ReadWriteHack

Slowly but surely, SPDY ("speedy") is becoming more widely used. The Google-backed protocol, a modification to HTTP, is designed to help reduce latency and bolster security. Even if you don't manage a Web server yourself, you should know about SPDY and what it offers to you - and the Web at large.

Google is trying to get developers interested in Dart with a technology preview of the Dart VM in Chromium, better known as Dartium. The plan is ultimately to include the Dart VM in Chrome itself, but no timeline has been given yet for that.

Google has been pushing pretty hard to move Dart forward. The company released a Rosetta Stone for JavaScript programmers called Dart Synonym at the beginning of February. However, developers have had to compile Dartium from source or find unofficial builds to test the code.

Catching up to Chrome is just part of the Firefox roadmap for 2012. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler has updated the strategy and roadmap for desktop Firefox in 2012. While the Mozilla folks have several original ideas and goals, there's a lot in the first half of the 2012 roadmap that looks very familiar to Chrome users as well. The really interesting features come in the second half of 2012, and relate to user privacy and account management. Third party cookie management and tracking could be a killer feature for Firefox later this year.

If you have a look at the desktop feature roadmap, you'll see that Q1 and Q2 have quite a few features that are either already in Google Chrome. For example, there's sync for add-ons, assuming add-ons work across releases, silent update and a redesigned new tab page.

Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better mouse lock for Web browsers, and you might make browser-based gaming a lot more attractive. Vincent Scheib has been working on a W3C specification and feature for Chrome that will put browsers another step closer to competitive with native games.

This might sound like a little thing, but the lack of the mouse lock feature holds back browser-based games. Here's the problem: Unless you're using a plugin, the way that browser-based games handle the mouse is clunky. Let's say you're trying to play a shooter like Quake III in the browser. Because the game can't "grab" the pointer, when you scroll too far outside the game screen it sends your cursor outside the browser window and disrupts game flow. (And probably gets you fragged.)

This has been a rough year for Mozilla and its Firefox team. Once the darling of the Web and the champion of the oppressed against Microsoft and Internet Explorer, Firefox is facing stiff competition from its primary benefactor and backlash from users. Chrome also seems to be the preferred browser of Web developers. Naturally, this means speculation about the future of Firefox.

Has Firefox had better years? Absolutely. Does this mean that Firefox is "doomed"? Not so fast.

Chrome Extension developers that want to add synthesized speech to extensions and Chrome-packaged apps are in luck. Google announced a new Text-to-Speech API for Chrome extensions yesterday, with examples and two sample voices.

According to Google engineer Dominic Mazzoni, a few hacks have enabled text-to-speech already. This involves tricks like sending text to a remote server and returning an MP3 that's played back with HTML5 audio. Smart approach in lieu of an official way to do it, but now Google has an easier (and less bandwidth-intensive) way.

The accelerated Firefox release cycle may be great for many users, but enterprise IT folks were not thrilled. To their credit, the folks at Mozilla eventually took the complaints seriously and founded a working group to address enterprise desktop needs. However, it seems clear that the Extended Support Releases (ESRs) will be second-class citizens.

The working group has made progress and come up with a proposal that would provide an ESR for Firefox. If it's accepted, ESR's will have life cycle of nearly one year, and a 12 week overlap between the ESR releases.

Two conferences being held next month, one in Aarhus, Denmark on October 10 and another two weeks later in Portland, Oregon, are scheduled to feature Lars Bak, the designer of the V8 interpreter used in Google Chrome. In Aarhus, Bak will be joined by Gilad Bracha, a Google engineer and co-author of the original Java Language Specification and the creator of the Newspeak programming language, a derivative of Smalltalk.

The subject of their talks may have inadvertently been revealed by the GOTO Aarhus conference organizers: It's a programming language being conceived at Google tentatively called Dart (maybe bearing no relation to the DART advertising platform run by Google subsidiary DoubleClick).

According to a post on the Mozilla Add-Ons Blog, 85% of Firefox 4 users have at least one add-on installed. The average user has five add-ons installed. The figure doesn't include the Personas feature and excludes add-ons bundled with other software that users haven't actively chosen to install.

"We previously estimated that at least a third of Firefox users had chosen to install an add-on, but knew the number was higher than that," wrote Justin Scott, the product manager for add-ons at Mozilla.

Google is now offering its Page Speed service, which just released a Chrome extension last week, as a browser-agnostic Web service called Page Speed Online. Just enter a URL and get the results. It also has a new feature offering suggestions for mobile optimization.

According to the Page Speed FAQ, "Page Speed Online provides the same analysis as the Page Speed browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, without needing to install a browser extension." Google suggests the browser extensions for testing pages not available to the public Internet, such as corporate intranets and sites under development. However, I receive slightly different results when running tests using the browswer extension instead of the Web-only service.