 cities and you can make transfers easily with detailed public transport connections. With live traffic information and incident notices, you know where the traffic is, so you can spend less time driving there and more time being there.
With HERE Maps for iOS you can organize favourite places by categories such as “Hip Bars” or “Cheap Eats” and sync them withHERE.com so you can build your personal map on the go and easily find them again.
For instance, you can add a place to your favourites on your phone and post a review when you get home: wherever you are, you’re always in sync. This feature is very easy to use because you can sign-on with your Nokia or Facebook accounts.
On an iPad you can also see the top 25 places nearby at a glance: HERE Maps automatically displays up to 25 best places near you in a scroll window at the bottom of the screen. Simply tap a place and get all the details or scroll down and filter your results by category (shopping, going out, sights and more).
Whether you’re making plans for later or just want to share a great new find, HERE.com lets you share locations with just a tap, including how to get there, with a simple link sent over SMS, email, or social networks.
Introducing HERE Maps for Firefox OS
Because one of the main attributes of HERE is its openness, we’re also partnering with Mozilla to create new location experiences for Firefox OS. In the coming months, we will introduce HERE Maps for Firefox OS and we’ll continue working, together with Mozilla, to give people the best mapping experience on the OS.
One more thing… HERE Android API
HERE Maps for iOS and Firefox OS are not our only effort to give everyone the ability to use the best location platform in the world. Today, we’re also introducing HERE Maps API for Android, which will made available to partners in the next months.
In apps built with the HERE Android API, users will be able to interact with extruded 3D buildings, search for specific buildings and preview their routes in detail to more realistically show where they’re going.
To showcase what partners can offer when they build Android apps with our HERE API, we have prepared a reference app in the following video.
Read more about HERE for iOS, Android and Firefox OS here:http://conversations.nokia.com/?p=103078 In apps built with the HERE Android API, users will be able to interact with extruded 3D buildings, search for specific buildings and preview their routes in detail to more realistically show where they’re going. To showcase what partners can offer when they build Android apps with our HERE API, we have prepared a reference app in this video.
Disclaimer: this is not an actual app that we are releasing in the Google Play Store, it is just a reference app we have developed to showcase which features we are offering to partners for their location-based Android apps.
Follow us on Twitter: @heremaps.
HERE: the next generation of location services [Nokia Conversations, Nov 13, 2012]
Mapping and location-based services are integral to Nokia’s future and a key way that we stand out from the crowd.
Nokia’s commitment to building the leading location offering is demonstrated every day around the world in its rich set of location-based apps like Nokia Drive, Nokia Transport, Nokia Maps, Nokia Pulse and Nokia City Lens. Quite literally, Nokia helps people navigate their world. But this is only the tip of the iceberg: as a result of our acquisition of NAVTEQ and other mapping industry players, Nokia was the first to build the world’s most accurate and comprehensive global digital map by sending teams to verify every street in every city.
The next step forward – sensing our world
We can do more with our location heritage and mapping expertise, and go beyond a digital version of the paper map. Maps can be more than getting a person from point A to point B. They should bring places to life and inspire us to sense our world.
This is why today we are introducing HERE, the world’s first location cloud that delivers a location platform, location content and location apps across any screen and any operating system.
Just like digital cameras created possibilities that were unthinkable with analog photography, today’s digital mapping has amazing potential to grow into what we call computational cartography, the ability to produce maps on-demand and tailored to their actual use cases. Today’s digital maps are generic – i.e. always the same, irrespective of the content they visualize. We also believe that this game-changing evolution in mapmaking should be available to more businesses and more people around the world – it should expand beyond cars and beyond Nokia devices.
“Location based experiences need to evolve from an app-centric approach towards a holistic customer experience; consumers want services that are optimized for multi-mobile device use and available on demand, everywhere”, said Thilo Koslowski, VP and Lead Automotive Analyst, Gartner.
What does it mean?
Nokia Lumia and HERE are naturally made for each other, providing the best location experience on a smartphone, but we aren’t reserving HERE just for Windows Phone. Instead, we are opening it up to all devices and operating systems to give everyone, with any type of device, the possibility to recognize and the ability to use the best location platform in the world. This openness is what sets HERE apart from other digital maps in the world. And with HERE, location will be an even more powerful differentiation for Nokia.
We’re making HERE Maps available for iOS in the Apple App Store as a HTML5-based app and introducing HERE Maps API for Android. We will also introduce HERE Maps for Firefox OS and we’ll continue working, together with Mozilla, to give people the best mapping experience on the OS.
We are introducing LiveSight, a technology based on a highly accurate, 3D map of the world, which provides the most precise and intuitive augmented reality experience. Nokia City Lens, developed exclusively for Nokia Lumia devices, is the first application using LiveSight.
Our industrial collection of data is about to leap a chasm with the planned acquisition of earthmine. earthmine offers a complete solution for collecting, processing, managing, and hosting 3D street level imagery.
So stay tuned. There is so much more to say in the coming hours and days and the long-term, and we’re looking forward to your continued feedback as we move ahead. You can also follow us on Twitter: @heremaps.
LiveSight: immersive experiences you can act on [Nokia Conversations, Nov 13, 2012]
Nokia City Lens, exclusively available for Nokia Lumia, is one of our most-talked-about apps and we’re very proud of it. Using the phone’s camera viewfinder, Nokia City Lens provides an augmented reality overlay view of buildings and instantly highlights places of interest. Nokia City Lens is basically turning sight into the next interface for searching the world around you. Although Nokia City Lens is powered by a complex system of collection technologies, it’s very easy to use. After all, what could be simpler to use than sight? It’s the most human sense for sensing and exploring the world.
After type pads, touchscreens and voice recognition, we want sight recognition to be another standard way to interact with the world around you. But it’s not only about sight recognition; it’s also aboutlive map information. In one word, it’s… LiveSight. Nokia City Lens, developed exclusively for Nokia Lumia devices, is the first application providing a LiveSight-enabled experience.
LiveSight is a collection of mechanisms:
3D sight interface: buildings are detected by our collection technologies with high accuracy and feeling of depth
Line of sight: with the line of sight view, only POIs in sight are displayed
Freeze frame: save a live view to inspect the city without having to hold the camera pointed at the target
Building directory: click on a building to see what is inside
This new technology is going to address everyday actions like finding a store indoor, finding your friends in a crowd or your parked car. Yes, with LiveSight you can create a place for your parked car.
“We’ve all been there — trying get to where we are going by following that dot on our phones; you take a few steps in one direction to see if the dot moves where it should; with LiveSight you can orient yourself by simply lifting up your phone and looking through the camera view finder and find your destination whether it is right in front of you or three blocks away” said Peter Skillman, head of UX Design for HERE.
You can also follow us on Twitter: @heremaps.
Innovating modern map making with earthmine [Nokia Conversations, Nov 13, 2012]
Because we know that maps are hard to get right, we have been investing and will continue to invest time and money to build the world’s most powerful location offering, one that is unlike anything in the market today. Content creation in cartography is a continuous quest to make maps more precise and to map the whole world. We useinnovative collection technologies (e.g. LiDAR, cameras, etc.) and a team of local experts to create close to perfect digital copies of reality.
Innovating map making
Map makers today have a vast array of data at their disposal and digital technology has made the map accessible to everyone. But at their core today’s digital maps are little changed from paper maps: they are static because they represent the world at the moment the data is captured and they still require a lot of work and imagination to get the most out of them.
We believe, in fact, that location services are revolutionizing how we use technology to engage with the real world. This is why we are innovating every aspect of what a cartographer does: we use data that’s never been incorporated into maps and then make sense of it in a way that transforms the experience. We are innovating what we capture, the way we capture it, and how we model to give rise to a new generation of user experiences.
earthmine acquisition
Today our industrial collection of data is about to leap a chasm with the planned acquisition of earthmine.
earthmine offers a complete solution for collecting, processing, managing, and hosting 3D street level imagery. This will add competitive advantages and increased differentiation to HERE‘s Location Content and Location Platform, sustaining competitiveness in B2B (e.g. data for in-car navigation systems) and driving highly engaging user experiences.
earthmine is going to be a major asset in our arsenal of collection tools in that it complements our internal technologies with capabilities that enhance what we are already doing. The most obvious is the sensor design and integration that can be seen on a earthmine car, which enables mobile mapping and is massively scalable. And when we collect with earthmine we get the same wealth of visual and other sensor data that enables us achieve our mapmaking automation goals. By next year, with earthmine we will expand the number of countries to 31 in which we are automatically collecting 3D information. Additionally, earthmine brings advanced image processing capability and geographic information system tools that make the processed imagery and data readily available enabling us to move faster than we otherwise could.
Follow us on Twitter: @heremaps.
I will add to that the following eartmine case study video as a latest one:
earthmine Helps 911 Dispatchers [earthmine YouTube channel, June 19, 2012]
Fueling the future of digital maps [Nokia Conversations, Oct 25, 2012]
At the heart of any location experience is the understanding of where you are and what’s around you, an awareness often achieved by using a map. While today’s digital maps are much more advanced than the maps of just 20 years ago, they will continue to get more accurate and comprehensive, simplifying how we navigate and interact with an ever-changing world.
So, how do we build a high quality map and keep it fresh? At the core of the process is our innovative collection technologies blended with a team of local experts.
Using their intimate knowledge of local road networks and surrounding areas, these experts, who drive millions of roadways each year, use specially equipped vehicles to collect and verify location data.
Depending on local conditions, product requirements and a variety of other factors, the local drivers use distinct collection technology, ranging from highly mobile pedestrian collection tools to the sophisticated NAVTEQ True technology.
NAVTEQ True is actually composed of four unique technologies:
360° LIDAR: Rotating lasers capture 1.3 million 3D digital data points every second, which generates a virtual 3D model of the world around the vehicle.
Position Sensors: GPS and military grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors measure the vehicle’s speed, orientation and even gravitational forces to provide highly precise location references to every point within the virtual 3D model.
Panoramic Cameras: These cameras layer in a 360° images synchronized to the 3D LIDAR points—giving us the most true to life representation of the world
High Resolution Multi-View Cameras: High-resolution images give us the opportunity to increase automation so we can more quickly bring advanced location content to more people.
Worldwide, NAVTEQ True technology is gathering an immense amount of data.
For instance, in one single day, we might collect 12 million signage images, two million panoramic images, a trillion LIDAR points, and 65 million million (65,000,000,000,000!) colour pixels. We’re not just taking pictures of the world; we’re creating a new data model of the world.
With this level of high quality data, NAVTEQ True technology is capturing real world dimension, fueling more realistic and interactive experiences. With data collected by NAVTEQ True, you can explore the world more easily and in a whole new way – you can instantly see all the best places to eat and things to do and see it right on your phone’s camera display. It’s like having x-ray vision, revealing the hidden spots you might otherwise miss.
You can experience an implementation example of the collected data in 3D with Nokia City Lens for Nokia Lumia. Simply by following the instructions on the right.
I will add to that the following NAVTEQ video giving more explanation about the excellence of Nokia’s mapping technology:
Building the most accurate and fresh map [NAVTEQCompany YouTube channel, Oct 5, 2012]
Frequently Asked Questions: Maps on Windows Phone 8 [Nokia Conversations, Oct 31, 2012]
With Windows Phone 8 officially introduced last Monday and the first smartphones based on this platform being shipped or reviewed, it’s time to have a quick overview of its location-based apps and experiences.
As you may already know, Nokia is delivering the backbone for all location experiences on Windows Phone 8 and offering Nokia Drive to all Windows Phone 8 partners, empowering this new OS with voice guided turn-by-turn car navigation.
Since we made these announcements, some legitimate questions have been asked on Twitter, on this blog and in the first reviews of Windows Phone 8. I would therefore like to summarize them and provide some clarification.
What does it mean that the Nokia Location Platform is powering the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem?
It basically means that location-based apps for Windows Phone 8 developed by Nokia (e.g. Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, Nokia City Lens and Nokia Transport), apps developed by Microsoft (e.g. Bing Maps) and apps by any other developer make use of basic functionalities provided by Nokia.
It also means that some features like offline maps are now completely embedded into Windows Phone 8. You can find this option in your smartphone settings.
Is Nokia Maps on all Windows Phone 8 smartphones?
The Nokia Location Platform is powering the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem, not Nokia Maps, which is an app. On non-Nokia Windows Phone 8 smartphones, the default mapping application is Windows Phone Maps. This is running on top of our map data. It is using our geocoding, our traffic information and our routes, but it’s ultimately developed by Windows Phone, with a custom UI, search and POI database.
Where is turn-by-turn navigation?
Nokia Drive is the application that provides voice-guided turn-by-turn car navigation on Nokia smartphones and with Windows Phone 8 it’s also being made available to other manufacturers. Nokia Drive has been rewritten from the ground up specifically for Windows Phone 8, to leverage the power of this OS and offering new features.
We are currently testing it and a beta version will be made available very soon. On a Nokia smartphone like Nokia Lumia 920, you will find a tile on the start screen that will take you to the Windows Phone Store to download Nokia Drive Beta. Other manufacturers and Microsoft will decide in which countries and on which devices Nokia Drive will be offered to their customers.
You will be very pleased to know that some of the features you have requested the most, spoken street names and route planning options to avoid toll roads, ferries, etc., have been included in this release. However, while currently in beta, Nokia Drive for Windows Phone 8 won’t support My Commute just yet and we strongly suggest you to make use of the offline maps to enjoy your travels.
What’s new in Nokia Maps for Windows Phone 8?
On Nokia smartphones with Windows Phone 8, the default mapping application is Nokia Maps. We’ve been working hard during the past few months to develop a great new release specifically for Windows Phone 8. In a previous blog post I’ve explained all the features we are including in Nokia Maps for Windows Phone 8 or currently working on.
While the first version of Nokia Maps for Windows Phone 8 was being preinstalled on our newest smartphones (v 2.9), we were already working on an update with even more features. This is why, when you first start your new Nokia smartphone with Windows Phone 8, we encourage you to immediately update Nokia Maps and enjoy all the latest features (v 3.0).
In a nutshell, you won’t only be able to use offline maps but also offline search and routing, also for public transport. You can use turn-by-turn walk navigation or start Nokia Drive to get voice-guided, turn-by-turn car navigation. Last but not least, you will also find your way indoors with the support of venue maps in almost 18,000 buildings in 40 countries (and counting).
‘Nokia Maps offers the most advanced mobile maps offering to consumers today with largest global coverage, highest quality mapping data and true offline availability’ said Francisco Jeronimo, Research Manager, European Mobile Devices, IDC.
What’s new in Nokia Transport for Windows Phone 8?
Nokia Transport (aka Nokia Transit in North America) has also been updated with great new features. Just like Nokia Maps, we started working on a new version of Nokia Transport immediately after preinstalling it on the Nokia smartphones with Windows Phone 8. This is why you will find an update in the Windows Phone Store in coming days.
With the new version of Nokia Transport for Windows Phone 8, automatic over-the-air updates help ensure you have the latest information on schedules and routes as well as on newly supported cities. You can now get a combined segment map and detail view to orient yourself at a glance: just tap or swipe a specific segment of your journey to expand an intuitive map and detail view that easily lets you see where you are and where you need to be.
New display settings will give you the options to select miles or kilometers, the time of departure or the time you have until the next departure and plan ahead by setting time and date of your journey. From Nokia Transport, you can now also launch the turn-by-turn walk navigation provided by Nokia Maps to get to the next stop or to your final destination. The search history has also been redesigned to be easier to use and to support entries management. For example, you can now manually delete previous searches and keep the history tidier.
What is Nokia City Lens?
Nokia City Lens turns sight into the next interface for searching the world around you. The app provides information about each building or landmark in the area, giving people an at-a-glance understanding of what restaurants, museums, shops and others places of interest are nearby. Seeing a place of interest through augmented reality provides a wealth of information not available with the naked eye, allowing you to see the world around you using your smartphone instead of having to perform web searches.
The technology powering Nokia City Lens is particularly advanced and accurate. We are capturing real world dimension, fueling more realistic and interactive experiences. It’s like having X-ray vision, revealing hidden spots you might otherwise miss.
Nokia City Lens comes preinstalled on Nokia smartphones with Windows Phone 8 and we are already busy working on the next release, which you can learn more in this previous blog post.
Image credit: Walt Stoneburner
1st W3C conference for Web developers and designers
14 Sep: W3C is holding its 1st web developer conference in Seattle! Nov 15-16
19 Sep: We may talk a bit about semantic web and metadata, such as RDFa, microdata, and microformats, but the focus is on client-side tech @zaythar
7 Oct: Registration for W3Conf opens today. Only $199 for 2 days of Web tech awesomeness. Limited to 250 seats, so register early! #w3conf #HTML5
As referred by Jeff Jaffe on Successes and Challenges slides at TPAC 2011 (31 Oct to 4 Nov 2011 in Santa Clara, California)
If you are a developer or designer wanting to hear the latest news on HTML5 and the open web platform, and your place in it, save the date.
http://www.w3.org/conf/
W3Conf: Practical Standards for Web Professionals
2011: HTML5 and the Open Web Platform
…
W3Conf has industry leaders speaking on a wide variety of topics that every developer needs to know: HTML5, APIs and Javascript, graphics, accessibility, CSS, and much more.
We have selected speakers on an invitation-only basis to deliver the most educational and entertaining experience for our audience on the topics we felt were the most pressing for Web developers and designers today.
http://www.w3.org/conf/#presentations [downloads and video recordings]
Below is a rearranged for reading and highlighted copy of the live blog of the conference by Manu Sporny:
W3Conf LiveBlog – Day One [Manu Sporny, Digital Bazaar, Nov 15, 2011]
Ian Jacobs (W3C): Welcome: Contributing to Open Standards
Focus on why developers are key to W3C and the future of the Web. W3C doing standards since mid 1990s – learned a great deal in that time: You have to have the right people involved. Who the right people are changes over time. Consensus building takes a lot of time, but you can’t let it go on forever – there is a balance. Royalty-free patent policy is important. Use cases and real-world developer stories are needed. Tests are needed for proper implementation. Developer buy-in is very important.
Continuing improvements at W3C is important – HTML5 logo, community groups, Unicorn testing framework, training material – useful documentation for developers/designers.
Community groups – important for bringing new work to W3C. This conference is a call for action – for web developers to get more involved in W3C.
Video of Tim Berners Lee (W3C):
Asks people here to have fun. Keep the Web open – use open standards. Do really exciting things – HTML5 and Web Apps – the platform allows you to do things that were only possible via native apps before.
Try to focus on Web Apps – not native apps. Being part of the Web is more powerful than creating siloed apps. Bit by bit – everything that you can do on a native app, you will be able to do via a Web Apps. By making Web Apps – you are helping to keep the Web open.
Keeping the Web open has always been a battle – we have to fight for openness.
Philippe Le Hégaret (W3C): Testing to Perfection
Asks audience to raise their hand if somebody has ever logged a browser bug (very few people raise their hands). “How many of you expect the web to work?”. Laughs from the audience.
Shows a testing example on CSS – asks audience what’s going to happen. Nobody seems to know. Different browsers show a different result… 25% of browsers will not work. This is what we would like to improve. Replaces test DIV elements with SPAN elements… invalid document, but will still render, but not exactly the same.
When testing, you find yourself in a lot of situations where it’s difficult to tell what should happen. We are not testing one spec with HTML5 – we are testing CSS, HTML5, JavaScript APIs, lots of things. Different levels of stability – difficult to synchronize between specs. Need web developers to participate.
Is testing to perfection possible? No. Testing is an approximation.
Lots of it can be automated, but a lot of it cannot. We need help testing plenty of combinations – HTML, HTML+SVG, DOm manipulation, CSS combinations. We’ll never get 100% coverage – but we still need to set a goal. Who are we testing for?
We are testing for the people that use this technology – manufacturers, spec editors, content providers, people using the Web… etc.
Manu Sporny (Digital Bazaar): Community Groups: A case study with Web Payments
Doug Schepers (W3C): Shortcuts: Developer Documentation
We’re back with Doug Schepers, SVG, Web Apps, Audio, that will be talking about Web Education. “Who here has used the Web?”… “How many have programmed for the Web?”.
“How many people learned the Web via ‘view source’”? Just about everyone raised their hands. “How many of you still do that?” Most dropped their hands.
The Document Web was pretty easy to learn. In 2000, we started to get the application Web. Media Web, Social Web… you have to learn a lot in order to be able to do these things. People can’t read standards – they’re really difficult to read.
WebMoney came early on. W3Schools, W3Fools.com is a good site. Opera Web Standards Cirriculum, SitePoint, MDN, Google’s “Ground Up” Videos. Tons of other sites – not just HOW-TOs, but help more.
At universities you learn serious programming languages like “lisp”. Laughs from the audience. Web Standards Project is great, InterAct Cirriculum is great – teachers can take these cirriculumns and plug them into their classrooms.
W3C has tutorials and primers, podcasts and videos. The W3C wiki has a bunch of resources, HTML5 reference guide, CSS reference guide. The problem with W3C’s documentation is that it’s scattered everywhere. Internationalization documents on W3C site.
Web Education Community Groups – launched to focus on learning material, curriculum, outreach, training, international resources. Trying to improve teaching resources at W3C. Why should people get involved in Web Education? Many eyes, pay it forward, reap what you sow.
How to help: write articles, review articles, help write curricula, help translate.
We started the Web as a hobby. We need to change it from a hobby to a craft. Make it easy to learn the basics, need smooth transition from casual development to career. Web developers learn throughout their lives – we hope these resources will persist and keep getting better.
Divya Manian (Opera): 5 CSS Magic Potions for your Layout Troubles from the Future
Divya is a Web Opener for Opera – contributes to HTML5 boilerplate, member of the CSS WG. Arsonist of the Semantic Web. Current state of CSS layout – what to look forward to in the future.
Many people use ‘floats’ for layout – absolute positioning. Problems with floats – they’re not content agnostic – floats require clearing. So, what can we look forward to in the future?
Paged media layout – “@media paged” – allows you to tread HTML as paged content.
Multiple columns – “css3-multicol – column-width: 12em;” – allows you to setup column sizes. Column spans allow you to say that a particular item can span multiple columns.
Regions allow you to flow text content from one region to another, even if they are separated by a large distance.
Exclusions – allow text to flow around the outline of irregularly shaped objects. For example – a large rock with text around it. Lots of options on how to wrap text via CSS.
Grids – standardize a way to do grids inside CSS. Grid templates look simple to start – very complex.
Flexbox – very much in flux – allows you to distribute layouts in a more flexible box layout.
Make sure to use feature detection via modernizr. Subbornella’s tutorials are great. Isotope jquery plugin is great – isotope.metafizzy.io – if you have complicated layouts, use Isotope.
More discussion on the www-style mailing list at W3C. Lots of traffic on the mailing list. Help by submitting bug reports. Divya can be found on Twitter at @divya
Vincent Hardy (Adobe): Web Graphics – a large creative palette
Vincent talking about passions – Web and Graphics. Formal education in distributed computing – worked at Sun on 2D APIs. Worked on SVG. Worked at Oracle on Data Visualizations.
Towards a more graphical, fluid Web. Shows graphical clock via Raphael. Amazing WebGL demo showing shader-use and cool artistic effects.
You have lots of tools – canvas, WebGL, CSS Animations, imperative vs. declarative programming for graphics. Very nice visual effects in canvas/SVG.
Canvas – imperative model – big array of pixels. SVG – declarative model – looks more like the HTML/DOM.
SVG – graphical elements w/ attributes that control how content gets rendered.
Canvas – pixel-based, you write scripts to draw what you want. You create a context, set it to 2D or 3D, then you specify drawing commands (draw an arc, fill with color, etc)
Canvas – more difficult to detect where events happen in your object – you have to write that code. SVG – events are tied to graphical objects. Easier to do event inputs via SVG – but both allow you to have very fine grained control over your graphics with either.
Scripted animation is still in the works – but you have scripting APIs today. Canvas uses scripts for animations. With SVG you can use CSS animation, scripts, and declarative animation with SMIL. All browsers except IE support SMIL. Declarative animation allows you to morph geometry between objects.
Timing – you can time animation events and chain them together via SMIL pretty easily. You can style SVG using CSS, just like any other HTML document.
Multimedia integration –
You can also do video in SVG – Video element embedded in SVG document, you can apply filter effects to SVG – filter effects apply in real-time. Foreground decorations with SVG – looks really nice.
Why two different models? Canvas is low-level, pixel access. SVG is very high-level, nice API, DOM events, etc… but no pixel access, can be limiting. There are good reasons to have both. Graffiti Markup Language – uses SVG and Canvas together.
Frameworks that can help: Raphael.js, Paper.js, Easle.js, D3.js, Canvg.
Canvas support is very good – supported in all recent browsers. SVG is supported in all major browsers, except for SMIL animation and font stuff in IE.
WebGL support is coming, but not quite there yet. Issues with in-line SVG.
What’s coming: Better 2d/3d integration, improved integration w/ canvas/SVG, additional features for SVG 2.0, filter effects and CSS shaders, video integration, etc. Presentation was created with HTML5.
Arvind Jain (Google): Web Perfomance: Making the Web Faster
Arvind is the Chair of the W3C Performance Working group – try to make web page performance better. Web Timing API – “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” — Lord Kelvin.
Web Timing API allows web pages to get detailed information about how long it takes pages to load. Web Timing API has four areas – navigation, resource, user and performance.
Navigation Timing API allows developers to create a complete picture of how long it takes for a page to load in very accurate detail. Supported in IE9, Chrome, Firefox and Android.
Resource Timing API – timing info related to individual resources on a page like images, scripts, objects, etc.
UserTiming API allows high precision (1 ms accuracy) to measure the execution time of their code.
Performance Timeline API – single interface for accessing all timing attributes.
Resource, user and performance implementations are not entirely implemented yet, but coming soon, around March 2012.
Security and Privacy implications – trying to ensure that people can’t be easily tracked with these new features.
Web Timing stuff is in use – Google Analytics Speed Report, WebPageTest.org, Dynatrace UEM, Boomerang.
Page Visibility API – helps you figure out of the page is visible or not – helpful to know if you need to keep running animations/etc. Ready in March 2012. In use on Google Analytics (count impressions correctly – page isn’t counted if page is opened in a tab that is never looked at), YUI Idle Timer, Google.com Instant Pages loads pages if it can predict if you’re going to click on a link (loads in the background).
Question on Usability Testing and improving the browsing experience. Yes, the Timing APIs can be used to figure out how long it takes for someone to click on a piece of a page.
Question on using image bundles or not. Google performance testing has shown that it depends on the types of images – large image bundling is bad. Tiny image bundling is good.
John Allsopp (Web Directions): Shortcuts: Getting off (line) with the HTML5 appcache [his slides on the web]
Great criticisms of the Web – it only works when you’re online. Not necessarily true.
For Appcache to work – create an appcache manifest file and link it to your HTML file. You have a file with a .appcache extension – appcache file has sections for cache, fallback and network.
Cache section – which resources must be cached.
Network section – which resources must NOT be cached.
Fallback section – which resources should be used for anything that is not cached and when you’re offline.
Gotchas: Appcache manifest must be served with text/cache-manifest. New-ish technology. Cache failure if one resource is not available – must verify your cache. Appcache is cached forever – when developing, don’t use appcache. Only things that are explicitly cached are available – must be explicitly included. There is lazy-caching, other cache controls in use in the browser may cache other files.
Do not develop with app-cache turned on.
If you change the contents of the appcache, it will be refreshed. Use #version 1.0. Some browsers limit to 5MB-10MB.
Appcache is supported in all modern browsers.
ManifestR creates a manifest file for any web page you visit – helpful for starting with AppCache development.
Rajesh Lal (Nokia): The N-Screens Problem: Building Apps in a World of TV and Mobiles [YouTube video]
7 Key challenges for the N-Screens problem.
Four screens – mobile smartphone, PC, tablet, Internet-connected TV.
Design Problem – N Screens – Mobiles, screen size 2-4″, viewed from a distance of one foot. Not reliable, finger input, highly interruptible. Very dynamic environment. Tablet – 7-14″ screen size, input touch, not as interruptible. PC – screen size 12-27″, very focused use. TV – screen size 25-65″ screen size, 10′ viewing area, total immersion, D-pad remote.
Native vs. Web App
Native, pros: each screen has an SDK, great for a specific device, robust, device APIs. cons: steep learning curve, not scalable. Winner: WebApp solution.
WebApp is an application created using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Two types – in-browser, or WebApp in a native container(Hybrid).
History: Old HTML, Server-side web apps and CGI, Rich Interactive Apps – Flash, Silverlight, HTML5 and now WebApps.
[see between 7:35 and 9:48 of the YouTube video]Seven key challenges
- How do you detect features? Device detection (bad) vs. Feature detection (good). Modernizr and jquery.support help with feature detection.
- How do you detect screen layout/orientation? Media queriesare great – you can query based on resolution, based on device aspect ratio and based on orientation.
- Graceful degredation? moz-* ms-* o-* etc… you can use CSS graceful degredationfor this.
- How do you Animation? WebGL is best, followed by CSS3 animation, followed by Canvas and JavaScript and then SVG and JavaScript.
- Audio? Web Audio in order of preference – OpenAL, Audio Data, RIA Audio HTML5 audio.
- AJAX? CORS is best, followed by a proxy, JSONP, then a hybrid app.
- Fallback for HTML5 APIs? polyfills and shims. Use HTML5 APIs, then polyfills and shims, then JavaScript code.
Rey Bango (Microsoft): The Great HTML5 Divide: How Polyfills and Shims Let You Light Up Your Sites in Non-Modern Browsers
Up now, the Great HTML5 Divide by Ray Bango of Microsoft. Works on jQuery, HTML evangelist. HTML5 is great, it’s definitely the future, but there is a divide. Talking about browser fragmentation today, feature detection, polyfills and shims. How do you leverage HTML5 and CSS today? Solutions will be provided.
Biggest problem now is non-modern browsers. caniuse.comis a good resource for figuring out which browsers support. Lot of browser fragmentation, across browsers, within the same browser, different versions.
Feature detection is a good thing – do it. Don’t do browser-based detection.
Modernizris great for feature detection – detects all major features for CSS3, HTML5, etc.
Polyfills and shims – polyfills are used to fill in cracks – shims fill in cracks. SVG support, Web Storage, WebSQL, WebSockets, etc. Consider 3rd party library– developers may not want to support it anymore.
Take-aways: avoid browser detection, use polyfills, do smart fallbacks.
Christopher Slye (Adobe Systems, Inc.): Shortcuts: Web Typography
Next up, Christopher Slye from Adobe to talk about Web Typography. Involved in WOFF standards group. Two real font formats – TrueType and PostScript. Going forward, quality will be about the same. EOT is Microsoft’s font container – been exclusively for Internet Explorer. WOFF is new Web font format – will be the first interoperable Web Font Format.
WOFF is a compressed font container, has font metadata. CSS3 Fonts Module – contains entries for properties size, weight, style. OpenType has nothing to do with the Web. Kerning, ligatures and alternates.
CSS font spec allows you to “optimize readability”, which uses ligatures. Discretionary layout features. Good typography on the Web requires font designers to be able to specify font choices on a per-character, per-stroke basis – let’s typographers add case shifting, kerning, alternates, small caps, oldstyle features, etc. – all help readability.
Paul Irish (Google): HTML5: The Foundation of the Web Platform [see also his blog post about it]
Next up, Paul Irish from Google talking about The Foundation of the Web Platform – HTML5. Talking about HTML5 underpinnings – on the jQuery team.
Explains that came about because browsers don’t really care about all of the variations and that all of the variations are difficult to understand for Web developers. was introduced because of a security vulnerability in UTF-7 and script tags.
Browsers used to parse broken markup in a different way. Now they all parse broken markup in the same way. There are optional tags – html, head, body, etc.
You can not use quotes in HTML5 attribute IDs, you can use many UTF-8 characters (like hearts and the unicode value for a snowman).
The HTML5 spec is a repository of valuable browser knowledge – acquired through copious reverse engineering.
W3Conf LiveBlog – Day Two [Manu Sporny, Digital Bazaar, Nov 16, 2011]
Giorgio Sardo (Microsoft): HTML5 Demo Fest: the Best from the Web
Some amazing SVG demos happening on screen at W3Conf. An SVG music video, amazing filter effects with SVG, CSS applied to SVG, etc.
Amazing HTML5-based demos. BMW using canvas to preview cars interactively using open standards. The Killers (the band) launches a pure HTML5 and canvas page. Amazing TRON interactive comic book done in pure HTML5.
CSS3 demos showing off animation. Amazing font work showing off WOFF (new font stuff in HTML5). Associated Press showing interactive news demo showing top stories in an interactive way, using Local Storage to save stories for offline viewing.
Demos showing that pen-based input, touch inputs, motion inputs on HTML5 pages – no plugins necessary. Showing smooth transitions between HTML5 video and page content, giving a very smooth website experience.
Current presenter is Giorgio Sardo, doing a great job showing off the power of HTML5 today. Showing off the need for multi-touch events – talking about mobile phones or large screens shared among different people, running HTML5 Apps.
Moving on to WebApps and the File API. Showing drag-drop of files from the desktop to the browser window. Drag-Drop API allows you to take files from the desktop and drop them into a web page – file information and the byte stream is made available to the browser. Web Performance API allows you to know when someone isn’t viewing a page and allows you to shut down processor intensive or battery draining portions of Web Apps.
HTML5 games being demoed now – Angry Birds in pure HTML5, 65,000 PacMan mazes in pure canvas, high speed, smooth interoperation.
See @gisardo on twitter for a link to all of the amazing HTML5 demos.
Mike Bostock (Square): Shortcuts: Data Visualization with Web Standards
Mike Bostock is up now, talking about Data Visualization with Web Standards. We should not put a focus on charts and graphs, but rather visualizing information in a way that is closer matched to the data we’re trying to understand. D3.js – Data Driven Documents.
D3.js looks at data visualization as a document. Map a quantity/value to a symbol then render. decoupling data from visualization. D3 mixes SVG, CSS and HTML togetherto build beautiful visualizations – for example hierarchical data sets can be visualized as hierarchical bar charts, or bubble graphics, and smooth transitions between them.
Showing off how D3 also allows you to do interactive visualization – select part of the data set, see highlights elsewhere in the data set. The tools we create don’t exist in isolation – combining SVG + Canvas + CSS allow us to create very compelling visualizations.
Becky Gibson (IBM): Making Accessibility Mainstream
Becky Gibson, from IBM – Senior Technical Staff Member, on stage now.
Issues with Accessibility – Vision issues, Mobility issues (not everyone is able to use a mouse), temporary disability, learning disabilities, hearing disabilities, age. Eventually all of us age – every one of us will have accessibility issues.
Why care about Accessibility? Government/legal reasons, monetary reasons (1.75B of disposable income from people with accessability issues), independence, altruism – it’s the right thing to do. People with disabilities don’t want a hand out, they want your respect.
Enabling Accessibility. Use semantic HTML, use alt-text on images, label form elements, add keyboard support, use tabindexes, support high contrast mode (all background images are removed).
Assistive Technology Support – WAI-ARIA – uses role attribute and aria-* attributes to enable accessible applications. Multiple roles – tree, spinner, grid, many more. States and properties – required, expanded, checked, owns, many more.
ARIA Roles landmark the main roles on the page – banner, main, navigation, search, form. Popular screen readers support landmarks. ARIA Presentation role – preferred way to say that something is being used to present some information?
ARIA states and properties. ARIA allows one to specify that a region of the page has been updated and how one should be notified that it’s been updated. For example: “aria-live=”assertive” aria-atomic=”true”. aria-required indicates that a field is required. aria-invalid tells us that something someone has entered is invalid.
The future – mobile – VoiceOver screen reader and ARIA support is in Safari – iOS has the accessibility advantage right now. Intent-based Events – how do you do generic events?
Brad Hill (PayPal), Scott Stender (iSEC Partners): Securing the Next Generation of Web Apps
Up on stage now – Brad Hill from PayPal and Scott Stender (iSEC Partners) talking about Web App Security. We need a way to protect information from prying eyes on the Web. New threats are client-based – Cross-Site Scripting and Cross-Site Request Forgery.
Same-origin policy guards against most attacks. Most attacks can be prevented on the Server-side. Conventional wisdom: Never trust the client – Defend the server, at the server. Web Security 1.0 puts up defenses at the server. Client Code Injection – DOM Cross-Site Scripting – you can use fragment identifiers to attack sites now because of JavaScript running on a page.
Big security vulnerabilities are now showing up in native apps that wrap HTML containers. When there are no servers, and you have stuff running on your local system, a script-injection attack can take files on your hard drive and send them across the network without your knowledge. Demo of Skype window sending passwords to attackers based on a JavaScript attack.
Old clever tricks – like script tags, iframe elements, JSONP are mature, but you have to understand what security model you’re signing up for– you’re effectively giving the source of a JSONP data/iframe check-in rights to the code on your page. So, if you use these clever hacks, be careful how you do it and who you do it with.
New features coming up that help web security – CORS, XHR2, WebSockets – powerful tools. Auditing is more difficult with these new technologies. postMessage (communication between two tabs in the same browser) and Web RTC (real-time data/media streams). These technologies, while very cool, open up the attack surface on the Web App.
Assets and attack surface are moving to the client, but the focus is still on securing the servers. Future of Web App Security is in the client, not the server. We are falling behind on making sure we’re securing our Web Apps.
What can we do to mitigate these threats? Comprehensive testing/verification, do tests on production code. Get rid of built-in “Game Over” security threats – JSONP is bad, plaintext HTTP is bad. Create code that is designed to be securable– compartmentalize the code, decouple the code, be explicit, do test-driven design.
More specific thingsyou can do: Use HTML5+ Mashup APIs, use HTTPS (and authenticate your origins), secure design – compartmentalize and sandbox origins, do good client-side testing.
For compartmentalization: use credential state isolated from the DOM, minimize foreign origins, create unique origins to isolate apps and sandbox dangerous or active content.
You can sandbox bad JSONP code using postMessage.
Implementation validation is also important. Test using security tools – DOMinator, DOM Snitch, WebDriver and Selenium for testing. Start using them, contribute bugs, make the tools better.
Content Security Policy – pioneering work at Mozilla/Google– Least-Privilege environment. Let’s you say: “No in-line script, no code from strings via eval(), no data URIs, code must come from libraries with origins specified in a whitelist, origin whitelist for images, media, frames, fonts, plugins, etc.”
Click-jacking and UI Redressing is still a problem with Mashups. DOM is still a mess – lots of browser-specific quirks.
Grant Goodale (Massively Fun): Shortcuts: Touch Events
Grant Goodale up now from Massively Fun (@ggoodale) to talk about touch events. First touch API appeared in iOS 2.0, now a part of the HTML5 spec.
Many differences still exist between vendors – many of the browsers don’t support it yet, but there are lots of mobile browsers that do support touch events. Many different types of input, you want native-like behavior. Firefox supports touch events.
Cross-platform multi-touch webapp checklist – disable standard gesture handling, handle rendering in a loop outside of the touch event handler, support single-touch devices (like Android phones), handle mouse events (phones w/ a physical pointer, phones with no touch events, desktop browsers).
Grant Skinner (gskinner.com): Hello. Games. HTML5 Gaming Today.
… by Grant Skinner (gskinner.com) – creator of Eazel.jsand Pirates Love Daisies.
Traditionally worked with Flash – moved to working with HTML5. Games on the Open Web today and in the future.
What do you need to make a great game? An idea – you can be inspired by the technology you have available to you. Can we design games designed for the Web? Loading – critical piece, how do you get the game onto the client? Monitoring progress is difficult in games (no clear standards to see how long it’ll take to load everything).
XHR2 is great because it has progress events – ability to load in binary assets. caching – minimizes bandwidth/connections – cache manifest is good, but it’s an all-or-nothing solution. If you change the cache manifest, everything downloads again. HTML5 local storage is good, tricky to store non-text assets, low-level way of supporting cached data – lots of custom implementation work.
Graphics – lots of options. DOM and SVG is good – interaction model is good, ubiquitous, hardware accelerated… but high overhead (can be a performance killer). Hardware acceleration works really well for Canvas, not so great for SVG and the HTML DOM. WebGL (based on OpenGL ES2) – fast, low-level hardware graphics, 3D vertex shaders, extremely sharp learning curve – Three.jsmay help, but still very difficult to use. Canvas 2D is broadly available, including mobile, consistently implemented, easy to get started with, increasingly performant.
Combining surfaces is good– combine Canvas and SVG and DOM. HTML DOM does the UI very well – all UI in their games is done with HTML – use Canvas/SVG for graphics. Using pluggable renderers – you can switch between three.js, EaselJS based on your platform – write the content once, pick the renderer based on the device.
Sound is a little more challenging in games right now– audio tag is broadly supported, but suffers from browser-specific issues, latency, codec support, maximum number of audio elements (arbitrary). Using solutions like Flash, SoundJS, SoundManager2 allow you to launch with good audio today. Sound sprites, like image sprites – one very long audio clip with gaps, use JavaScript to see and play different parts of the audio track.
The Web Audio API is coming– very powerful API for real-time audio manipulation, runs at native speed, synthesis, analysis, mixing – limited support now, but will solve a ton of problems.
Basic interaction – keyboard capture is incomplete, but mostly adequate. Mouse interaction is fine for point and click games. WebGL and Canvas require custom handling of mouse events. Full-screen and interaction API is a bit quirky. mouse lock and synthetic mouse events are necessary when you want the cursor to go off-screen and still generate mouse events (which you need to do in first-person games when walking, running, navigating).
Upcoming device APIs – touch events, orientation change API, device orientation API, nothing for orientation lock yet (don’t change the orientation when playing a game).
Communication – XHR (http requests and polling), WebSockets (text only for now, but binary coming soon). WebRTC / Peer Connection API – peer-to-peer audio, video and data. Network Status API – is the device online or offline.
Code authoring – JavaScript performance has gotten faster, IE has improved the most, but many browsers are doing great work with JavaScript performance. ECMAScript 5 is good – strict mode should be used. New features in ECMA5 – seal, freeze, prevent extension for objects, property descriptors allow you to specify when a property should be writable, readable, etc. There are still challenges: no type safety, no interfaces, limited inheritance, no super() – difficult to write a big game engine w/ JavaScript. JS is great for hacking together a game. Some solutions – Google Closure is neat and a good IDE, cross-compilers – Haxe, CoffeeScript, Jangaroo– compile down to JavaScript.
Tools – good dev tools – WebStorm, debugging tools are good, profiling is good for JavaScript – not so good for profiling graphical processes. WebGL inspectoris really neat, lets you see where a single pixel came from in the code.
Asset preparation (for designers) 3D – Inka3D exports to WebGL. Sprite sheets – Flash, Zoe, TexturePacker. 2D – Wallaby, SVG to Canvas, EaselJS.
Marketing and Monetization – Web games are great because you’re already in a social medium.
Flash is more ubiquitous, it has more tooling, building a game is cheaper in Flash… but it doesn’t run in iOS, probably won’t run in mobiles, Windows 8 Metro won’t run it either.
Exciting times for Games in HTML5 – still some rough edges, but technology is maturing quickly.
Faruk Ateş : Shortcuts: Modernizr
Design for the browser of the future by detecting features instead of browser versions – useful for progressive enhancement, graceful degradation, regressive enhancement.
Modernizr allows you to test a feature and then conditionally load code that expects the feature or code that uses a polyfill.
People arrive at your site for the content, but will leave very quickly if the site isn’t fast. Showing demo of progressive enhancement.
How to use modernizr? Go to http://www.modernizr.com
Development and production version. Good for CDN distribution.
Art Barstow (Nokia), Paul Cotton (Microsoft), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera), Chris Wilson (Google), Peter Vosshall (Amazon):
PANEL: Browsers and Standards: Where the Rubber Hits the Road
What’s interesting about the browsers?
- Nokia has shipped millions of browser installs – written from the ground-up in some cases – shipped browsers from Opera – also shipping Windows Phone browsers – large swath.
- Microsoft – IE9 and IE10 – driving home the message about all web developers using the Web Platform – picking stable specs, moving it into the browser.
- Mozilla – we’re a non-profit, our focus is a bit different – mission driven focus– we’re concerned about SOPA and censorship over profits.
- Opera – we’re a commercial company, we are out of Norway, we are product focusedfor our customers.
- Google – focus on making the Web platform better.
- Amazon – just got into the browser game, built from the ground-up to use Amazon web services infrastructure – browser running on a mobile device.
What do you think about DART and SPDY and how they were brought to market?
- Paul Cotton (Microsoft) – innovation is good, we should have more of it but we need to coordinateon those things.
- Paul (Amazon) SPDY is great, we ship it, it reflects what’s happening in the real world today.
- Chaals (Opera) browser vendors are just one part of the puzzle, developers need to take part in it, security folks need to take part in it.
- Tantek (Mozilla) – the problem is delayed open – for a fair look on the problem search for “delayed open google microsoft”.
[ 20 Nov: @t Tantek Çelik also @#W3Conf: fight “delayed open” tactics per Eran’s post: Open vs. Fast, Good vs. Evil, Google vs. Facebook: ttk.me/t4Ex4]Vendor prefixes, are they outmoded?
- Chris Wilson (Google), vendor prefixes are not that good.
- Chaals (Opera) bad authoring is worse, so is bad Web teaching, we need a mechanism for innovation – vendor prefixes are terrible, except for all of the other things we tried, which are worse – sunset the vendor prefixes.
- Paul Cotton (Microsoft) we want vendor prefixes to be taken out when we go to Candidate Recommendation status – we need to get to CR faster, we need to do our specs in a much more modular fashion. Part of the standards process is at fault here – standards need to move faster.
- Tantek (Mozilla) The better that we can get about dropping vendor prefixes, the better. Vendor prefixes suck, but it’s the best we’ve come up with so far– we could do better – we’re all open to suggestions on this point.
- Paul (Amazon) Vendor prefixes are a form of technical debt, you have to pay it down eventually.
Tantek asks why VIDEO element didn’t have a vendor prefix – but it still worked… why?
- Chaals: It was easy to understand what Video should do.
- John Allsopp: It had a good fallback.
- Tantek: Video wasn’t easy, but we got it right – why was that? Arguing on stage
What about operating system integration, like with Chromebook?
- Tantek: it’s bad – robs the user of choice. iPhone, no choice – Chromebook – no choice.
- Chris (Google) – Chromebook is just the Web layer, you can replace the OS if you want to– there is choice there.
- Paul (Amazon) having HTML5, creating a true application environment – maybe the model of using the OS as the browser is terrible.
How do most of the regular web developers know what should be used and what shouldn’t?
- Chaals (Opera) All of us building the Web need to go out and learn and teach other people. There is nobody spoon feeding information to you – this field changes so quickly – look around to your peers, they will help you.
- Paul (Microsoft) Browser vendors need to hang out with one another – we need to work together, get things done. Community Groups at W3C are going to be key – get groups going with least amount of overhead, understand what minimum required to get a spec done is needed. The way we’re dealing with the HTML5 spec is bad – it’s a flawed way of working on a standard. We will continue to work together at W3C. We have a real obligation to the community here.
- Tantek (Mozilla) – it’s not sufficient for browser vendors to work together – we need to work together IN THE OPEN.
Is there any plans to replace JavaScript?
- Chris (Google) One of the goals behind DARTwas to provide something simpler.
- Chaals (Opera) it would be terrible if the solution was not interoperable.
- Paul (Microsoft) JavaScript will become “copper pipe” in 5-6 years… it’ll be what we use just like we don’t think about processors and compilers today.
Privacy –
- Chaals (Opera) different societies define privacy differently, difficult to start the work when you don’t know where you’re going.
- Chris (Google) people should have the tools to control their own privacy, you can’t just leave it to the end user.
- Doug (W3C) Good work on do not track, cryptography going on at W3C.
What about internationalization?
- Paul (Microsoft) We need to be able to ship browsers worldwide – how to bring rest of the world into the conversation.
- Tantek (Mozilla) There are 70 versions of localized Firefox browsers – built by the international community. Customized for specific locales and markets.
Women in browsers, why are they not represented?
- Paul (Microsoft) I work with 2 women on my team, 3 men. More women attending at TPAC, this is a good sign.
- Chaals (Opera) different societies have different levels of participation.
- Paul (Microsoft) Women are certainly welcome here – we want much broader participation than we have now. I think some of the problem is societal, it’s not a social norm in the USA – we need to get better about teaching science and math to he smarter of the genders.
Web apps for the open web from Mozilla
Mozilla releasing new version of Firefox for Android [Nov 22, 2011]
The new version is strategically important for Mozilla for multiple reasons. First, smartphones and tablets are at the center of a mobile-first transformation of the computing industry, and Firefox isn’t preinstalled anywhere right now. Second, with Firefox shut out on Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Android is effectively the only route for Mozilla to bring its browser to the mobile market.
Last, Mozilla’s objective–to ensure an open Web–relies on Firefox. Right now, Apple and Google browsers based on the open-source WebKit project dominate mobile browsing.
Release manager Christian Legnitto announced the move Friday. Initially the new version was geared just for phones, but Mozilla expanded it to tablets, too, after concluding it couldn’t offer separate versions.
Firefox for personal computers, and many of the add-ons that helped make the browser popular by making it more customizable, use an interface called XUL (XML User Interface Language). But because the XUL-based version of Firefox took so long to start up on Android and isn’t as responsive, Mozilla instead embraced Andoid’s built-in technology.
Mozilla releases roadmap for Boot to Gecko project [thinq, Nov 7, 2011]
Mozilla is continuing its assault on the operating system, releasing an updated roadmap for its Boot to Gecko (B2G) project that sees its developers using the mobile platform as their primary phone device by the end of the year.
Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project first appeared back in July, when researcher Andreas Gal posted a message to the mozilla.dev.platform Usenet group asking for volunteers to help develop a new mobile platformthat brings the concept of the open web to smartphones as well as the desktop.
“We propose a project we’re calling ‘Boot to Gecko’ (B2G) to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web. We will do this work in the open, we will release the source in real-time, we will take all successful additions to an appropriate standards group, and we will track changes that come out of that process. We aren’t trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox,” Gal claimed at the time, “we’re trying to have them run on the web.”
As well as a standalone platform, Gal explained that initial versions of the software would operate as a “low-level substrate for an Android-compatible device,” allowing tablets and smartphones based on Google’s popular mobile platform to boot into B2G as well.
The B2G project stands as an apparent answer to the success of Google’s Android and the work the advertising giant has done on the Chrome OS project for so-called ‘Chromebook’ devices. A combination of the two – a smartphone platform and a web app platform – B2G promises to appeal to those looking to offload their processing from a mobile device to the cloud.
In the latest version of the B2G roadmap, Mozilla claims that the first milestone is to get developers using a B2G device as their day-to-day smartphone – a goal it aims to achieve by the end of the year.
The project has a way to go, however: while B2G currently has access to smartphone features including the camera and the ability to make outgoing calls via Android, work has yet to be completed on messaging and full telephony functionality, along with power management, Android contacts integration and screen management.
Once complete, the team is planning to turn its attention to the nicer aspects: support for Bluetooth, USB and Near-Field Communications hardware is planned – although not yet scheduled – while plans to release an open web apps store= much like Google’s own Chrome Store, which lists web apps solely for use with its own browser – and add full Firefox-like functionality to the web browser are scheduled.
Once complete, that work will result in a public demonstration of the project as early as Q1 2012, the team claims, followed by “productisation” in Q2 – at which point the public at large will be given their chance to play with Mozilla’s creation.
The company has a long road ahead, however: Google’s Android is a popular platform, and while B2G promises to maintain compatibility with the system – likely by integrating a dual-boot functionality or using B2G as an overlay on top of the still-running Android OS where possible – it’s likely to struggle to convince non-technical types that it’s worth the effort.
Should the company secure a deal with a major handset manufacturer to ship B2G as standard with a smartphone, however, that could rapidly change.
Full details of the B2G project are available on the official wiki.
B2G/Roadmap [Nov 4, 2011]
This page is edited by brendan, cjones. Please don’t change without permission. DRAFT
[Brendan Eich co-founded mozilla.org and is currently the CTO of Mozilla. He is widely known for his contributions to the evolution of the Web, including inventing JavaScript and spearheading its ongoing standardization and evolution. See also: Mozilla’s Brendan Eich on the Birth of Firefox [Nov 9, 2011].]Milestone 1: Developer Phone Q4 2011
Developers will use B2G as their day-to-day phone.
Gecko
Gecko implements standard and proposed Web APIs.
- Accelerometer
- Geolocation
- Camera
- Visibility
- Messaging: (filed 7/27)
- android backend (ON TRACK, first patch 8/11)
- RIL backend (ON TRACK)
- SMS IndexedDB database (ASSIGNED)
- Telephony: (filed 7/27)
- outgoing calls on android
- RIL backend (ON TRACK)
- mute and speakerphone-toggle through libaudio (ON TRACK, landing estimated 11/15)
- Battery: (filed 8/12)
- android backend (ON TRACK)
- Linux upower backend (ON TRACK)
- sysfs backend (ON TRACK)
- Contacts: (ON TRACK)
- android backend (ON TRACK)
- native IndexedDB backend (ON TRACK)
- Screen/power management: (SCHEDULED)
- Settings: (SCHEDULED)
- Intents/Actions interface (SCHEDULED)
System (Gonk)
Gonk provides the OS kernel and lower-level native-code libraries that Gecko depends on.
- Boot into Gecko-based runtime
- Basic developer tools
- debugger (gdb)
- profiler
User Interface (Gaia)
Gaia is Mozilla’s phone user experience.
- Home screen
- Lock screen
- Dialer
- SMS application
- Basic web browser
- Contacts manager
Integration and testing
Infrastructure to collaborate with partners on source using established tools from Android ecosystem. Test correctness and performance.
- Project Eideticker(performance testing): (ON TRACK, prototype finished)
- Control B2G devices: (ON TRACK)
- git.mozilla.org and gerrit server: (ASSIGNED)
Milestone 2: Product Demo Q1 2012
Gecko
- Open Web Apps and Store (ON TRACK)
- Network status
- Network management
- Vibrator(ON TRACK)
- android backend (ON TRACK)
- sysfs backend (ASSIGNED)
- Lights
- Sensors(ON TRACK)
- proximity and ambient-light sensors (ON TRACK)
- android backend (ON TRACK)
- gonk backend (ASSIGNED)
- Bluetooth(STRETCH)
- USB(STRETCH)
- NFC(STRETCH)
- Completed port to Gonk
- widget backend built on GL context for screen (ON TRACK)
- user-input processing (ON TRACK)
- gonk backend for all device APIs
- audio and video playback
- Developer tools: remote debuggers
- JS
- DOM (STRETCH)
- CSS (STRETCH)
System (Gonk)
- Dalvik removal
- Developer tools
- valgrind
- OpenGL debugger
- OpenGL profiler
profilers
User Interface (Gaia)
- Full-featured web browser
- Settings manager
- Apps store
- eBook reader
- Camera
- Gallery
- Media player
- Distinct look-and-feel
Integration and testing
- Automated correctness testing
Milestone 3: Productization Q2 2012
Gecko
- Update mechanism
- WebRTC
Boot To Gecko (B2G) [A Minute With Brendan, Oct 19, 2011]
Back from JSConf EU and other travels, the minute with team is happy to return with a special episode from Brendan about the new Boot To Gecko (B2G)system. This is targeted to allow users of mobile devices to boot directly to a Gecko based browsing interface and to run web applications. It is really doing some stunning work around the new web APIs and privilege model that all developers should be aware of. Enjoy!
- Mobile discussions (more about Mozilla’s mission)
- Boot to Gecko wiki
- JS APIs for cameras, USB, and possibly Near Field Communication (NFC)
- HP WebOS
- ChromeOS
- Brendan discusses the benefit of coop-atition between webkit and gecko, working together and keeping separate is a good thing.
- Nitobi
Crowd Sourced Full Transcript: http://piratepad.net/amwb-20111019 [Brendan Eich, Oct 19, 2011]
When I last spoke about the whole area of the rise of mobile smartphones and tablets really, and how Mozilla needs to climb the stack, use the Firefox desktop-heavy user-base to grow and make new product offerings, new projects, I did not talk about Boot To Gecko, but it’s, it was latent in what I, I did talk about, because we, we look around the world of mobile devices, and we see different operating systems that are increasingly locked in, vertically in terms of browsers or app models, or, even down to the OS and hardware, and that goes against Mozilla’s mission.
So what we really want is an offering that allows you to use the web to access all those great device APIs, with security, with user, user’s permission, with the principle of least-authority, so that there’s not a big security nightmare. But we do expect that the web languages, JavaScript especially, are capable of doing the high level sequencing and operations that you want, for things like your camera, USB connectivity, even futuristic stuff like Near Field Communication. That can all be just APIs exposed to JavaScript. You shouldn’t have to write native code that’s like Java interfaced on Android, or Objective-C, on, on, or C or C++ on another platform.
And so Boot To Gecko really is trying to make a thin OS layer, using open-source stacks like the linux kernel that’s in Android, or some similar linux kernel, and lib-c, and, you know, the Bluetooth open stack, and other things, to have a completely unencumbered operating system that gets you straight into the web languages as fast as possible. The, the launchers, home-screen, or the front-end of the user experience of the OS will really be realized with web technologies.
And, you know you might think this is similar to webOS, from Palm originally, now HP, and ChromeOS, there’s a lot similar in spirit. I would, I would say there’s some differences strategic for Mozilla and in what users will see there. What we’re trying to provide is not a new big fat JavaScript library or stack, but the web libraries that you find on Github, the ones you’re already using in your front-end development. We want web developers to be right at home, we don’t want to give them yet another, sorta framework. And I think that the webOS has some of that going on, which you know, may or may not be a strike against it, but it’s different from what we intend. We intend to be totally aligned with the grain of the web.
ChromeOS is fully open source, as fully as it can be, I think, more so than Android, at least Android Honeycomb, and that’s, that’s a good thing about it. It’s currently targeting you know notebooks, machines with keyboards, I think it’s, it’s also being brought up on some tablets, I’m not sure where that stands. And maybe even some phones, so the telephony, you know the dialer and the signaling stuff will be there. And not sure how that’ll play out. But ChromeOS is kind of Chrome, and therefore Chromium Webkit, and sort of Google dominated, to be fair. And I, so inspite of the philosophical alignment I feel with ChromeOS, it needs to be something like Android, which is really linux plus some Java stuff, I think Mozilla has to take a shot at something like Boot To Gecko.
We want to keep the Gecko code base relevant, even as it sort of dissolves into the operating system, becomes part of the ambient functionality you find on devices. So we’re looking for interoperation between Webkit and Gecko. We’re not just saying: “one open-source widely-used renderer is enough”. And, of course, as, as I mentioned last time, there’s a lot of, sort of, implicit version forking or vendor specific, you know, bug injection going on with Webkit. This is inevitable with any widely used codebase, it’s not something peculiar to Webkit.
But it, I think it even more raises the temperature on having another rendering engine, ideally open-source, like Gecko, out there, with a lot of users, even in the future where tablets and smartphones dominate the desktop population of devices, of PC’s and Macs.
So, Boot To Gecko is trying to differentiate by bringing web developers all those APIs that are going to take awhile to standardize. The stuff that Phonegap, from Nitobi, does well, we want to bring it as quickly as possible and feed it into the standards body, and, bodies, and iterate on it, and we want to run well on certain, certain devices. Now, this also requires making choices, because you can’t just say this is gonna be something users can download for any old phone. It, it, all the phones are different, you really have to flash into ROM, and you know, to burn, burn a ROM with this code. That’s part of the challenge, because for tablets, you might need some, some extra support that isn’t yet open-source. I mentioned Android Honeycomb.
We’re gonna persevere, and try to get this to be completely open-source, and running on relevant devices. There’s some really sweet hardware out there that we like a lot. We like the Samsung devices, the Galaxy II-S, we went with the Galaxy Tab 10 inch. Getting up on those right now with fully open-source stacks is a little hard. So part of our mission is to overcome that obstacle, and then interface the device APIs in the OS and down in the linux layer directly to the web.
And, so we won’t run equally well on every device, but we will pick devices that we think are likely to be popular, that are well executed hardware, that, you know, can actually give Apple a bit of a run for its money, and try to get something up and demonstratable in a few months.
So, I will be talking about this at least in, in October at a couple of conferences, probably Web 2.0 Expo in New York, and another one. And that, that puts a short fuse on the initial prototyping work for Boot To Gecko, so it’s paramount that we leverage what’s out there as open-source already, and then build on it with the Gecko technology that allows web developers to get at the device APIs. And I’ll have more to say about this as it progresses, but it’ll be exciting, and I, it’ll, I hope be really awesome on certain well designed hardware.
Booting to the Web [Andreas Gal, Director of Research at Mozilla Corporation, Jul 25, 2011]
Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development. To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike, we need to keep pushing the envelope of the web to include — and in places exceed — the capabilities of the competing stacks in question.
We also need a hill to take, in order to scope and focus our efforts. Recently we saw the pdf.js [http://github.com/andreasgal/pdf.js/] project expose small gaps that needed filling in order for “HTML5” to be a superset of PDF. We want to take a bigger step now, and find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are — in every way — the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7.
To that end, we propose a project we’re calling “Boot to Gecko” [http://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G] (B2G) to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web. It’s going to require work in a number of areas.
* New web APIs: build prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content (Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.)
* Privilege model: making sure that these new capabilities are safely exposed to pages and applications
* Booting: prototype a low-level substrate for an Android-compatible device;
* Applications: choose and port or build apps to prove out and prioritize the power of the system.We will do this work in the open, we will release the source [http://github.com/andreasgal/B2G] in real-time, we will take all successful additions to an appropriate standards group, and we will track changes that come out of that process. We aren’t trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we’re trying to have them run on the web.
This project is in its infancy; some pieces of it are only captured in our heads today, others aren’t fully explored. We’re talking about it now because we want expertise from all over Mozilla — and from people who aren’t yet part of Mozilla — to inform and build the project we’re outlining here.
brendan, cjones, gal, shaver
Boot To Gecko misconceptions [Luke Wagner, Sept 16, 2011]
I’m all jazz hands about Boot To Gecko (B2G). I think B2G is really important to the Mozilla mission. Perhaps stemming from the early-and-open nature of B2G, there are some misconceptions about B2G that I’ve seen in articles and forums. I am not closely involved in the project, but I do know enough to identify and correct a few of these misconceptions with the following three B2G facts:
- B2G will not run in kernel mode. To be clear, B2G will run on top of the Linux kernel; Gecko will run as user-mode processes. Furthermore, a crash in Gecko will not take down the entire phone: with Electrolysis (already being used in Firefox Mobile), different apps/sites will run in different processes.
- B2G will (ultimately) not run on top of Android. To bootstrap the project, work is currently being done on top of Android. However, the goal is to incrementally remove each dependency on Android, leaving only drivers and low-level libraries. In particular, this means B2G would not contain the Dalvik Java VM which should significantly improve the patent–encumbered Java situationas well as reduce the number of VMs needed to browse the web from 2 to 1.
- B2G will use Gecko, but it’s not just about Gecko. A clearer name might have been “Boot to Web platform”. Gecko will, of course, be the engine used to prototype new Web APIs but since these are targeted at open standards developed in the open (as opposed to dumped in the open) [referring to a Dart presentation], a possible/desirable outcome is a separate “Boot To Webkit” implementation able to run the same home screen and apps as B2G.
If you are excited, feel free to contribute to the project; it’s just starting and there are many important problems to be solved.
1st search: HTML5 CSS3 Javascript “Windows 8” Chrome Firefox Apple Opera “web apps”
2nd search: “web apps” Mozilla
The State of Mozilla Annual Report – Opportunities [Oct 10, 2011]
…
Improving Web Capabilities
Mozilla has long been at the forefront of making the Web a more capable, rich and compelling platform. We continue this leadership today.
Identity
…
Apps
Apps represent a new, convenient way of interacting with the Internet, but they lack a number of the features that are great about the Web. The Mozilla open app ecosystemwill let users take their apps with them across platforms and devices. It will bridge contact lists and social graphs from different providers across the Web. It will allow users to discover apps in open and flexible ways, just as we discover other content on the Web.
Education
…
Media
…
WebFWD
…
Boot to Gecko
…
The State of Mozilla Annual Report – FAQ [Oct 10, 2011]
FAQ
What are the key projects for Mozilla in the next year? How do you plan to influence the market going forward?
Firefox continues to be a fundamental lever in driving the Web forward and advancing the Mozilla mission. At the same time, the Web is evolving and moving into new areas and so is Mozilla. In addition to delivering Firefox on mobile phones and tablets, we will focus on new projects in the important areas of Apps, Identity, Education, and more.
Do you see a continued need for an independent player like Mozilla, now that competition in the browser market has accelerated?
Absolutely, Mozilla’s public benefit mission and nonprofit nature enables us to advocate for the user and remain committed to keeping the Web open and participatory, rather than focusing on market share or profits. The desktop browser market is innovative and competitive, but no one other than Mozilla is organized solely for the good of the Web as a whole, and we believe that as people become increasingly aware and informed online citizens that more and more people will look for a Web browser, like Firefox, that answers only to them.
What was Mozilla’s total revenue for 2010?
Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2010 was $123 million, up approximately 18 percent from 2009.
How does Mozilla generate revenue?
The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, Ebay and others. Mozilla’s reported revenues also include very important individual and corporate donations and grants as well as other forms of income from our investable assets.
What is the status of the organization’s search partnerships?
We currently have partnerships with a number of search providers that differ by market. Our largest contract, with Google, comes up for renewal in November. We have every confidence that search partnerships will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future.
Do Mozilla’s partnerships affect its independence?
Our mission and development process are completely unrelated to revenue or revenue generating relationships. Our open development process is governed by Mozilla’s mission and our commitment to improving the Web.
Are you exploring partnership opportunities to diversify your revenue stream?
We currently have several key business partnerships and are actively exploring search partnership opportunities and other potential revenue opportunities. We’ll continue to build great products that help people enjoy the richness of the Internet, and we’re confident that this allows us to identify appropriate sources of revenue.
Prototype of an Open Web App Ecosystem [Mozilla Labs, Oct 19, 2010]
The open Web is a great platform for rich applications. It would be even better if it had additional capabilities to ease discovery, acquisition, installation and use of apps, while also enabling monetization for developers. We designed and built a prototype of a system for open Web apps: Apps built using HTML/CSS/JavaScript that work both on computers and mobile phones, have many of the characteristics that users find compelling about native apps and provide developers with open and flexible distribution options.
Today, we are releasing technical documentationof the proposed system and a developer preview prototype that allows you to install, manage and launch Web apps in any modern desktop or mobile browser (Firefox 3.6 and later, Firefox for mobile, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 6, Safari 5, Opera 10 and WebKit mobile). This prototype provides a simple mechanism to support paid apps and authentication features to allow apps to log users in upon launch.
The design proposed here provides the following capabilities and enables a new category of what we call “Open Web Apps” — apps that are truly of the Web.
Open Web Apps:
- Are built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
- Can be “installed” to a dashboard within your mobile or desktop Web browser, or to your native OS desktop or mobile home screen.
- Work in all modern Web browsers, while enabling each browser to compete on app presentation, organization and management user interfaces.
- Support paid apps by means of an authorization model that uses existing identity systems like OpenID.
- Support portable purchases: An app purchased for one browser works in other browsers, and across multiple desktop and mobile platforms without repurchase.
- Can request access to one or more advanced and/or privacy-sensitive capabilities that they would like access to (like geolocation) which the system will mediate, giving the user the ability to opt-in to them if desired.
- Can be distributed by developers directly to users without any gatekeeper, and distributed through multiple stores, allowing stores to compete on customer service, price, policies, app discoverability, ratings, reviews and other attributes.
- Can receive notifications from the cloud.
- Support deep search across apps: Apps can implement an interface that enables the app container (generally the Web browser) to provide the user with a cross-app search experience that links deeply into any app that can satisfy the search.
Mozilla Labs | Open Web Apps [Oct 19, 2010]
Q: Why is Mozilla building an Open Web App platform?
Web apps are becoming a commonly used class of applications – often directly competing with native apps. Web apps offer similar features to native apps and are available through any modern Web browser (both desktop and mobile) from any place in the world. Yet, Web apps lack certain essential features around the user experience, including installation and launch, app discovery, monetization and some platform features, such as notifications and unified search through installed apps. App experiences are usually a tightly vertically integrated (e.g. iPhone/iTunes) with problems such as an opaque approval processes, lack of choice for developers, platform lock-in, high(er) development cost when going cross-platform, etc. Realizing these gaps and issues, Mozilla decided to build the underlying system to enable Open Web Apps – these apps are fundamentally built upon the Web infrastructure.
Q: Is Mozilla creating an Open Web App store?
At this point in time, Mozilla has no intention to build our own store or distribute apps ourselves. We expect to see app stores develop, which will provide access to both free and paid Open Web Apps. Developers will be able to publish their apps on their own sites and, if they choose to do so, charge for them.
Q: How are Open Web Apps different from add-ons?
Open Web Apps are applications produced on and delivered through the Web. Open Web Apps are complete applications such as office applications, productivity applications, image processing applications, games, etc. Open Web Apps run in any modern Web browser (both on desktop as well as mobile). Add-ons are extensions to your Firefox browser, which provide specific functionality to the browser itself.
Q: How will people discover new apps? Will there be recommended apps?We expect that we will see a whole array of directories and stores being developed to aid in discovery. This will be another area where stores will compete with each other. Further – as you can link into apps – a developer can market an app through the established online marketing channels such as keyword advertising.
Q: Will developers need to submit or create a new app?
All developers have to do to make their apps work in the proposed system is to provide a short manifest (as text document consisting of a few lines of JSON code). There is no submission process – the simple existence of a manifest is enough for the system to understand that the particular URL is an app. If the developer chooses to sell her app, she has to add some boilerplate code for purchase verification. We will provide example code and libraries for this purpose.
Q: Will the apps be localized and available globally?
This is completely up to the developer. An app can be distributed globally in exactly the same way you publish a website today – once the app is available through its URL, anyone around the world can access it. It’s up to the developer to decide if they want to localize, provide special features for certain geographies, etc.
Q: What is important about Mozilla’s proposed Open Web App infrastructure?
Apps are fundamentally of the Web; they live on the Web and you can link into them.
– Apps can be published without limitations (on your own site, in directories, in stores), fostering innovation on the store fronts/directories, remove problems with approval processes, etc.
- The system provides mechanisms for identification and authentication.
– You can easily charge for apps, similarly to experiences you have today on the iPhone or Android devices.- Apps run in any modern Web browser.
– You are not tied to a specific browser, your apps travel with you from browser to browser independent from the underlying OS (e.g. desktop to mobile). For developers, this means that they develop once and can deploy on every device that runs a modern Web browser.
Open Web Apps – An Update [Nov 30, 2010]
There has been a lot of discussion and progress in the month since we announced our proposal for an “Open Web App Ecosystem”, and we wanted to provide a snapshot of our progress and current thinking. This post outlines a new feature, “Application Sync”, as well as several proposed technical changes to Open Web Apps.
Syncing Apps
The way the Web works today, changes made on a site are often transparently visible across all of a user’s devices, changes such as photos posted to Flickr or updates sent to Twitter. Given that many popular sites use server based storage behind an authenticated user account, this “feature” is quite natural for the Web.
Open Web Apps, on the other hand, are more similar to browser bookmarks than they are to photos on Flickr. The set of applications that a user has installed is persistent in a browser’s storage on the client, and is not stored on any central server by default.
A problem in user’s expectations arises here: the more and more the dashboard ends up feeling like a hosted Web application, the more a user will expect to see her stuff wherever she is.
To address this problem, we have included “application synchronization” as a first class feature. The goal of this feature is to allow a user to synchronize their applications between devices and browsers if they choose. We’ve begun prototyping synchronization, and you’re welcome to follow our progresson github.
Refining the Manifest
The application manifest format for Open Web Apps is a specification of JSON encoded meta-data that describes the presentation, launch, and capabilities of an Open Web App. This specification is central to the system we propose, as it will be an important integration point for application developers, browser vendors, and application stores.
Given the central role of the manifest, it has been the focus of a commensurate amount of attention. We have received feedback from standards groups, engineers working on “Installable Web Apps” at other browser vendors, companies and individuals interested in running application stores, application developers, and our own security experts here at Mozilla.
All of this discussion has culminated in a handful of concrete proposed revisions to the manifest format which attempt to build a more secure platform for Web apps that serve all parties involved in the ecosystem. You can learn more about the current proposed changes, and join the discussion, in a separate blog entry dedicated to refining the manifest.
Defining the Application Repository
One key component of Open Web Apps is what we’re calling the Application Repository. This is a client side entity that exposes an API to Web content: applications, stores, and dashboards. Its primary responsibilities are to manage the collection of installed applications and ensure that the user remains in control of them.
One interesting element of the application repository is that it is the piece that we propose be built into browsers as a native component. In the past month we’ve completed a first pass proposal and proof of concept (in the form of browser add-ons) of the API that the application repository will expose. This API can also be provided by a JavaScript library to support browsers that have no special support for Open Web Apps.
You can view the latest versionof this API specification on github, and we’re especially interested in feedback from browser developers on this API. Our hope is that it will be possible to implement this API on browsers across mobile and desktop environments alike.
Upcoming
In the upcoming weeks we hope to complete a first prototype of application sync, and we will have a complete revision of the application manifest ready for further community review. Finally, we should have prototype add-ons complete for multiple browsers available for people to try out.
Our longer term goal is to have an Integration Release of the Open Web Apps concept ready by early next year, which will serve as a blueprint from which we can work with members of the community to help spark a vibrant new ecosystem of rich applications for your browser.
Building the Open Web App Ecosystem [Dec 6, 2011]
Editor’s Note: Today, Mozilla Labs posted an update on the Open Web App Ecosystem project. Included below is an excerpt from this post. You can read the full details from Director of Mozilla Labs, Pascal Finette here.
The Web needs support for the co-existence of multiple Open Web App stores, and to enable users to use applications from these stores in a consistent manner. People buy their shoes, food and music from different stores on the Web today, and we see the same need for diversity and choice with Open Web Apps. We are excited to build a truly free and open market which is the basis for innovation and fundamental to the Web.
We recently launched a project to build the infrastructure for an Open Web App Ecosystem because we want to enable many different stores to exist and work in any modern browser across devices and platforms. The Open Web App Ecosystem will allow app developers to publish apps on their own website under their own terms, and will provide opportunities for individuals and companies to develop innovative services.
Building the Open Web App Ecosystem [Dec 6, 2010]
The Web needs support for the co-existence of multiple Open Web App stores, and to enable users to use applications from these stores in a consistent manner. People buy their shoes, food and music from different stores on the Web today, and we see the same need for diversity and choice with Open Web Apps. We are excited to build a truly free and open market which is the basis for innovation and fundamental to the Web.
We recently launched a project to build the infrastructure for an Open Web App Ecosystembecause we want to enable many different stores to exist and work in any modern browser across devices and platforms. The Open Web App Ecosystem will allow app developers to publish apps on their own website under their own terms, and will provide opportunities for individuals and companies to develop innovative services.
Concretely, the system consists of a machine readable format to describe applications (the manifest), a client side collection of the apps a users has installed (the app repository), a user facing application launcher (the dashboard), as well as the interactions to support commerce (such as proving a user’s ownership of an app).
Progress
Numerous app developers and companies have shared plans to build stores and services (search, recommendations, etc.) based on the Open Web App Ecosystem prototype we released.
On the technical side, we are in the process of finalizing the APIs and the manifest format for developers (read more about the details of this work here).
We are experimenting with new app capabilities such as notifications, app sync and the possibility for apps to exchange data directly if permitted by the user(allowing your email app access to your address book and calendar app for example). We also continue to work on multi-browser specific integrations of the user-facing application launcher (currently referred to as the Dashboard).
What’s next?
Our “integration release” is on track to be available in Q1 2011, and will have a stable manifest format and APIs, and will include initial custom browser support for most popular browsers (via extensions), application sync, and an application dashboard. Additionally we are actively working with developers of apps and stores to help them integrate a presence within the Open Web App Ecosystem into their plans.
Find out more
To stay up to date on the development or get in touch with the team,
- Follow our GitHub account
- Check out our developer preview
- Contact us on irc.mozilla.org #openwebapps
First developer release of Web Apps Project [March 3, 2011]
We are excited to announce the availability of the first milestone release of Mozilla’s Web Application project. Web Apps are applications that run on any device, and can be distributed through any store or directly by the developer. This release contains stable APIs, developer utilities and documentation to help you get a jumpstart on building Web Apps and stores.
Developers can use this release to publish their application to users, or to create a Web App store or directory. Users can review a gallery of user experience ideas and beta-quality versions of Firefox and Chromeadd-ons that integrate the Web App experience more tightly with the browser.
To get started, watch this short video which describes the main features of the release, then head over to our landing page to learn more.
Web Apps are applications that run on any device, and can be distributed through any store or directly by the developer.Ready. Set. Build!
Head on over to the Mozilla Developer Network to understand how to:
- Build a Web App
- Describe your Web App using the stable manifest description
- Use our stable JavaScript APIs to let your Web App interact with the browser
Check out this gallery of some of the cool Web Appsthat developers have already started building using our APIs.
If you are interested in building a Web App Store, we have documentation to help you get started.
Further we have some nifty utilities that will help you test how your new Web App works in modern browsers:
- Download the Mozilla Web App extension for Firefox and/or Chrome. This extension implements the application launch and application management APIs.
- Use the Manifest Validatorto ensure your Web App manifests are working.
- Check out this proof-of-concept Web App dashboard written in HTML5. You may even be inspired to write your own dashboard!
To give you a taste of how we envision Web Apps will enable rich, immersive user experiences, head over to the user interface concepts gallery
What’s next?
In the coming weeks, we plan to pursue several new ideas, including:
- A deeply integrated “in browser” experience that spans the entire find, install, launch, use and manage flow.
- Syncing your Web Apps to your mobile devices.
- Supporting native browser controls and OS integration.
- Support for widgets and notifications to make your Web Apps more lively.
- and many more.
Give us feedback!
As always, we would love to hear from youas you build and deploy Web Apps. In particular, we’d love to hear if:
- You have feedback on improvements you’d like to see in our APIs and documentation.
- You have built an awesome Web App and want to show it off.
- You have an amazing dashboard you’ve built.
- You have an idea for a cool Web App.
We believe Web Apps enable us to package all the generativity of the Web as rich, immersive experiences that delight users. We look forward to building this world with you.
—
The Mozilla Web Apps team
Web Apps Update – experiments in Web Activities, App Discovery [July 7, 2011]
At Mozilla Labs, we’ve been experimenting with several concepts and ideas to build a Web of Apps. Today, we’re proud to release a new version of the experimental OpenWebApps add-on for Firefox that allows you to easily install and manage web applications in Firefox and aims to provide a tightly integrated app experience.
These features are aimed at developers and adventurous users and give you an idea of what to expect in the future. You can download the latest version of the add-on here.
With this release, you can try two new experimental features – Web Activities and App Discovery.
v0.3 release of the Mozilla Open Web Apps projectWeb Activites
This experiment is focused around the concept of linking apps together.
For example, if you use Flickr to share photos, then the Flickr Web App should let you easily share and integrate your Flickr photos with other Web Apps. If you use Twitter to share links with your friends, then other Web Apps should allow you to easily share via Twitter.
To try out Web Activities, do the following:
- Install the Rainbooth Add-On.
- Take an awesome photo.
- Install and Authorize the Flickr Connector Web App(you’ll need a Flickr account).
- Click Send To in the Rainbooth Web App to automatically send the photo over to Flickr.
We’re working with Google’s Chrome team on this new feature.
App Discovery
This experiment is built around the notion that you should be able to discover interesting Web Apps as you browse the web. To try this, once you have installed the OpenWebApps add-on in Firefox, visit nytimes.comand you will see a prompt to install the awesome NY Times web app.
Note:We have faked this for the NY Times site to give you a sense and idea of what the experience might be as more web sites add support for browser-based App Discovery.
What Next?
As a developer, you can:
- turn your web page into an Open Web App by publishing a manifest
- play with Web Activites by declaring that you support certain services in your manifest, and implementing the service handlers.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Check out our github repository. File bugs. Join us on irc and join our Google Group.
—
The Mozilla Web Apps team
Application Craft: a multiplatform rapid development system and SaaS for HTML5 et al
Application Craft – our one minute overview [Oct 29, 2011]
Check out our fantastic one minute video. It shows you just some of the great development features available.
Related information: Microsoft and jQuery Mobile, PhoneGap [Oct 13, 2011]
More information:
– New website [Nov 4, 2011]
– Technology
– Features
– How our system works [Nov 9, 2011]
– Example SmartSites (=websites for smartphones, their core value proposition) in the Content ideas: Location Specific Web Sites, Retail, Publishing and Other
– Use cases in App Dev – Build Web, Mobile and Tablet Apps: Mobile, Workflow, Forms, Reporting, Mashups and Features for that
[this is called by them AppOps – their developer value proposition – meaning: “a substantial set of developer oriented functionality that allows you to build pretty well any sort of business or data-centric App (so not great for games) ”]
– Application Craft – Learning Center [from Oct 22, 2011 on, only half done yet]
(including an API Cheat Sheet, the other resources are very concise videos and links to the reference manual )
– Application Craft – User Guide
– Professional Services [Oct 20, 2011] offerings:
Fork Application Craft on GitHub
As of today (November 3rd, 2011) we are preparing our code for public availability on GitHub. Current estimations are that it will be available in the last week of November. As soon as it is available, we will be letting everyone know and you will find a large link here.
…
I founded Application Craft in September 2009. We started writing code a month or two later and we released our first really proper version in June 2011.
I do the product design and have an extraordinary team of guys and one gal in Russia [in Yoshkar-Ola the capital city of the Mari El Republic]who are a full part of the company. They do all the really hard work and have most of the brains.
Investors [April 8, 2011]
Application Craft is a UK company, founded by Freddy May and backed by 3 Angel Investors.
Urs Wietlisbach – Angel
Urs is the co-founder and Vice Chairman of Partners Group, one of the world’s largest independent private markets asset management companies, with over US$ 23 billion in assets under management [and over 500 employees and 15 offices].
Application Craft IDE [Fredy May, Application Craft, Oct 13, 2011]
[Release: 1.12.1, October 24, 2011 with jQuery Mobile RC1 and Alpha release of Workflow.Detail; Release: 1.10.7, October 3, 2011]
We are just launching our new IDE for building Apps and Content that can be deployed to Mobile, Tablet and Desktop. It is all browser based and uses just HTML5/Javascript/CSS.
It is now released and available on our cloud platform (for not a lot of money) as well as on Amazon AWS from November (for free).
We are looking for advanced content designers as well as javascript developers of all levels to give us their feedback and help guide the product. We are still offering free support at this stage so there really is $0 cost.
It has full support for Responsive Design as well as Client and Server Side Javascripting.
Anyway, take a look and please feel free to contact me directly fmay@applicationcraft.com or on skype ‘freddymay’.
Responsive Design and Javascript Coding in a 100% browser based IDE. [Fredy May, Application Craft, Oct 30, 2011]
Responsive Design and Javascript Coding in a 100% browser based IDE. The first of its kind.
There is lots of chatter and twitter about Responsive Design for Web content right now. What about Apps (both Web Apps and Native ones)? This is my blog post on this topic
One of the key things that developers should be focusing on is how to build an App once that works on various screen sizes and, more importantly, on different devices such as Smartphones and Tablets.
This blog post looks at an extremely cool, 100% browser based IDE that enables mobile and desktop apps to be built while meeting all of these requirements for Responsive Design.
It highlights an App that works on everything from a large screen to an iPhone and looks great on all of them. This IDE (from Application Craft) also allows mobile content Apps to be built that also follow the Responsive Design principles.
URL: http://www.applicationcraft.com/blog/495-responsive-design-adaptive-layouts-application-craft
PhoneGap + Application Craft = Pain-Free Mobile App Development [a PhoneGap case study, Nov 7, 2011]
Remark: while among jQuery related tools it is one of 13, it is the only other development system case-study by PhoneGap next to the earlier mobileFX!
Just as the PhoneGap mantra is fast and easy cross-platform mobile app deployment, Application Craftcreators are committed to making the mobile app and content development process pain-free. No wonder these two technologies get on so well!
Application Craft is a cloud-based, desktop and mobile app development environment for building enterprise apps and mobile and tablet content. On top of its advanced browser-based IDE, Application Craft offers a sophisticated back end that supports database integration, data storage and more. Examples of apps built with Application Craft include the Tate Modern Museum mobile app and the JamieOliver.comapp.
So, why is Application Craft and PhoneGap a match made in heaven?
Application Craft generates 100% JavaScript apps. When combined with PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build, apps built using Application Craft can access native device features and can be automatically deployed to app stores.
PhoneGap Build–a cloud-based services that compiles PhoneGap apps for various platforms–provides a “huge bonus” because it seamlessly manages the complexities of native compilers, says Freddy May, Founder and CEO of Application Craft. “The PhoneGap Build API is icing on the cake because it meant we were able to achieve the tightest possible integration with Application Craft.”
May adds that integrating the PhoneGap API into Application Craft was easy. Despite PhoneGap Build being in beta, Application Craft developers completed the integration without a single email or call to PhoneGap. The result is an app deployment feature that Application Craft is proud of–a build of five platform binaries takes about a minute. “This is more than acceptable especially when you consider it’s an asynchronous process and we allow our users to work on other things as the apps compile. Once a user can specify a single platform build via the build API, it should be even faster,” he says.
By adding cross-platform app compilation to Application Craft, PhoneGap Build saves developers many tedious testing hours, which translates into a major competitive advantage for the Application Craft development environment and, ultimately, makes for happier app developers.
Watch this video to get a closer look at how Application Craft and PhoneGap work together:
AC Phonegap Short.mov [Sept 6, 2011]
Application Craft Phonegap Build Ripple Emulator ShortIn the last couple of weeks, Application Craft has launched a major update with a comprehensive implementation of jQueryMobile and added a new feaure allowing UI designers to build responsive design type page using the IDE. You can read more about this news on their blog.
World’s best and true cross platform to develop mobile application [dineshkamath1982, Nov 14, 2011]
Application Craft (AC) is the best true cross platform for developing mobile apps. AC allows you to develop apps and generate native files for major platforms (symbian, apple – ios, android, webos, blackberry).
They have excellent support (response within minutes) and they also direct you to the necessary documentation for your requirement. They have very good example videos.
The cloud based IDE for developing the apps is excellent. They provide you also preview and live mode to see how would your application behave on your mobile (even before trying out on your mobile).
I decided to go to AC after going through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_a…. Its mentioned as it is the true cross platform (this is mentioned only for AC). But now i really know why is it.
I am neither an employee or marketing guy of AC. I am just a normal user trying out AC for my personal interest. Please try it out and see if what i quoted make sense 🙂
Application Craft ROCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roadmap [Nov 9, 2011]
…
To be Released (target release date 21st Nov)
ServerSide Javascript Support
This will enable an AC User to build scripts that run and execute server side. This will allow secure execution of rules etc. It will also tie in with the Data Storage Access and associated permissions so that only server side scripts can read from and write to connections and queries.
Other Plans not yet prioritised
…
Improved WYSIWYG editor features
The Editor currently does an imperfect job of pasting in HTML from the clipboard. It also does not allow perfect support for AC’s own Styles. This is being rectified along with other user-friendliness aspects of the editor.
CRUD for Regular Databases
CRUD (database Create Read Update and Delete) operations only work on other Apps currently. We have just completed support for CRUD operations on regular databases such as MySQL, Postgres, Oracle etc.
Offline Instance Storage for Mobile Apps
Currently, a Native App cannot store instances to an offline mobile device. We are adding extensive capabilities to allow offline data collection that can be uploaded later.
…
JQuerymobile Themeroller [Freddy May, Nov 7, 2011]
Just been looking at the new JQuerymobile Themeroller and it is a beauty. My plan is to annoy the hell out of Tolstoy (that is by new nickname for Max Kraev [Head of Engineering] by the way) and get this shoehorned in by the end of the year.
http://jquerymobile.com/themeroller/
I think it will make a beautiful addition to the product and give great control over the way that Mobile interfaces are created.
I think that we may then look at the regular Themeroller in a later stage as I think that our theme implementation is in need of improvement.
Anyone who wants to contribute thoughts and ideas on this before we get started, please do so here.
My thoughts are that it will fit into the Themes section of the console and pressing ‘edit’ will bring up the Themeroller Editor. Obviously, it will tie in nicely with the system and not require any manual messing around with the resultant CSS.
Why we love the ACE Cloud 9 Editor (and how we’ve integrated it) [Nov 8, 2011]
There are some parts of the Application Craft system where we need to give credit to other people or products where it is due. One of these is the ACE Cloud 9 Editor from ajax.org.
Code Editing is often an integral part of building an App and so having a really superb code editor is essential. We have successfully incorporated the ACE Editor into our IDE and we are extremely pleased with the result.
Click here to see a video in our Learning Center. Look at the first video (from 1:15) or the second one.
Where we use it
The most important part of our system is the Application Craft IDE. This does 2 main things
- build UI screens with the WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop UI Layout Editor
- edit javascript code (currently client-side code and, very soon, also server-side)
…
Mobile Widgets (from the AC User Guide)
We have gone to a lot of effort to make developing for Mobile devices a really positive experience. There are three main components that we are working with which we have integrated very tightly into the product.
JQueryMobile
Application Craft has embedded JQueryMobileinto the Application Craft widget framework. We comment on this only because we would like to thank the JQuery team for their very high quality work. If you find that there are some things on the jquerymobile.com site that you would like to see included in Application Craft then please let us know.
Phonegap [currently pointing to PhoneGap 1.1.0 not the latest 1.2.0 released by Nitobi on Nov 7, 2011]
Phonegapis the magic that transforms the Web Apps that come out of Application Craft into Native Apps. This lets your Apps be deployed through App Stores and it lets them access device features and hardware such as GPS, Camera, Audio, Contacts and so on.
Ripple
Rippleis a superb emulator plugin for Google Chrome that lets you test out device features without needing to deploy to an actual device.
Thanks to all of the above for majorly improving both our own and our users’ lives (well the development part of their lives at least).
Big Update – Application Craft & jQueryMobile [Fredy May, Application Craft blog, Sept 23, 2011] [Release: 1.10.6, September 20, 2011 with PhoneGap and jQuery Mobile Beta 3 and heavily extended Mobile Widgets support]
We have just launched a major update. It contains a comprehensive implementation of jQueryMobile within Application Craft. We think that this combination of JQM and AC has to be the easiest and fastest way to build Web Apps for mobile and tablet devices (and they pretty good on the desktop, too). And thanks to our Phonegap:Build integration, Native Apps are also extremely easy.
In this post, I am covering
- A bit about the jQueryMobile implementation
- The range of jQueryMobile widgets we currently support
- A typical JQM widget inside the Application Craft IDE
- Requests for widgets and jQueryMobile related features we don’t yet support
- The next major announcement – Responsive Design and Adaptive Layouts
jQueryMobile implementation
The latest jQueryMobile (Beta 3) is a leap forward in terms of stability, functionality and speed. There were quite a few architectural changes, too. We have added these into a special ‘mobile’ toolbox section in the AC IDE. We find the stability to be really excellent and any bugs we found we have patched up, but they were few and far between. All jQueryMobile components have a comprehensive range of properties rendered in the IDE’s property bar and there is full javascript event support. Appropriate widgets also support the AC Data Storage Framework.
JQM comes with 5 standard themes. These have been well designed by the JQM team but we will soon be adding the ability for designers to upload their own custom CSS themes. These Themes are actually very simple and easy to add and everything is done in CSS. We’ll announce it on this blog when it’s ready.
The Mobile widgets we currently support
The table below shows the mobile specific widgets we support (we have a load more desktop ones, most of which can also be used in mobile Apps). Each of these widgets is highly configurable via the property bar in the IDE as well as from AC Scripting (Javascript).
- Checkbox
- Checkbox Group
- Select Button Group
- Single Line Text Input
- Multi Line Text Input
- Mobile Toolbar (dockable)
- Buttons (multi-size)
- Search Input Field
- Slider
- Flip Switch
- Navbar (button bar)
- Popup Dropdown (selection wheel)
- Popup Multi Select List
- List (for navigation and content)
- Collapsible Container
- Accordion
A typical JQM widget in AC
You either set properties or use javascript to control all the finer points of a widget’s behavior. Below are a few variations of the Mobile List widget
You can add Items to the list in two ways. You can use the Item dialog for navigation type stuff where you know your items in advance. Or, you can add data to the list programmatically.1. You have an array of the following object, one element for each list entry
{ “value”:”1″, // Data value that gets stored in AC (if required)
“label”:”United Kingdom”, // appears as list content
“image”: imgUrl, // image url if required
“divider”: “false”, // true if divider should be shown
“count”: “25”, // the number to show in the count bubble
“aside”: “Short Text”, // appears on the right in smaller font
“action”: id // page jump action id
}
2. And this is how you update your list widget with the list item array
app.setData(‘myMobileList’, lstItems);Populating a Mobile List manually
Populating a Mobile List with JavascriptOver in the property bar, we can now start to make all sorts of adjustments relating to cosmetic and functional behavior. Here are the two more interesting proeprty sections for the Mobile List widget
Documentation
We have documented the new Mobile features. Your can find them here.
Requests for widgets and jQueryMobile related features we don’t yet support
If anyone is aware of a mobile feature that we aren’t supporting but should be, then please let us know. We are also interested in any cool widgets that are already mobile compliant or with a little work, could be.
Responsive Design / Adaptive Layouts
This is a really exciting topic and one which one of the next blog posts will go into in detail. Initiatives like “Mobile First” state that modern web designers and app builders should think about putting the mobile device at the top of the list when thinking about platform support.
Responsive Design allows you to build a single app design that looks and works great on Desktop, Tablet and Mobile devices.
Inaugural Blog Post as Application Craft and SmartSites enters Private Beta [Fredy May, Application Craft blog, June 23, 2011] [Beta 1.0, June 22, 2011, first full Private Beta Release, pre-launch announcement: “Full mobile support and lots of ‘Visual Basic in the Cloud’ features.”]
After some long, hard development and a little bit of pivoting from the original concept, Application Craft is now ready for prime time. We are extremely proud of the platform we have built and we think it does a totally unique job of delivering beautiful, rich mobile and desktop sites (SmartSites) all the way up to full-blown applications.
If you are a Web Designer or Marketer, SmartSites lets you build device independent sites incredibly quickly. If you are a Javascript developer(or about to become one) then Application Craft lets you build anything from great front-ends to forms apps, workflow apps or full-blown relational applications.
SmartSites
[The essence of the new value proposition, i.e. the evolution from the original one: “Democratizing the Building of Data-driven Apps … for Citizen Developers as well – i.e. application stakeholders who have historically been peripheral to, or shut out of, the development process” see the below September 27, 2010 announcement]
A SmartSite is really a Mobile Web Site built on the Application Craft platform. There are several things that make SmartSites very different from other sites.
- It is properly platform independent
- The layout options are really exceptional, supporting many mobile specific widgets
- Device orientation changes are fully supported
- You can deploy your SmartSite app as a Web Site OR as a Native App
- Thanks to the full development capabilities of Application Craft, you can turn a simple, static site into a full blown App with some Javascript knowledge.
Example SmartSites
Rather than explain what they are, take a look at the SmartSites section of our website, where you will find some really good examples.
See some examples on the various tabs on the SmartSites pageApplication Development
Javascript is the lingua franca of the web and everything about Application Craft is Javascript. It is written 100% in it(a lot of thanks to JQuery and JQueryMobile by the way), SmartSites and Apps are pure Javascript and you can add business logic to your Sites and Apps using it.
More about Application Craft AppOps
Private Beta
We are starting off with a Private Beta phase which I anticipate will last 3 to 4 weeks before it goes into Public Beta. We are delighted with the stability and the feature set of the product but we want to make sure that our provisioning systems and platform operations are functioning smoothly before we switch on the automated provisioning.
Support & Feedback
Our main goal in the next months is to work very, very closely with our users. We brought the product to where it now is by working with real users with real issues. We started working with these users in the early days after Robert Scoble did a pre-release video interview late last year. We are immensely grateful to their input and we now are ready to do the same with the next wave of users.
If you contact us for help or suggestions, you will hear back from us. We don’t just want your feedback and input, we need it. We are available on Skype, Twitter etc. You can find full support and contact information here (click on the Support button).
Version 1.0 Release
Application Craft has had a lot of very hard testing before Private Beta from ourselves as well as a handful of early adopters who have built substantial Apps and Sites using Application Craft. The first Commercial Offering is not yet certain but it will not be later than Fall 2011.
Pricing
We will be announcing proper pricing plans in July. There will be versions for all types of users. including a Free version for basic, single-user SmartSites usage all the way up to high end versions including special releases, features, unlimited users (SmartSite/App builders not consumers) and support options.
Future Blog Entries & Requests
Initially, I plan to write a series of blogs on the many usages of Application Craft and SmartSites. I will be showing real examples that focus in on a particular use of the product. If you would like to see me blog on a specific topic, please tweet either @appcrafty or me (Freddy May) personally @3bfred.
SmartPhones need SmartSites [Fredy May, Application Craft blog, June 24, 2011]
The main thrust of this article is to discuss a major problem (and a corresponding solution) with almost all web sites when they are visited by a SmartPhone. They appear so small as to be pretty well unreadable and clicking links is a lottery.
We all know that SmartPhone usage is growing rapidly, so many companies should prepare for lots more people to visit their web site using a SmartPhone. The proliferation of Gelocation Apps and Services (Google Search/Places/Maps, SimpleGeo, Factual etc.) cater explicity to the Mobile user and increase SmartPhone traffic even further.
If you take a look at the image on the left, it will probably be a familiar sight. Given the size of the opportunity, it is pretty amazing how poorly this situation has been addressed.
As you can see from the infographic excerpts above (full Infographic from Microsoft Tag available here), there is already a lot of mobile based internet usage and by 2014 it will exceed desktop usage. And already one half of all searches are performed on mobile devices. This all leads to a lot of people visiting web sites using their SmartPhones.
You should view SmartPhone web site visitors as exciting opportunities, because
- they are probably nearby
- they probably have a very specific and immediate interest in your product or place
- they need information, a local service or a product
One big problem
The big problem is that almost every web site looks terrible in a SmartPhone browser. And site navigation is even worse due to tiny links colliding with fat fingers (my good friend Dobs would appreciate this). Get your phone out and visit some random sites.
There are some notable exceptions (Twitter, Facebook) but take a look at these well known names below. Click on these to see them at their original size or go to the website on your phone or scan the QR-Code if you’ve got an App.
FYI: The QR-codes shown here can be read with QR-Reader Apps (iPhone try ‘ConnectMe’, Android try ‘Google Goggles’)
… with a SmartSite solution
Take a look at the following example, which is a typical local business you might want to get information on. Click on the thumbnail or scan the QR-Code to see the website rendered on a phone, then read on.
Now, take a look at the SmartSite below, which is an Application Craft SmartSite. It is actually live, so you can interact with it. Be sure to check out the Location pages and both tabs on the Contact page.
- This SmartSite took about 1 hour to build
- It includes a simple but cool ‘contact’ form
- It required absolutely no programming skills
- It is a really easy job for a Web Designer, Marketer or Product Manager
- If you want to add really advanced App capabilities and you have some Javascript knowledge then our AppOps features are genuinely superb (more on this in another post)
also reachable at
ac.applicationcraft.com/kallkwikSmartPhone Visitors will probably want different (and simpler) content
Clearly, this is a good thing, because they will usually want access to
- only the most relevant information
- information that relates to the fact they are on the move and probably nearby
- complex and rich layout is not required due to the limited form factor
Location Specific Content
There is another set of very relevant uses of SmartSites that are described on our SmartSites page. Location Specific Content is where you build a SmrtSite that is tied to an object, place or business and targets the SmartPhone user who is actually standing at the location. For instance, information boards at Airport, Tourist Office, Hotel or Shopping Centre. Or providing information to in-store shoppers. Printing QR-Codes/tiny URLs onto products as a better way of accessing manuals and assembly guides. The list is pretty well endless. Go to the SmartSites page to take a look at the example uses.
What are the alternatives?
There are alternative, but very expensive and non-trivial, ways of achieving an effective mobile-ready site
- Hand code it using developer tools such as Sencha or JQueryMobile. This requires proper web development skills and will take many times longer than using Application Craft
- Design your main web site to reformat for SmartPhones but this is really not for the faint-hearted
What if I want to add App like capabilities to my SmartSite
Well, this is where you really are in luck. Application Craft was initially conceived as a cloud based App development platform. Alongside SmartSites, we have AppOps, which is a substantial set of developer oriented functionality that allows you to build pretty well any sort of business or data-centric App (so not great for games) that you are likely to need.
I plan to do another blog post on AppOps soon, but feel free to explore AppOps now.
Application Craft: Sam Schillace to Advise Application Craft [Oct 7, 2010]
Google Docs Creator to Advise Cloud-based Rapid App Development Platform Innovator
London, UK October 7, 2010 – Application Craft today announced that Sam Schillace, creator of Google Docs and co-founder of new venture Restartle, is joining Application Craft as an Advisor. Launched at Tech Crunch Disrupt 2010 and currently in Public Beta, Application Craft radically shortens development cycles for even complex data-driven desktop and mobile applications. Importantly, Application Craft’s drag and drop Data Graphs and built-in collaboration tools allow an unparalleled level of involvement by Citizen Developers in the application development process. By eliminating the user/developer gulf, Application Craft reduces strain on development teams, promotes on-time and on-budget projects and blurs the boundary between content and applications.
Schillace led the Google Docs team after Google acquired Upstartle, the company he co-founded to bring the collaborative word processor Writely to market. Before leaving Google in June 2010 to found Restartle, he led the Internet giant’s Gmail and Apps team as Senior Engineering Director.
“I have seen how fast the Application Craft team has built a really superb product over the last year,” said Mr. Schillace. “It is a genuine enabler for a new class of application developer and I think it will result in some major changes to the desktop and mobile application development landscape. I am excited to be involved with Application Craft during these early, formative days.”
“You would be hard pressed to find a software entrepreneur with as much SaaS and PaaS expertise as Sam Schillace,” said Freddy May, Application Craft Founder and CEO. “I have benefited greatly from Sam’s counsel over the past year and I am delighted that Application Craft will continue to do so now that he has joined as a formal company Advisor.”
About Application Craft
Launched at Tech Crunch Disrupt 2010 and currently in Public Beta, Application Craft’s rapid application development platform allows professional and ‘Citizen’ developers to quickly and collaboratively build amazing data-driven desktop and mobile apps. By eliminating the user/developer gulf, Application Craft reduces strain on development teams, promotes on-time and on-budget projects and blurs the boundary between content and applications. To learn more, please visit: http://www.applicationcraft.com
Application Craft Invites Citizen and Pro Developers to Get Crafty Rapid Development [TechCrunch Disrupt, London, UK and San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 27, 2010]
Platform Democratizes the Building of Data-driven Apps
Application Craft today opened the public beta for their rapid development platform that allows both professional and ‘Citizen’ developers to quickly and collaboratively build amazing data-driven desktop and mobile apps. Citizen Developers are application stakeholders who have historically been peripheral to, or shut out of, the development process, such as web designers, analysts, knowledge workers and IT staff. Getting Crafty means unprecedented ease of collaboration between hard core coders and Citizen Developers.
“Throughout my IT career, I have witnessed countless development projects fail due to lack of alignment between users and developers and overloaded development teams. Application Craft aims to eliminate the user/developer gulf by fostering active collaboration, which reduces strain on dev teams and promotes on-time and on-budget projects,” said Freddy May, Application Craft Founder and CEO.
You’re Getting Crafty When…
- Your apps can instantly pull data from virtually any source
- You can rapid prototype in minutes and build a production app in hours
- Web designers become Web developers in a day
- Agile is easy!
- Apps run everywhere out of the box
- Usability takes center stage
- Your projects are consistently on time and on budget
Watch this video to see it in action: http://tinyurl.com/GetCrafty
_C_ollaborative app development that welcomes pros and amateurs
_R_ich apps, extreme mash ups
_A_gile
_F_lexible deployment
_T_otal customization
_Y_our projects on time every timeAbout Application Craft
Application Craft is the quickest way to build apps. The company opened the Public Beta for their revolutionary Rapid Application Development Platform for Professional and ‘Citizen’ developers at TechCrunch Disrupt, where the company is also exhibiting on Tuesday, September 28. Application Craft is seeking Public Beta participants. To learn more and apply for the Beta, go to: http://tinyurl.com/GetCraftyAbout TechCrunch Disrupt
TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco (http://disrupt.techcrunch.com), is being held Sept 27-29 2010, at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse. TechCrunch Disrupt attracts over 1,500 leading technology innovators and investors and over 150 new startups. The format combines top thought-leader discussions with new product and company launches. Morning executive discussions debate the most timely disruptions in media, advertising and technology. Afternoons host the Startup Battlefield where 25 new companies will launch for the first time on stage, selected to present from more than 500 applications received from around the world. Another 100 early-stage startups will exhibit in Startup Alley. TechCrunch will award a $50,000 grand prize along with other award recognitions at the conclusion of the conference.
Corporate developers: exclusive first look at Application Craft, a new tool for corporate web apps [Robert Scoble, Sept 26, 2010]
http://www.applicationcraft.com/ has what they say is the quickest way to build apps. This is generally aimed at corporate developers, and looks like a modern Visual Studio — everything is in the web browser. Here I spend a bit of time with founder Freddy May who gives me a good look at what it does and why it’s an important new entrant into the web programming field.In the 1990s we had Visual Basic, Delphi, and then Visual Studio come along. All great tools for corporate developers who needed to build apps for their workgroups.
But since then developer tools have stagnated. Yeah, we’ve had Ruby on Rails, but that’s really aimed at web developers (Twitter was originally built in it, for instance) and the kinds of database and UI tools that corporate developers needed weren’t there.
Today Application Craft (CrunchBase info on Application Craft) is releasing a new system that looks somewhat like Visual Studio, but is completely web based. Here CEO Freddy May spends a lot of time with me showing how it works and giving me some idea of the power underneath.
Oh, and you can build a LOT without knowing any code. May says it’s not just aimed at developers, but can be used by “citizen developers.” IE, those who don’t know how to code very well. That is exactly the audience that Visual Basic was aimed at back in 1992, and it went on to be the tool for corporate developers. Will Application Craft take over that mantle? We’ll see, but this is a very interesting start. What do you think?