Gtk+ 3.2 Will Let You Run Any Application In A Browser (Remotely Too)

Gtk+ 3.2 will let you run any application in a browser thanks to the new HTML5 gdk backend. That means you'll be able to run GIMP, Gedit, a video editor or whatever, remotely (or on the same computer), using a web browser.

This is still work in progress so not everything works yet (the keyboard input support, dnd or c&p) and also, it only works in Firefox 4 for now, but this is nevertheless amazing.

Check out the following video recorded by Alexander Larsson:

(video also available in WebM)

For more info, visit Alexander Larsson's post.

via Ubuntusecrets.it

How To Install Firefox 3.7 (4.0) With WebM Support In Ubuntu Linux [PPA]

WebM is a new open source project suppored by Google, Mozilla, Opera and many others which uses the VP8 video codec Google aquired from On2 as well as Vorbis audio for HTML5 videos (HTML5 uses a built-in codec so you don't need Adobe Flash for viewing videos from YouTube for instance - which results in a very low processor usage compared to Flash and so on).

Firefox 3.7 (soon to be 4.0) got WebM support yesterday. The Ubuntu Mozilla Daily PPA for Ubuntu got this new builds so you can finally install Firefox with WebM support in Ubuntu - for 32bit only for now.

Besides WebM, Firefox 3.7 (4.0) from the Mozilla Daily PPA also features the new extension manager:

Please note that Firefox 3.7 is unstable so expect to find bugs! Also, this PPA will update your Firefox 3.6 to the nightly. If you don't want this, after installing Firefox 3.7, remove the PPA!

Install Firefox 3.7 (aka 4.0) in Ubuntu using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox-3.7

Firefox too needs libvpx but for some reason, this is not available in the Ubuntu Mozilla Daily PPA. But you can install this from Chromium Daily PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libvpx0

And there you have it - Firefox 3.7 (aka 4.0) with WebM support.

To use WebM on YouTube, enable HTML5 and try some WebM videos like this one. Note: for some reason I was unable to view videos in 360p using WebM, but the videos in 720p worked great.

Chrome / Chromium: Full-Screen Button For HTML5 Videos [Extension]

YouTube, Dailymotion and other websites already allow you to view HTML5 videos, but they don't come with a full-screen button.

For Google Chrome / Chromium, there's an extension which easily fixes this by adding a button where the old full-screen button used to be on YouTube:

(full-screen button added in the bottom right corner)

Here is how the video controls looked before using the Chrome / Chromium HTML5 full-screen (button) extension:

The extension also adds a button in the Omnibar (where applicable) for the rest of the websites which support HTML5 such as Dailymotion and so on:

Once you click the full-screen button, the video will open as full-screen in a tab so if you want to go truly full screen, press F11.

On it's page @ Chrome Extensions, there are also links to install a full-screen button to be placed to the right of the Omnibar as well as context menu (right click) full-screen option.

Install HTML5 Full-Screen Chrome / Chromium extension.

Google Open Sources VP8 Video Codec, Packs It Into WebM Project - Already Available On YouTube

As you probably know, a Google I/O conference was held today and a lot of blogs said they will announce big things. And big it was: Google officially announced the release of an open source, royalty-free video format called WebM which will be using the VP8 codec Google aquired from On2 as well as Vorbis audio.

The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors.

For now, WebM is not part of the HTML5 specifications but support for it will be added by Chrome, Firefox and Opera, as a part of the <video> tag (update: Internet Explorer 9 will also be supporting VP8). Most probably today's snapshots of Chrome(ium), Opera and Firefox already include this. You can already download patched FFmpeg or DirectShow for Windows (Gstreamer support coming soon) from HERE. There is also a patch for MPlayer.

WebM is already part of the YouTube HTML5 experimental feature - all the 720p or higher videos uploaded to YouTube starting today will be encoded using WebM (but also in H.264). However Google claims (according to Mozilla) to transcode all YouTube existing videos into WebM sometime soon.

How will Adobe handle this? Well, Engadget points out that Adobe is rolling VP8 support into Flash Player, but hopefully websites such as YouTube will start using the HTML5 <video> tag instead of Adobe Flash by default.

More on the subject:

• OsNews
• Engadget
• WebM project website & WebM blog
• The first in-depth analysis of VP8

Update: Download WebM (VP8) capable Chromium, Firefox and Opera builds.

HTML5 Support Comes To YouTube, But Limited: h.264 Video Codec Only

HTML5 support finally comes to YouTube, but unfortunately using the proprietary h264 video codec, not the free Theora:

Right now we support browsers that support both the <video> tag in HTML5 and the h.264 video codec. These include:

* Google Chrome
* Apple Safari (version 4+)
* Microsoft Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed

What does HTML5 <video> tag support means? Well, it means that you won't be needing Flash Player to watch videos, it will be done using your browser and the h264 codec (sadly). This is still one great step forward, but one may question the decision to chose h264 when Google keeps saying it's an "open-source company".

There are limitations to this HTML5 videos though. It doesn’t work with videos that have advertising, captions, or annotations. And it only works for the browsers listed above.

To use HTML5 on YouTube, you must visit this page and join the experiment.

[via YouTube]

3 New Free Cheat Sheets For Web Designers and Developers [And A Bonus]

1. The HTML 5 Visual Cheat Sheet - was created by Wook and it's a great way to see the new HTML 5 elements in action:

This cheat sheet is essentially a simple visual grid with a list of all HTML tags and of their related attributes supported by HTML versions 4.01 and/or 5.

You can get it by heading over to Wook (download available as high quality JPEG or PDF, in 2 versions: white or black background).

2. CSS 3 Cheat Sheet - is a printable PDF featuring complete listing of all the properties, selectors types and allowed values in the current CSS 3 specification from the W3C.

Each property is provided in a section that attempts to match it with the section (module) that it is most actively associated within the W3C specification. Next to each property is a listing of the expected values that that property takes (normal text shows named values it accepts and italics shows value types it will accept).

You can download the CSS 3 Cheat Sheet from Smashing Magazine website.

3. Wordpress Cheat Sheet - is a complete cheat sheet released on 14/07/2009, in PDF format:

You can get it for free from Ekin Ertac's website.


Bonus: for a website to have some value, it needs visits. And for this, knowing some SEO will most definetly help, thus, I also recommend the Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet:

This cheat sheet needs to be printed and pinned on the wall of every web developer. It's not 100% accurate (like the "less than 100 links on a webpage" myth which was busted by Matt Cuts) but it's very very useful!

You can get it via Seomoz website (obviously, like the rest of the cheat sheets in this blog post, for free).