ReadWriteWeb

Google just launched dynamic views for Blogger, its free blogging platform, and they are something else. Powered by AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, these new themes for Blogger users are heavy-duty, interactive designs, not mere blog templates. The announcement claims that they also load "40 percent faster than traditional templates," but that will require some testing. Just in trying to load Google's blog posts announcing this update, this author saw lots of new Blogger loading graphics with spinning gears.

Nevertheless, these designs look amazing. They have infinite scrolling, dynamic loading of graphics and new posts, easy re-sorting, keyboard shortcuts for navigation and, of course, one-click sharing to Google Plus "and other social sites." There are seven new templates, and they can be gently customized. More customization options will be added "in the coming weeks." The flagship Google blogs for Gmail, LatLong and Docs are getting dynamic makeovers, too.

Slideshare made an announcement this morning that is sure to thrill open Web standards advocates and iOS gadget lovers alike. The document and presentation-sharing site has done away with Flash completely and now uses HTML5 for its file embeds.

Not only will millions of SlideShare uploads embedded across the Web now render effortlessly on iPhones and iPads, but the company also launched a new mobile site that renders nicely on smartphones and tablets as well. The upgrade should also make the site and its embeds load faster, since they don't rely on clunky Flash plugins and content to render.

Joe Hewitt, one of the most important software developers in recent history, published a provocative and sad post on his personal blog today, predicting that unless the open and free Web gets someone to own and take responsibility for advancing it, it will inevitably fall into virtual obscurity in the dust of fast evolving platforms like iOS, Android and Windows. Chris White, one of the co-founders of Android, offers a compelling argument against Hewitt's perspective, though.

As one of the primary co-creators of Firefox, Hewitt single-handedly built the Facebook iPhone app. and when he left Facebook fed up with Apple's approval process for apps, he announced that his next aim was to build tools for mobile HTML5 developers. Apparently that work has led to some frustrating experiences trying to support the open web. It's not surprising, but it is pretty heartbreaking. It's hard to imagine a decentralized platform like the web evolving to make as many things possible, as quickly and at scale, as the big centralized app platforms.

We have been waiting most of the year to hear news from Facebook about an HTML5-based Web app store that would circumvent the native application ecosystems of the Android Market and the Apple App Store. Yet, according to Facebook's CTO, there is not going to be a central repository of HTML5 Web apps coming to the platform any time soon.

In the meantime, a Brazilian company called Movile has launched a new version of its Web app store, Zeewe 2.0, which incorporates some key HTML5 features and could provide a roadmap for U.S. developers, like Facebook, in creation of a Web app store.

In the ongoing debate over Web vs. native mobile and tablet apps, it would appear the Web just racked up a few major points.

When Apple changed their subscription rules to require that publishers fork over 30% of the revenue generated from apps sold in the iTunes store, many media companies played along, hoping that making their content available on iOS devices would help them survive the transition from print to pixels.

Last week in Anaheim, in amongst the crowd of developers at Microsoft's Build 2011 conference assimilating the news about Windows 8, was a team from a London, U.K.-based company called YoYo Games. In 2000, that company released an interesting entry-level game development and distribution platform called, quite simply, GameMaker. Following in the hallowed footsteps of the great computer game platforms of the 1980s and '90s, it introduced a stand-alone interpreter whose language borrowed a bit from Pascal.

Developer framework Sencha announced a major update to its platform last week that further enhances its HTML5 capabilities and provides easy wrappers to package Web applications into native form for Android and iOS. It is a bulky update to Sencha and is representative of how the tools of the mobile developer industry need to keep pace with innovation.

Sencha provides the entire horizontal stack capabilities that professional developers need to write, package, scale and wrap Web and native applications. If that sounds kind of like the hash browns at The Waffle House, it is. Sencha wants to place itself as the go-to framework for mobile commercial software development.

HTML5 is the next version of the Web's markup language and is enjoying increasing popularity amongst the developer community. The level of interactivity it enables has probably been the most talked about feature of HTML5, largely due to Apple's controversial refusal to allow Adobe's Flash technology onto its mobile devices. As a result, HTML5 is seen as the best way to get interactivity into mobile browsers. The other big benefit of HTML5 though is that it enables developers to build cross-platform websites. One website that will work just as well across devices - whether PC, smartphone, tablet or another of the increasing array of Internet-connected devices on which people consume media.

It's for the cross-platform utility that magazine publisher Hearst Magazines has announced a plan to convert all of its websites into HTML5 sites, starting with Good Housekeeping.

On Monday, The Boston Globe released its new premium content mobile initiative dubbed BostonGlobe.com. That is not to be confused with Boston.com, its free flagship website. This unto itself is not all that interesting. Yet, the HTML5 development community is heaping praise on BostonGlobe.com primarily for how the sites renders across varying screen sizes, an innovation called responsive design.

Responsive design allows the Globe's content to be refitted to any screen size available automatically. It is a win in the fight against mobile device fragmentation and screen sizes and the future of how content is displayed on mobile devices. Below is an in-depth discussion with the creators of the Globe's responsive design and the challenges they faced along the way.

The new development platform for so-called Metro apps is called WinRT, short for Windows Runtime. Its name suggests its potential future place as the principal runtime library for Windows. Developers who have already embraced the .NET Framework may find themselves shifting positions to make room.

WinRT is not the replacement for .NET. However, as Microsoft Windows engineer Aleš Hole?ek told a press gathering at Build 2011 in Anaheim, it will present a new foundation for an alternative app model for Windows that Microsoft will promote as the modern style of Windows development.