Web developers

Microsoft is promoting alternative browsers to millions of Windows users across Europe -- and Opera is poised to pounce on the opportunity. With a brand-new, faster iteration of its open-source browser, Opera is working hard to gain the attention of Europeans looking for an Internet Explorer alternative.

Microsoft used to configure Internet Explorer as the default browser for its Windows operating system, but agreed last October to test-market measures to give European consumers an option to download and install competing browsers like Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox.

Microsoft told its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles Wednesday that it's already working on the next version of Internet Explorer. In addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperability standards in IE9, Microsoft said it intends to make more PC hardware capabilities available to web developers from within the browser.

"Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don't do today," said Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch.

Google is putting Caffeine in its search engine, and it could be a wake-up call for businesses to tune up their Web sites. The previously secret project, announced Monday on the company's Webmaster Central Blog, is intended to provide the "next-generation architecture" for Google's Web search, especially as Microsoft's Bing, a reinvigorated Yahoo, and Wolfram Research's Wolfram Alpha gear up.

Opera on Tuesday unveiled a technology that aims to disrupt the client-server computing model of the Web. Dubbed Opera Unite, the technology turns any computer into both a client and a server so it can interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web. Unite eliminates the need for third-party servers.

Opera CEO John von Tetzchner said Opera is opening up the full potential of the Web to everyone. PCs decentralized computing from large mainframes, he said, and Opera Unite is taking the next step by decentralizing the cloud.

With the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona just a week away, the LiMo Foundation on Monday endorsed a specification that could mark the future of Linux-based handsets.

When the specification, Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) BONDI, is installed on a mobile device, it allows Web applications called widgets to leverage native functions on mobile handsets, such as a calendar, camera or contact services. In other words, the new spec enables Web 2.0 functions on Linux-based mobile operating systems.

For every developer who has been waiting with bated breath for Microsoft to spell out its cloud-computing strategy, the day has finally arrived.

During a keynote speech on Monday at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, announced Windows Azure. Azure is Microsoft's cloud-based service foundation underlying its Azure Services Platform.

Tim Berners-Lee, the British-born inventor of the World Wide Web, says he doesn't like to express preferences among Web browsers. But he does have an issue with one of them: Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer.

Berners-Lee, director of the standard-setting World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, said in an interview this week that Internet Explorer is falling behind other browsers in the way it handles an important graphics feature for Web pages.

Mozilla Labs has rolled out an experimental Firefox plug-in that promises to streamline the way Web surfers manage the mountains of information online. Called Ubiquity, the proof-of-concept prototype is an experiment with two parts -- it's both an interface and a development platform, notes the plug-in's developer, Aza Raskin.

"Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser," Raskin said.

Instant Translations

The Linux Mobile Foundation has announced that 11 new companies have joined the global consortium for the open-source mobile platform.

In particular, new LiMo member Movial said it intends to open-source its Browser D-Bus Bridge technology, which translates standard HTML and JavaScript commands to Desktop Bus commands to facilitate inter-process communication (IPC) between Web 2.0 applications and services.

“Social Networks will be like air“
-Charlene Li of Forrester Research