About Web Development by Activo

It seems like the search giant is going through some housekeeping: laying off 3,000 employees and shutting down over ten of its services. We know from our clients that the first thing in slow times is to shut down the advertisement dollars. I guess, easy to setup and easy to stop, all it takes is a click of a button.

Well, we are seeing the result. Here is a shortlist of the services that Google just stopped offering:

1. Lively - used to be a virtual world kind of like second life. No more.

2. Google Answers - similar to Yahoo Answers. No mas.

3. SearchMash - non Google branded experimental search for design purposes. Gone with the dinosaurs.

4. Page Creator - a simple way to create a simpleton website. Caput.

5. GDrive - allow online storage on Google servers. Negative.

6. Browser Sync - extension for FireFox to synch your browser settings across computers. Belly up.

7. Hello - online photo sharing integrated with Picasa. Dead.

8. SMS - send SMS to a phone from online. Departed.

9. Click to call - was used inside Google Maps. Extinct.

10. Send to phone extension - FireFox extension. Vanished.

11. Related Links - relating links between sites. Defunct.

Now, this is not to say that Google is no longer the search giant. I only suspect that this is a focus shift and we will eventually see many more useful tools and systems come out of Mountain View, CA. Google is still one of the biggest think tanks in the world and did I mention the largest cloud computing network?

Yes, they are here! FireFox version 3 is now available to download and in a month or two every FireFox installation out there will show a dialog to upgrade to 3. Similarly, Microsoft is planning on releasing their Internet Explorer 8 which is now in Beta 1 mode. Regardless, it definitely seems like FireFox is getting a lot of attention lately and the buzz does come on Internet Explorer’s expense:

For us, web developers, it is a mixed blessing. On one hand, we get a better, faster, more reliable browsers. On the other hand, browsers don’t just come into the market and replace old ones instantly, therefore we will now need to test for Internet Explorer (IE) 6, IE7, IE8, FireFox (FF) 2, and FF3. Not mentioning the fact that some browsers like to behave differently on different operating systems which we have to account for as well.

My first impression of FireFox 3 is a positive one. The awesome bar is indeed awesome. Performance wise it does seem to be a bit faster when it comes to AJAX, however I am not sure I notice any difference in general performance. All my necessary plugins released versions that work with FireFox 3 - so I am a happy camper. In our web development work, we did see some sections of sites that work in FF2 and break in FF3 - so be aware that there are some HTML rendering differences.

Now, the question is when will IE8 be ready for us? and what will it bring to the table? Let’s just wait and see…