Apple has brought Mobile Safari to the Ipod

Last week, Apple announced the new iPod Touch (essentially, an iPhone without the phone bits). What is particularly interesting about the iPod Touch is that it includes WiFi connectivity and Mobile Safari.

There are two aspects to this release that make it particularly interesting:

1. Mobile Safari is now poised to explode in terms of market share, possibly driving a lot of innovation in the handheld browser market, and
2. developers now have a far less expensive means of obtaining and testing on the new browser.

What do you think of this announcement? What repercussions do you think we will see?

Written By Aaron Gustafson

By Molly E. Holzschlag

This article has been written on behalf of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and has been cross posted on The Web Standards Project, Lachys Log, Molly.com and 456 Berea Street.

There has been a lot of discussion about the W3Cs recent decision to continue the development of HTML around the web lately. Blog posts, and messages that have been sent to mailing lists or posted on forums, revealed many questions and misconceptions about the future of HTML (including HTML 5 and XHTML 2), the WHATWG and the W3Cs new HTML Working Group.

Some people asked for new features; others were wondering if formerly deprecated elements would return; some had comments and criticisms about the decision itself, the WHATWG or W3C process; and a few raised concerns about the WHATWG and W3C ignoring the needs of particular groups. The WHATWG, who are in the process of developing the next version of HTML (called HTML 5), feel that it’s important to not only listen to all of this feedback, but to actively seek it out and respond so that we can develop a language that meets your needs.

There are many ways in which you can participate. The most direct approach is to make your voice heard by subscribing to the mailing list. However, not everyone has the time to participate, or keep up with the high volume of messages sent to that list. Some people feel that the current drafts of HTML 5 (Web Applications and Web Forms) are rather daunting. Others feel that because they can not afford the substantial W3C membership fees, they would not be listened to anyway.

Microsofts IE7 is out, Firefox 2 is on the horizon and is there still room for Opera?

Well ofcourse is my answer to this question but I see other browsers making there way onto the scene next year but I am sure for the next decade these three will be the BIG 3 of there industry.

A good list of mistakes one can make when developing DOM Scripting applications, in a handy editable wiki format. Give thanks to Chris Kaminski for this great tool

A group of organisations including IBM, Mozilla, Zimbra and Dojo have announced a project to develop a common set of AJAX interfaces, plugins and widgets for Eclipse. The project is aimed at providing a common target for tools developers to support, as opposed to the myriad open source and proprietary toolkits and libraries available today.

You can read more on the Dojo projects site

Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. They work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium. Click on the link to learn more about this great group of individuals.