new earth online

jQuery is one of those frameworks that has a tremendous following but it is a pretty sizeable framework. Obviously this has it's downsides when doing mobile development as the capabilities between desktop and mobile do differ somewhat. To some degree you can control what gets included in the jQuery file but there was never a predefined set aimed specifically at mobile devices.

The developers of jQuery first branched into jQuery UI for performing JavaScript based UI controls and animations in a similar way to what Scriptaculous is for Prototype. Now the developers have moved on to the next logical step and have developed a mobile version of their framework. At the time of writing it's not yet been released but it does sound promising and I can't wait to try it. 

Not only is the core jQuery library being improved to work across all of the major mobile platforms, but we’re also working to release a complete, unified, mobile UI framework.

They're also quite keen on getting it to be compatible with as many mobile platforms as they can and covering as many different mobile browsers and versions as well. To demonstrate what the mobile framework should work with they have produced a table of compatibility showing graded browser support. The supported mobile platforms are:

• iOS
• Blackberry OS
• Windows Phone
• Android
• Bada
• Symbian
• WebOS
• Maemo
• MeeGo
  

It's not just Apple having potential legal problems at the minute, Google are also having a particularly unlucky time too. For starters they have angered many people with their stance on net neutrality - a document was leaked which stated Google was in favour of a verified name service for Government to track anonymous usage and for their to be different tiers of internet access.

On the Android front they're also being attacked by Oracle who have laid claim that Google infringed on some of their Java patents in the creation of their Android operating system for mobile devices. It seems well timed considering the recent news that Android has become the market leader in the US meaning that if Oracle were to win this claim it could seriously hurt Google with their apparent desire to stop stop Google distributing Android.

There have been rumours that Apple plan to refresh their Apple TV box for some time, possibly close to a year. In the past week or two rumours have started to fly that the refresh is going to happen soon and that it will mean a name change too - it will be rebranded as the Apple iTV.

When I first heard this news I thought it may cause a few branding issues in the UK due to ITV being the name of a channel. Way ahead of me the lawyers for ITV seem to be investigating whether this is going to happen and whether they'll have a case to take Apple to court over it. I think there's a pretty good chance that if the name change does happen that ITV will be in with a strong case to protect it's name which may mean either a name change for the UK market or Apple having to license the name from them. 

Testing of software is a big business and there are many tools for automating the process. In the field of web development and design there aren't quite as many tools but still a fair selection. Fake is a Mac based application that simulates normal browser usage and works in a similar fashion to Apple's Automater app.

Fake is a new browser for Mac OS X that makes web automation simple. Fake allows you to drag discrete browser Actions into a graphical Workflow that can be run again and again without human interaction. The Fake Workflows you create can be saved, reopened, and shared.

I wonder how the app compares in the real world to other testing based applications as Fake seems pretty easy to use and uses AppleScript for coding scripted tasks for Fake to perform. It also includes a library of functions to help make repetitive tasks easier.

I do like doing iOS development, but I have always found the interface for doing so to be a little cumbersome and long winded. First you write your code in Xcode and then design your interfaces in Interface Builder - when writing PHP I wouldn't use two apps to split out parts of the MVC like that; I'd just use Textwrangler or other such text editor. This is why it's always seemed odd that Apple would split development of an application out into different applications.

Apple have released a preview (now onto it's second iteration) of Xcode 4 - a brand new interface for Cocoa development that seeks to unify them into a single application and have advertised it as being intelligent enough to help you write better code.

The Xcode IDE understands your project’s every detail, identifies mistakes in both syntax and logic, and will even fix your code for you. Quite simply, Xcode 4 will help you write better code.

Whilst code checking and auto-suggesting fixes is an interesting topic (maybe one for another article) what interests me (in addition to the unification of the two applications) is that they've worked on clearing up a lot of clutter so there is now jump navigation and small icons for switching between the different views. It might not sound like much but I often find when coding that the more space you have to read through code, the better. It's also quite handy that you can now drag and drop controls onto code to wire them up to use that function or variable.

With the new Xcode Assistant, the two-pane editor layout in Xcode 4 becomes dramatically more powerful. When you turn on Assistant, the IDE will anticipate which other files you need to see, as you work.

The purpose of such a feature is that it will show you the code for headers if you're working on implementing the class, or show you the parent class definition if you're working in a class that inherits from it. Simple, but a great idea. They've also tightly integrated version control with Xcode 4 so that you can easily switch between and view differences between versions of the code. There are some seriously basic and/or ugly diff tools out there (such as UltraCompare on the PC) and this isn't one of them - it is actually more powerful than the code comparison in Text Wrangler and looks a lot prettier too.

I actually can't wait for Xcode 4 to reach the final release. 

When the Digital Economy Act was pushed through Parliament at breakneck speeds before the Government Election this year it caused a massive outburst from the tech community due to the lack of thought and detail in the proposed plan. When it also passed the House of Lords and was brought into law many people gave up hope that the Act may be changed.

When this law comes into effect it will mean massive changes for ISPs as they comply with the new law, but it seems it's not just the public who are unhappy with the law - BT and TalkTalk are seeking a judicial review of the Act due to questions over it's legality.

Both think it had "insufficient scrutiny" and question whether its proposals to curb illegal file-sharing harm "basic rights and freedoms".

-- BBC News

Not only are they concerned that the law could make people move to smaller ISPs where they don't have the resources to check everyone's activity, but also that it may conflict with the EU legislation that ISPs are not responsible for what their connections are used for.

As I've said before, the majority of the Act is fine but they really do need to put more thought and detail into some of the more controversial elements of it. It wouldn't help if they got some "real world" experience behind the Act so that they would better understand what it would mean. However as the Government have closed the Twitter account for Digital Britain it suggests they have no intention of reviewing Act.

I'm a bit late reporting this one, but Mozilla have released the first beta of Firefox 4. With this new version comes several noticeable changes. The most obvious change is one which is only present in Windows as of yet, but is a change which moves Firefox's UX closer to that of Google Chrome. The tabs no longer appear underneath the address bar, but above.

Along with this change, in Windows 7 you also get a "Firefox button" which is a replacement of the menu bar - thus further reducing the real estate required by browser elements. The Awesomebar has also been renamed the "Smart Location Bar" and allows users to search for open tabs and to switch to them easily. The stop and reload buttons have also been merged into a single button - again similar to Google Chrome.

The crash protection we saw added for plugins in version 3.6.6 has been expanded upon and improved in Firefox 4.

Support has also been added for WebM (HD HTML 5 video format), WebGL (OpenGL-like standard for using 3D with the HTML 5 canvas tag), and further improvements to it's support for HTML 5.

I guess this should really be an "App of the week" post, but this one is aimed more at the photographers amongst you. Often when I'm out and about visiting other countries I'm keen on getting twilight and sunset shots, but don't always remember to look it up on the internet before I make my visit. This can cause problems with trying to guess the timing, and asking locals doesn't always help.

The Photographer's Ephemeris is an iPhone application which will provide the user with information for sunset, sunrise and more based upon the user's current locale. The application features:

• Time and direction of sunrise and sunset
• Time and direction of moonrise and moonset
• Phase of the moon and % illumination
• Times of civil, nautical and astronomical twilight
• Graphical display on a map
• Save any location you want - no fixed lists
• Automatic time zone detection for any location on earth
• Determines elevation above sea level
• View azimuth and altitude of sun/moon for any time of day/night
• Distance, bearing and elevation angle between any two points
• Find when the sun/moon will appear from behind a hill
• Compensation for atmospheric refraction
• Compensation for elevation above the horizon
• Does not require network connection for rise/set times and azimuths. (Note: maps and elevation do require a data connection)

That is some pretty essential information for providing you with the perfect lighting for your intended shot. The iPhone application costs £5.49 but if you're in front of a PC or Mac you can download and use the AIR application for free. I think the desktop application is okay if you're somewhere with a network connection and can predict where you want to be attempting photographs from, but I think when you're out and about you can see some unexpected shots from different positions you haven't planned for (and hence making the iPhone application useful).

Security is something pretty much everyone is keen on improving - you don't want to risk your private details falling into the hands of someone who would use them for fraud. Whilst a lot of sites have HTTPS servers not all traffic goes encrypted over HTTPS.

Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site.

This new extension for Firefox, HTTPS Everywhere, works with a number of major sites to force traffic to be sent encrypted over HTTPS. The main sites this plugin currently works for include: Google Search. Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Paypal, EFF, Tor, Ixquick. It's also been built in such a way that you can write your own rulesets for the extension to get other sites to work with it.

In some ways I can see how this would be a useful feature for browsers to have built-in, but I'm not sure all site owners would be too happy with forcing this traffic primarily due to the extra load that HTTPS traffic puts on a server. 

It's not just the Americans getting the iPhone 4 on June 24th - the UK is too. In order to please their customers after last years fiasco with early upgrades, O2 have announced a plan for people to upgrade even if their contract isn't up yet. This early upgrade offer means paying £20 for every month you have left on your contract. The other condition of ending your contract early is that you get a new contract with the iPhone 4 and agree to forfeit the "change of mind" period.

So for those who got their iPhone 3GS on the release date and opted for the 24 month contract they'll find it will cost them £220 to end the contract early and then additional money on top of that for the iPhone 4 with the amount depending on the contract they go for. Personally I'm considering going for an early upgrade with a 600 minute option over 24 months, though I think I will make my final decision in the next few days.

Another incentive for iPhone 3GS users to upgrade is that O2 are offering money back for your iPhone in their recycling program. Under this program the 32Gb model will get you £240, and the 16Gb model will get you £221. For every phone that gets recycled under this program they give £1 to community projects.

Despite this good news for existing O2 customers, those who are not on O2 may have to wait.

iPhone stock will be extremely limited in the UK at launch and not everybody who wants one will be able to get one straight away. We want to make sure that our existing customers get priority so until at least the end of July, only existing O2 customers will be able to get an iPhone 4 from us.

Other UK mobile vendors will get the iPhone 4, however T-Mobile does not specify a date of when they will start offering them to their customers, but Orange do state they'll be getting them in stock on June 24th as well. If you want the phone without a contract then Apple UK have been taking pre-orders over the past week. Due to the amount of pre-orders they've already taken, Apple are currently estimating a dispatch date of July 14th for any orders taken at present.

It's not just the cinema screen that is showing off 3D films, with the release of the Sony BDP-S470 Blu-ray player it is moving into our living rooms. Is 3D just a fad or is it here to stay? The success or failure of ticket sales and 3D home cinema equipment will be the deciding factor.

Finally after weeks of waiting I now have a Sony BDP-S470 Blu-ray player. I think I could write a whole essay about how Sony's website didn't state it wasn't released at the time and was actually a pre-order, but that's another story. It's apparent delivery from Sony UK (and not Sony Leicester as the receipt suggested) was a rather odd one - it was delivered by a Taxi driver. It's not everyday you see a parcel delivered in this way; I'm not complaining, it's just unusual.

In the box you of course get the Blu-ray player with a permanently attached power cable, a remote control, batteries, warranty information, manual and a leaflet to state that a firmware update would be released in March to add 3D support and the ability to stream from iPlayer. I did of course assume this firmware update to have already been applied since the unit had only just been released in the UK according to their sales department. I was wrong, but it didn't take long for the update to be applied. After a restart I found that as the player boots up it cuts the signal to the TV totally several times which is annoying, but something I can put up with by not turning my TV on until the player has booted up.

When it first starts up it will find the resolution which is best suited for your screen - for me it started with 1080i and decided to stay with it - I found this rather surprising actually as I thought my TV was a lower resolution than that. The menu is a little different to ones I am used to, though I can't comment on whether or not it's similar to other Sony devices I imagine it will be. The various categories for the menu are arranged horizontally and as you select one the options for that category. For example if you select the Video category you will see options for watching the current disc (if available), media from a USB device (if connected) or from a variety of online services such as BBC iPlayer, YouTube and LOVEFiLM. Under the music category you also get access to various online radio stations.

One of the first things I did was to plug in a USB device containing a HD video saved in .mkv format. It was both surprising and pleasing to see that it played it without any problems - the same went for subsequent tests using XVID encoded AVI files. Moving on to actual physical media I tried the Blu-ray version of the Stargate movie - I was amazed at how much better the picture was than on my DVD release. Just to make it clear, although it has it's "cheesy" moments, Stargate was one of my favourite movies so it was one which would be easier for me to spot differences in quality for. Although the player will upscale DVDs, it's good to try it with a DVD that has had some work done to it to prepare it for Blu-ray consumption.

For years, the social web browser Flock has been based upon Mozilla - the same code-base that Firefox is built from. For a while I made Flock my primary browser when interacting with social sites however after a while decided it was too slow and buggy. I'm sure many of those problems have been fixed since I last used it, however there may soon be a reason to try it once more as the developers have announced they switched to Chromium for the latest development version.

A switch from Mozilla to Chromium is likely to mean a complete rewrite of the code they use to modify the browser due to differences between how extensions can be written for the two browser platforms. I am however starting to struggle to see the relevance of Flock - what can it do that Chrome with extensions can't? At least Chrome is now available on both Windows and Mac OS X, but to start with Flock will be Windows only.

As usual they started their keynote with an update on the statistics about their products, specifically the iPad. Probably the most impressive statistic was that in 65 days since the launch, users have downloaded over 5 million books - most of that time was whilst it was only the US using iBooks. In related news they have also added the ability to add notes and bookmarks to books, and have confirmed the previously announced self-publishing (US only). It's also quite good that they will now allow PDF ebooks to be viewed in iBooks.

They have also announced the impending release of a Netflix application for the iPhone, however it will of course be for US residents only. At this point they mentioned it had already done really well on the iPad - I didn't even realise it was available for that though (not that I'd see it in the App Store being in the UK)! They have said that like on the iPad you'll be able to resume a movie where you left off - already better than iTunes support for renting movies (in the UK at least you're limited).

Another developer announcement was that Zynga, a well known games developer among those on Facebook, are about to release Farmville for the iPhone. I find that game a complete waste of time and uninteresting, but I'm sure I'll still download it (to review it at the very least). I think it's one of those games that is compelling only for the sake of competing against your friends. The closest game to it's style among existing apps would have to be "We Rule" which is the same style of gameplay but instead is about building a kingdom.

The iPhone 4, after months of speculation and the leaked prototype fiasco, was also announced. The new iPhone looks absolutely amazing - it is thinner than the previous model (9.3mm) and has a glass cover on the front and back. Apparently this is now the thinnest "smartphone on the planet" though I'm sure that's a title it won't hold for long. Not only have they added an LED flash to the main camera (which is now 5MP), but it now has a front-facing camera which is perfect for the video chat that was previously uncovered in the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. They have also said the application now supports 5x digital zoom, but it's nothing special really - anyone with Paint or other photo application could make a photo have 5x digital zoom. Also, as part of the design they have improved the phone's reception by making the stainless steel band around the phone the antennae. As expected they also increased the resolution by 4 times and is now an effective resolution of 326 pixels per inch. They call it a "retina display" as it's resolution than the maximum resolution a human eye can see (apparently around 300 pixels per inch). It has an 800:1 contrast ratio and uses IPS for improved colour definition. These improvements to the display will improve existing applications although Apple recommend that developers should start including higher resolution graphics in their apps.

The new iPhone uses Apple's newly designed A4 processor - something else which was already revealed during the recent leak. In saving space by using a microSIM this has allowed more space for the battery and have now given the iPhone a 40% increase in battery life. That alone would be enough for a lot of people to upgrade due to common woes of the iPhone having a short battery life.

• 7 hours 3G talk time,
  
• 6 hours browsing over 3G,
• 10 hours browsing over Wi-Fi,
• 10 hours watching video,
• 40 hours listening to music,
• or an amazing 300 hours on standby.

They've also added a 3-axis gyroscope which allows games to utilise pitch, roll and yaw, as well as rotation about gravity. When used in conjunction with the accelerometer you can obtain details about the phone in 6-axis through the CoreMotion API which makes it perfect for gaming and could easily have more practical uses (possibly even for pilots?).

Going back to the camera they have now got the camera to record video in HD (720p at 30fps) and works with a mobile version of iMovie (costs $4.99 from the app store) which will allow you to edit videos on your phone. If you're recording at night or in low level light conditions you can also use the LED flash in a permanently on mode to illuminate the subject. All videos you record are also automatically geo-tagged which allows iMovie for iPhone to sort clips by area.

The iPhone OS 4.0 is no longer known by that name either, it has been renamed to iOS 4 - it makes sense really considering the iPhone is only one of three devices to use it (the others of course being the iPod Touch and the iPad). As part of this upgrade (which will be released imminently due to the final release going to developers today) they have also added a third search option: Bing. iBooks will also be coming to the iPhone - something I'd hoped for since it was announced for the iPad; it should help improve their competition with Amazon. As you'd expect it has pretty much the same features as the iPad version and any books you by can be used on both.

As a "one more thing" they also announced that you'll be able to do video conferencing (called FaceTime) using the iPhone 4. Again this is something which was revealed as likely due to people uncovering it in the iOS 4.0 SDK. This new feature can use the front or rear camera in landscape or portrait; but is only available over Wi-Fi due to the strain it would put on existing networks. Maybe this is a good argument for the next iPhone to use 4G.

The new iPhone comes in Black and White models, $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB and will be on sale in several countries (including US and UK) on June 24th and for everywhere else it will be released in July, August and September. The iPhone 3G is being scrapped and the 8Gb 3GS will be reduced to $99. Apparently AT&T will also allow people to upgrade early just so long as their contract expires some time in 2010 and will be replaced with a new contract. The iOS 4 update will be available for free from June 21st for supported devices.

After a 2 month break for the Christmas holiday period PHP East Midlands returned with a session hosted by Antonis Pavlakis (@pavlakis). In the first PHPEM session there was a lot of talk about the Zend Framework and how it works; in February it was all about using Dojo with the Zend Framework.

Dojo is a JavaScript framework from a similar vein to mootools, Prototype and jQuery.

Dojo saves you time, performs better, and scales to meet your needs. It's the toolkit that experienced designers and developers turn to for building great experiences.

I can't really comment on their claims as I know more people who use jQuery and/or Prototype than Dojo. I think really that's just an opinion which you could neither prove or disprove, just as their statistics of being 1.5x - 2x faster than jQuery is very dependent on what it is you are doing. So let us instead move on to what it can do. Just like jQuery is available on Google's CDN, Dojo is available on AOL's which means you can add the framework without it causing too much extra time to the page load.

Dojo also host a TaskSpeed test suite which shows a comparison of various frameworks and using pure DOM functions. A lot of the functions they demonstrate the speed of are ones I'd personally just use the DOM for even if I was using jQuery or any other framework. These include functions such as attr and append which are pretty basic functions to be honest and unless you want to use it on multiple elements at the same time there is very little point in using a framework for them.

If you're experienced with using the Dojo toolkit I'd love to hear your thoughts about it, and what advantages it may have over other frameworks.

Once a week I have a look at the "Top 50 Paid Apps" and the "Top 50 Free Apps" in Apple's app store. Most weeks I'll find there is at least one application of interest, or at least sounds interesting enough to get me to read the description further. Today I noticed at position #26 in the paid applications list is "Cell Phone Tracker Pro" which claims to use government technology to give a geographical location for any mobile in the world. This in itself seemed a bit odd to me - I didn't think it was something which was legal to do in this country at the very least so I thought I'd have a read of the application's description. Surprisingly there is no mention in the description of that the application is a joke so seeing that it averaged 3 stars I thought I'd see if it shed a little more light in the reviews. Sure enough the 60 reviews which I read all had a single star and commented that the application was a rip-off and didn't work. Most wanted their money back, but some commented that not only were they surprised it was in the Top 50 applications but that Apple would not do anything about it either as they considered it to be "not their problem". I also wonder how it can get 3 stars when the 60 reviews that are displayed (out of 70 total) are all 1 star reviews.

I see this as an example of where a broken application has been authorised by Apple so that the developers can con money out of people yet perfectly working applications (such as emulators) get rejected. Sooner or later things like this are going to cause Apple big problems.