Platformability » Martin Tyler

Server Scalability – HTML5 websockets vs Comet

Martin Tyler — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:31:49 +0000

There’s an interesting discussion over on stackoverflow about server scalability and HTML5 WebSockets vs Comet. I have blogged in the past on the topic of server performance and about WebSocket and have just contributed to the stackoverflow thread. Anyway, here’s the link..

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9107384/server-scalability-html-5-websockets-vs-comet

It’s all about platforms…

Martin Tyler — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:59:11 +0000

A very interesting read about life at Amazon and Google from Steve Yegge (ex Amazon, now Google)

Steve posted this on Google+ publicly when it was intended as an internal message. Steve talks about the difference between Amazon and Google and how Amazon turned their technology stack into a platform.

Here are a few links to the post, just in case any get removed – also they have different comments.

https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876
http://steverant.pen.io/

At Caplin, we are not really in the same game as Google or Amazon, but we have a platform that our customers take and build on, as opposed to an online platform that customers use.

iOS5 Web Apps

Martin Tyler — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:21:14 +0000

When Apple released iOS 4.3 there was much talk of the improved Javascript performance due to the new ‘Nitro’ engine, however, it was soon discovered that Web Apps that were saved to the home screen and launched from there did not use that same engine, and neither did native apps that made use of the browser components (ie Web Apps wrapped up in a native app). You can read an article about it from the time here.

With iOS 5 it appears that the Nitro Javascript engine will be used for Web Apps saved to the home screen now, so they can take advantage of the improved performance. This came to my attention from this article.

Will this spur on a few more HTML5 web apps to be developed for mobile devices? I think the most important thing is that it shows Apple is still serious about Web Apps and improving the environment for them.

Financial Times chooses HTML5 over Native app

Martin Tyler — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:09:27 +0000

The Financial Times has become the first major news application to switch from a native app to an HTML5 web app. They explain their reasons here and experiences – http://aboutus.ft.com/2011/06/07/ft-web-app-technical-qa/

Google detail browser support plan

Martin Tyler — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:52:26 +0000

I’m sure this has been mentioned before, but maybe this is more specific details, but Google have decided to only support the latest two versions of any browser. As soon as a new version is released, an older one will stop being supported.

That means no more support for IE7, FF3.5 or Safari 3.

As they mention, things won’t just stop working for those browsers, but they won’t be officially supported.

Windows 8 with HTML5/JavaScript apps

Martin Tyler — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:09:07 +0000

Microsoft have previewed Windows 8 at the D9 conference, including a video showing it off.

It seems like a slightly crazy mix of backwards compatibility and some quite cool new ideas that are meant to be suitable for keyboard/mouse based systems as well as touch based. What is interesting though is the mention that the new style tiles and apps are built on a new platform using HTML5 and JavaScript. It seems unclear what the future of Silverlight is, but what is clear is that Microsoft is definitely embracing the HTML5 world.

This can only be good for HTML5 development and tools.

Real-time Web on LinkedIn

Martin Tyler — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:29:27 +0000

There’s some interesting discussion on the Real-time web Software and Technologies group between Phil Leggetter (ex-Caplin, now Pusher), Frank Greco (Kaazing), Alessandro Alinone (Lightstreamer) and myself. It covers some of the long running issues with terminology in the area of Comet and WebSocket etc.

An upgrade path from IE6?

Martin Tyler — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:39:42 +0000

ReadWriteWeb reports you can Run Internet Explorer 6 Apps in IE8 With UniBrows. This sounds like a possible way for companies that rely on IE6 for certain legacy applications to upgrade to a newer browser without losing compatibility with the legacy applications.

It looks like there would be some administration overhead to set this up so the old sites/applications specify that they need to run in IE6 mode, but at least this gives people an option of running a newer browser. This put the responsibility in the hands of the users (or administrators) of old in house applications that require IE6 rather than in the hands of the software vendors writing new exciting applications that at the moment have to spend a lot of effort being compatible with IE6.