by Sebastian Anthony on April 8, 2011 at 06:30 AM

Bing's new HTML5-and-CSS3-enhanced search interface, which was first demonstrated back in September 2010 to showcase the power of IE9, has started to roll out.
The most notable addition to the new interface is is smooth page transitions -- the fade in and out -- and navigation tabs (maps, images, videos, etc.) now persistently float at the top of the page. WinRumors is also reporting that a ...
by Lee Mathews on April 6, 2011 at 01:30 PM

The crew in Oslo keeps plugging away at Opera 11.10, and the latest snapshot build includes a number of improvements to Opera's built-in email client -- as well as HTML5-related additions.
On the IMAP front, Opera now supports special folders like sent items, spam, and trash. It also better handles duplicate items in Gmail -- such as those which appear in all mail and under your custom ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 31, 2011 at 10:15 AM

Google, as part of its ongoing and much-needed overhaul of its popular Blogger platform, has just enabled five dynamic, HTML5ish, AJAXy 'Dynamic Views'. There's a video introducing the new layouts after the break.
The five new views provide fresh and interesting ways to explore your favorite Blogger blogs. The Mosaic view, for example, creates a wall of thumbnails -- click one, and it zooms ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 30, 2011 at 12:30 PM

iSites -- a zero-code cloud-based 'app creator' -- can now generate HTML5 apps that work on iOS devices. With this new feature, dubbed 'InstantApp', you can now design a single app in your browser and publish it natively on Android and iOS, and as an HTML5 iPhone app.
We haven't looked at iSites before, but it shot to fame last year when it launched with native iOS and Android support. ...
by Lee Mathews on March 30, 2011 at 11:30 AM

While this slick little HTML5 audio player might not pack all of the features of your favorite desktop media application, it's still a very cool demonstration of what a Web app can do with access to local resources -- like MP3 and OGG files.
Just fire up http://antimatter15.github.com/player/player.html in your HTML5-compatible browser and browse to the topmost folder in your music ...
by Lee Mathews on March 24, 2011 at 09:45 AM

Now that Google Chrome 11 has hit the beta channel, you can expect to see extension and Web app developers making use of the new HTML5 speech-to-text API. In fact, there's as least one slick extension you can already install: Speechify.
Install Speechify, and you'll see a microphone icon added into the search box on many popular sites -- like Google and Bing. Click it, and Speechify will ...
by Lee Mathews on March 24, 2011 at 08:30 AM

The Bing team has just delivered a major update to its mobile search. m.bing.com now utilizes HTML5 tech to deliver better image and iOS app search, as well as realtime directions and transit info to Android and iOS users.
It gets better, too. If the update situation for Windows Phone 7 wasn't bad enough, the official blog post offers this sad-trombone style news for WP7 users: "If you have a ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 24, 2011 at 07:00 AM

WordPress has just announced the introduction of a 'pure HTML5' iPad-optimized theme. It has been automatically activated for all 18 million WordPress.com blogs, and self-hosted WordPress.org users can download and install the plug-in manually.
The iPad-optimized layout, which was developed with tablet publishing specialist OnSwipe, supports touch interactions, swiping, rotation and 'many other ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 21, 2011 at 01:06 PM

It isn't available from the official Firefox website yet, but Firefox 4 is now available to download from the Mozilla releases FTP server. Update: you can hit a random FTP mirror by using these links: Windows / Mac OS X / Linux. Update 2: Firefox 4 has now officially launched.
Despite what we reported last week, there was an unexpected (and unannounced) RC2 released on March 18. The final ...
by Lee Mathews on March 18, 2011 at 12:45 PM

In 2010, Scribd announced that it planned to dump Adobe Flash embeds in favor of an HTML5 viewer for its user-uploaded documents. Now, the Scribd HTML5 experience has gone mobile as well. That's a very welcome update, since certain shiny touchscreen mobile devices don't offer support for Flash embeds.
Scribd has also announced that all of its existing embeds -- which number more than 20 ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 16, 2011 at 03:17 PM

Step right up! Mozilla's Web O' Wonder is a fantastic and enthralling and slightly terrifying playground for surfers of all ages and experience levels. Feast your eyes on funky uses of WebGL and CSS3 transitions as slick as a bald man's pate. Marvel at the flexibility of HTML5 video -- but most of all, revel in the fact that everything in the Web O' Wonder is made of Open Web technologies.
...
by Lee Mathews on March 15, 2011 at 09:15 AM

Not too long ago, Microsoft released an extension for Google Chrome which enabled H.264 HTML5 video playback. Now Google has returned the favor by offering a WebM plug-in for Internet Explorer 9 users. In a move which we can only describe as oozing with self-confidence, Google points out that there are some known issues -- visit this page, and revel in its blankness.
If you plan on using IE9 ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 10, 2011 at 05:50 AM

After having its recent iOS app pulled from the App Store by Apple, Readability has turned its attention to Open Web technologies and released an HTML5-powered Web app.
The new Readability app is accessed by simply visiting www.readability.com on a mobile device, and it looks very similar to the native iOS app. This of course means that Readability is finally available for Android, too! It ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 8, 2011 at 12:50 PM

Fractal Lab might be coolest demonstration of WebGL and JavaScript that we've ever seen here in the Download Squad bunker. If you've ever studied Mandelbrot sets -- either willingly, or for Computer Science at high school -- Fractal Lab will change your perception of iterative, recursive maths for ever.
At first glance, Fractal Lab isn't immediately exciting -- in fact, when you close the ...
by Sebastian Anthony on March 8, 2011 at 06:55 AM

Adobe, in yet another move to shift its eggs into other baskets, has released an experimental Flash-to-HTML5 converter called Wallaby.
The tool doesn't do much at the moment -- it just exports the assets used in the Flash project, and uses HTML and CSS to lay them out. It also creates a custom JavaScript library which seems to handle animation (but we couldn't get animation to work), and ...