28
Dec
2007

Death of the Netscape browser

AOL, who these days own Netscape, have announced that they’re to cease development of the browser. I’ve mixed feeling weirdly enough, although from a professional point of view it’s good news as it’s one less browser to have to test websites against in the long term.

When I started out developing websites, Netscape was the browser our company mainly tested against, mainly because it was a lot more powerful and popular than the Microsoft browser at the time. As time progressed this situation obviously changed, but there was a time when companies proudly displayed “built for Netscape Navigator” icons at the bottom of their sites.

I don’t think anyone has seriously used Netscape for years; it kinda turned into a weird mish-mash of Firefox and IE in the end, and because they haven’t managed to make a dent in IE’s market share they’ve decided to quit.

22
Dec
2007

Codec Primer

First part here, with the second part now also appearing. Well worth a read, thanks TrustedReviews!

21
Dec
2007

Unofficial Wii Opera SDK released

Very eager to try this out. Read news originally on Joystiq.

20
Dec
2007

Adobe Media Player prerelease 2

Is out now on Adobe Labs. Looks very slick, although I’m still not sure if it’s intuitive enough to use. It’s got zefrank in the comedy section however, so I’m happy regardless.

19
Dec
2007

Tweener is awesome

Been using Tweener for Flash tweening/animation/fading for a little while now and deserves praise and recognition. Check out the Google Code page, examples, and documentation.

I notice the new streaming BBC iPlayer uses it too.

18
Dec
2007

M.U.G.E.N

Haven’t heard about M.U.G.E.N before but stumbled upon it earlier today when I watched Peter Griffin and the Giant Chicken battle Freddy and Jason here. Very weird, but makes me want to try it out!

18
Dec
2007

Updated AIR beta 3, extensions and examples

It sounds like the API has changed enough to warrant revised examples on sites kind enough to provide them, such as on Kevin Hoyt’s site.

The new beta can be downloaded from Adobe labs here, with updates for the Flash AE and DreamWeaver also available.

18
Dec
2007

Google sitemaps now do video

Very useful addition to the sitemap protocol. Read about it here, do something about it here.