Internet Explorer 8 (beta) is now available for download, and as I predicted in my web trends "the web community will love it - nobody else will notice any difference."
IE 8 does not seem to have changed anything. All the sites I have tested - including this one - works fine. The interface has been changed very little.
The only real difference is this little icon in the toolbar, which changes IE8's browsing behavior to the one used in IE7 (since all the ones works fine in IE8, the button doesn't make any difference).
But, if you do spend some extra time looking at it, you will find that there are indeed a number of changes and new features.
One is "Activities" that allow you to do things with the text on the screen (see video) - like sending it to Yahoo Mail, translating it etc. It is a nice idea, but I do not think people will actually use it.
» See Demonstration
Another new feature is Web Slices, which allow you to subscribe to parts of a website. This is actually pretty cool.
» See Demonstration
The really cool stuff is of course the things for us web developers. Most noticeably is the built in "Developer Tools", which allow you to inspect the page you looking at, and debug it *LIVE*. You can even add breakpoints and see just what is going on.
This is going save us so much time when we are making web applications. I am super excited about this.
» See Demonstration
The last great thing is that IE 8 support AJAX interaction. Meaning, that you can now force the navigation buttons (back button etc) in the browser to follow AJAX interaction - instead of just showing the last full page.
» See Demonstration
Ohh... and, of course, IE8 passes the Acid2 CSS test (see also note about Acid2 copies)
(Videos from Microsoft)
Here is a brilliant idea. What if your furniture could react intelligently to your presence and anticipate when you need it. Or what if it could move out of your way out of the way when you are just passing by? What if your furniture could help out in social situation? Wouldn’t that be something?
There are many online image editors. Like Picnik (which was recently bought by Google), Pixlr, Aviary Phoenix, Photoshop online and many others. All them require that you go to their website to edit your images. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could bring the online image editor into your own web apps.?
Back in late October 2009, Adobe Labs showcased an upcoming feature in Photoshop called Content Aware Fill. And it was absolutely amazing. Now they have released another video, showcasing even more impressive image manipulations.
Earlier this week Penguin presented their vision for how they could translate their book into the ebook format. Or rather, how they can really make us of digital publishing to create much better books.
Remember Microsoft Surface? You know, the big multi-touch coffee table? Now Microsoft is working on a much smaller version with Mobile Surface.
Today, Microsoft announced "Windows Phone 7 Series", featuring a completely new edition to the long infamous Windows Mobile operating system. It looks modern, polished, graphically exciting and nothing like the tiny windows 95 that we have been used to seeing.
The newspaper industry is falling over themselves in the fight to come up with a ever more impressive newspaper tablet. The problem is that they miss the point completely (as I wrote about in "The Future of News, Tablets, and Business Models").
As you probably know, both Google and Microsoft have entered into a partnership with Twitter and is now incorporating social search into their regular search engines. This is a big deal because social is a very important element of the future of search... it's not the only part though.
Wouldn't you like to mix wild hand gestures, cute birds flying around your screen, Twitter, tweeting bird sounds, and your web camera? Well, now you can with Flyar.
A number of people have pointed me towards PhotoSketch, a research/student project from Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at National University of Singapore (now there is a mouthful).
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