A few weeks ago one of my developer friends was gushing about the capabilities of his favorite native platform. After every point I felt obliged to point out that the web platform either already had or was actively developing precisely the same capabilities—and then some. He was incredulous. "Prove it," he said.

So I pulled together a few of my favorite examples from the cutting edge of the web platform and recorded three screencasts to help my friend—and others—meet the web platform again for the first time.

The first video, Building on Foundations, goes over how the web platform has been fixing various historical shortcomings and building upon its core strengths, like complicated graphical effects, composability, and advanced text layout.

The next video, Learning from Other Platforms, reviews how the web platform offers new capabilities inspired by successes on other platforms with things like push notifications, payment APIs, and web intents.

All good things come in threes. So, this week, the Chrome Developer Relations team is releasing three new resources for developers.

First, we are making available a brand new Field Guide to Web Applications, to help developers create great web apps. This guide walks you through topics like app design fundamentals, tips for creating great experiences and a few case studies that put the best practices to use. Whether you're building your first web app or are just looking for ways to improve your existing apps, we hope you'll find the field guide useful.

Second, our popular HTML5 site, HTML5Rocks.com, was also remodeled to better organize the site's content. You’ll now find new "persona pages" with catered content in 3 different verticals (Games, Business, Mobile). In addition, we consolidated many of the different components, and deeply integrated the HTML5 technology classes to bring a better identity to the site.

Finally, we've also joined Google+ with a new page specifically for Chrome Developers. Whether you’re building modern web apps, using Dart or WebRTC, we’ll be there to help you! Keep your eyes open for our weekly hangouts and add us to your circles.

With the growing popularity of HTML5 games and applications, it looks like Google has a vision of its own.

According to the EDGE, during the Develop Liverpool conference in London, Google’s developer Paul Kinlan has announced that Google Chrome will receive gamepad support tin the first quarter of 2012. In addition to that, it will feature a support for cameras and microphones that don’t have to be plugged in.

While not many details were revealed, it is known that the search giant is already working on the next instance of its Google TV service, with the hardware set to debut sometime next year.

Why add gamepad support anyway? If our speculation stands correct (and only time will tell), we guess that Google Chrome will be an essential part of Google TV, offering its users an ability to play HTML5 games on their TV with a gamepad attached. Think about it as Google’s version of a gaming console.

Cross posted at the Google Code blog

This post almost wasn’t written.

I’ve been a bit too busy playing and testing new browser-based games such as Monster Dash, Angry Birds, and the newly released SONAR. Bigger and better games are coming to the browser rapidly (and just wait until Native Client with 3D lands in Chrome), and it’s hard to keep up with the technology and scene. So what better way to bring everyone together to share stories and keep up to date than to hold a conference dedicated to HTML5 game development?

New Game, the first North American conference for HTML5 game developers, is now open for registration. You are invited to join hundreds of HTML5 game developers for two days of technical sessions and case studies from developers and publishers who brought their games to the open web platform. The event will take place November 1-2, 2011 at the beautiful Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

This year, New Game looks at what is possible in the browser today. Sessions will focus on the technologies that have elevated the browser-based gaming experience, such as WebGL, Canvas, and JavaScript performance techniques. In addition, the conference will feature sessions exploring and analyzing lessons-learned from recent HTML5 game launches.

New Game is honored to have Rich Hilleman, EA’s Chief Creative Officer, keynote the event. The schedule also includes sessions from Mozilla, Spil, Opera, Google, Bocoup, GameSalad, Moblyng, and others. After the first day, we’ll network with our colleagues and share high scores at the New Game party, open to all registered attendees.

For more information on New Game, including session and speaker details, please visit www.newgameconf.com and follow @newgameconf for the latest news. Google, the premier sponsor, and conference director Bocoup invite you to take advantage of early bird registration pricing, available for a limited time.

The future of gaming is in your browser, so I’ll see you at New Game! Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to get back to my SONAR tab.

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 convert the words you speak into text. You've still got to press enter or click to search, and an automatic submit option is definitely something we'd like to see added.

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 but don't want to miss out on all the WebM videos which are popping up, download and install the plug-in now. The plug-in only works on Vista and Windows 7, but conveniently the same is true for IE9.

Google has already announced that it would be dropping H.264 support from Chrome, but some other key players in the browser arena aren't backing down. Microsoft, of course, is standing behind MPEG-LA's codec -- and now it's making sure that Chrome users will still be able to view HTML5 video embeds which are encoded with it. The magic will be handled by a new browser add-on called Windows Media Player Extension for HTML5. No, it's not a full-on plug-in -- which is kind of what we were expecting, given Microsoft's affinity for NPAPI tomfoolery.

To add the extension to your Google Chrome install, just visit Microsoft's download page and agree to the alert you see above.

Google has just flipped the switch on a new feature in Gmail: desktop notifications for new email and instant messages. It only works in Google Chrome at the moment, but Google plans to bring it to other browsers that support HTML5, like Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9.

If you reload your Gmail tab, you should be prompted to enable the desktop notifications -- otherwise, head into Settings, scroll down to Desktop Notifications, and choose what kind of notifications you want. You can currently toggle chat, new mail, and new important mail -- but presumably, you'll be able to select which labels will produce notifications.

The HTML5 web video wars are heating up again, this time with the news that Google has announced to remove support for the h.264 codec from the Chrome browser in the next couple months. Google product manager Mike Jazayeri admits that ” H.264 plays an important role in video” but that Google has decided to direct their resources exclusively “towards completely open codec technologies”.

What does it mean for Chrome users? Chrome will eventually only support HTML5 web videos that are making use of Google’s own WebM (VP8) codec or Theora video codecs, and will refuse to play H.264 videos if the website in question streams video in that format only. While that’s not the case for Youtube and maybe a few other sites, the majority of Internet sites will not encode their videos multiple times to make sure they can be watched in all browsers.

Lets take a look at browsers and their HTML5 video support:

• Google Chrome WebM8, Theora
• Firefox, WebM8, Theora
• Opera, WebM8, Theora
• Internet Explorer 9, H.264
• Safari, H.264

Google Chrome until now was the only browser that supported all video codecs. Internet users now have the problem that their favorite browser may not be able to play videos that they want to watch on the Internet, which means that they need to keep a second browser installed, or download the videos to the computer to watch them locally.

H.264 is the Blu-Ray codec and Apple makes use of it as well in their products. If you look at entertainment devices you notice that the majority plays H.264 but not WebM or Theora.

The majority of commenters at the official blog announcement over at the Chromium blog appear to disagree with Google on the move. Some thing Google tries to push their own codec at the expense of the Chrome user experience, others state that the WebM8 codec is inferior to h.264 in quality.

What’s your take on this? And how will you handle HTML5 web video?

First person shooters are next.

If you are using the Dev Channel builds of Google Chrome 10, prepare for a nice surprise. According to Google OS blog post, it now comes with two HTML5 games pre-installed: Poppit and Entanglement.

As of today, it will install games without your permission. However, manual removal is possible.

Earlier this year, in June, I ran the first of my side-by-side deathmatches to try and work out which, if any, of the browsers is truly the hardware accelerated king. As it turned out, Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 were pretty equally balanced. Just two months later, in August, Chrome had stolen the top spot and sent Firefox 4, in a fit of tears, to the bottom of the heap.

In the last five months, all three browsers have been maturing. Chrome has leapfrogged from version 7 to 9, Firefox has been working frantically on its JavaScript engine to catch Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9 has been quietly -- but confidently -- working behind the scenes on the entire package. The emergence of new features has all but ceased: all three vendors are now readying themselves for an epic market share battle at the start of 2011.

20 Things I Learned About Browsers And The Web is a beautiful and educational example of what we can expect from the HTML5 Web. It was developed by the Google Chrome team to showcase both the power of its browser, and of HTML5 itself.

20 Things is fully illustrated, too, and on each page a cheesy subtitle or piece of poetry awaits. Put simply, it's a delight. If you're a hardened Web expert, spend a few minutes leafing through it to enjoy the HTML5esque features -- the offline storage, the page-turning, flipping the light switch in the bottom-right corner -- and then send the link to a friend or family member. Check the Google announcement if you want more details.

It's a damn sight better than Google's last attempt at an HTML5 showpiece, that's for sure. At least this one actually works with Firefox and Internet Explorer 9! It's a little bit slow with Opera, but there should be a hardware-accelerated beta version of Opera 11 any day now...

20 Things I Learned About Browsers And The Web is a beautiful and educational example of what we can expect from the HTML5 Web. It was developed by the Google Chrome team to showcase both the power of its browser, and of HTML5 itself.

20 Things is fully illustrated, too, and on each page a cheesy subtitle or piece of poetry awaits. Put simply, it's a delight. If you're a hardened Web expert, spend a few minutes leafing through it to enjoy the HTML5esque features -- the offline storage, the page-turning, flipping the light switch in the bottom-right corner -- and then send the link to a friend or family member. Check the Google announcement if you want more details.

Today, we test five most popular web browsers to find out, who leads and who lags in the HTML5 Benchmark.

Browsers

Internet Explorer 8
Internet Explorer 9
Firefox 3.6
Firefox 4
Google Chrome 7
Google Chrome 8
Opera 11
Opera 10.6
Safari 5
WebKit

Results

Higher is better. Maximum score: 377 points.

Internet Explorer 8 – 32
Internet Explorer 9 Beta – 80
Firefox 3.6.10 – 145
Firefox 4 Beta 6 – 235
Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 – 248
Google Chrome 8.0.552.11 Beta – 262
Opera 11 Alpha – 223
Opera 10.63 – 203
Safari 5.0.2 – 178
WebKit r70433 – 196

Conclusion

As per our test, Google Chrome 8 takes the lead, followed by Google Chrome 7 and Firefox 4 Beta 6.

Unfortunately for Internet Explorer 9 and 8, they are in the bottom, followed by Firefox 3.6 and Safari 5.

Thanks to Nox for the tip.

Filed under: Microsoft, Browsers

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Google, Browsers

Google Chrome Frame, Google's plug-in for bringing HTML5 and the latest web apps to IE 6, 7, and 8, has reached stable status and left beta. Chrome Frame lets developers of modern sites and web apps support legacy browsers, with the plugin handling the HTML5 rendering when a user's old browser -- ok, old version of IE -- can't get the job done.

Chrome Frame is an alternative to more complex hacks that tend to slow sites down, but the beta tag probably scared some developers away. Well, now Chrome Frame is stable, so load times and crashes are way down. Some fairly big-name sites like DeviantART, HootSuite and github have already jumped on the Chrome Frame bandwagon, and I'm sure more will follow their lead.

If you're already using the Chrome Frame beta, you'll be automatically updated to the stable version, and future updates will happen on the same update schedule as Chrome itself. If you're just getting started with Chrome Frame, you can check out Google's handy intro video after the jump.