Code Retard

Under the Mozilla proposal, a new Extended Support Release version of Firefox would arrive every 30 weeks.

(Credit:
Mozilla)

Mozilla, faced with business users’ stiff resistance to its new rapid update schedule for
Firefox, has proposed a slower-moving version of the browser.

Under the proposal, Mozilla would issue a new Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox every 30 weeks. That’s five times slower than the new rapid-release cycle for regular Firefox, which updates the browser every six weeks. And each version would be supported for 42 weeks under the proposal.

After Mozilla got an earful in June about how the rapid-release program outpaces some users’ needs to test the browser and in-house Web sites that use it, Mozilla set up an Enterprise Working Group to try to hammer out a compromise.

“These proposed releases would provide organizations with additional time to certify and deploy new versions of Firefox while mitigating some of the security risks of staying on an older release,” said Mozilla’s Kev Needham in a mailing list message yesterday.

The proposal is the result of that group’s work, said Stormy Peters, head of developer engagement at Mozilla. Now it’s time to see how well the proposal is received.

With the ESR proposal, Mozilla is trying to have it both ways, modernizing its development process without abandoning slower-moving customers. If it moves too slowly, it risks losing its edge with early adopters who already have found Google’s Chrome appealing. If it moves too fast, it risks driving slower-moving organizations into the arms of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

The company, while trying to accommodate the slower-moving customers without having to spin up a huge new support operation, is as convinced as ever that the rapid-release program is the best way forward.

Indeed, some at Mozilla are mulling an even faster cycle that would deliver new features to users faster And it seems likely that Firefox updates will become not merely frequent but “silent,” generally taking place without user intervention.

Rapid-release rationale
The rapid-release plan is designed to bring new features to Firefox users sooner and to smooth the development process. Instead of waiting a year or so for a large set of new features, Firefox users wait a few weeks for a small set. And no more can a single new feature hold up an entire release. Instead, it’s pushed back six weeks while the other changes are shipped. With a focus on a schedule rather than a version number, developers ideally can ship a new feature it’s done, not hastily push it into users’ hands before its ready.

“If we don’t do something like this the browser becomes a limiting factor in what the Internet can do,” Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker said in a blog post in August.

Google pioneered the rapid-release schedule with Chrome, starting with a three-month process then spinning faster with a six-week cycle.

But Google had a couple advantages over Mozilla with the rapid-release mechanism.

First of all, it employed a silent update mechanism from the outset, with the browser downloading new versions of itself automatically, installing them when a person restarted the browser or the computer. Those who didn’t like the system enough steered clear of Chrome altogether.

Mozilla, in contrast, is trying to change an existing process that, while not always perfect, has certainly worked well enough to attract the second largest group of browser users on the Internet.

Second, Chrome uses an extension system that uses Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and relies on browser interfaces the company works hard to keep stable. The result are customizations that generally don’t break when the browser is updated.

Firefox, though, while adding a similar extensions system, has an older one as well that’s much more susceptible to compatibility problems. Mozilla is working to ameliorate those problems–for example by automatically registering the add-ons it distributes as compatible with new versions of Firefox when possible.

Ideally, Web developers will adjust to the new era by skipping version numbers, too. Instead of tailoring Web sites and Web applications for this or that numeric version of a browser, they can use “feature detection” to see what technologies a browser supports and present an appropriately tuned Web site.

There are cultural issues with the rapid-release process. Huge numbers of people have been trained by the software industry that a major version number increase ought to be something of importance, an occasion to take note of big changes. The rapid-release process–which has largely hidden away version numbers as a mere tracking tool–does away with this big-bang style of change.

And there are practical issues. As Needham succinctly puts it, “The faster release cadence makes gives organizations a shorter period of time to certify and use new releases, and the lack of maintenance on older releases can expose organizations using them to security risks.”

To deal with the slower-moving users such as businesses and schools, for example, Mozilla offers the ESR version. Under the proposal, it would come with fixes for high-risk and critical security holes, would be tested and released through its own distribution channel alongside ordinary Firefox, and likely would start out based on Firefox 8 or 9.

Faster yet?
A discussion on a Mozilla mailing list has raised the possibility of an even faster release cycle. Programmer Josh Aas asked whether a five-week cycle might be possible. A new feature developed this way would arrive in users’ browsers three weeks earlier, because it would spend one less week being tested in the nightly, Aurora, and beta channels of Firefox that precede a stable release.

There’s no plan to make the shift right now. But the general idea has allies–including Christian Legnitto, Firefox’s release manager.

“Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle–but it won’t be soon. We have some work to do to make 6 weeks smooth from a process, tool, and product side. When we get six weeks down to a science we can shorten as needed. Note we will need to be very, very crisp on the messaging and announce the shift well in advance,” Legnitto said. However, he added later, “We are sticking with the 6 week cycle for the foreseeable future.”

Mozilla also is moving Firefox toward a silent update process in which people don’t have to take actions to move to new versions of the browser as they do today.

“We formed a team / had our first meeting last week to focus on silent updates, and it is definitely a top priority,” said Mozilla’s Robert Strong in a message. An update will require user action in cases where the new version isn’t compatible with an existing add-on, he said. One of the complications of the idea is bypassing operating system warnings such as Windows’ User Account Control that pop up asking if users really want to install software.

Firefox mutiny? Not so much
Despite the hue and cry over the rapid-release program, most Firefox users are on board.

Legnitto said people are moving to new versions of Firefox faster than before.

“The uptake curve got steeper between [Firefox versions] 5 and 6, which means more people are updating faster. This generally dismisses the concern that as we do more updates people are holding back,” he said. “These numbers are actually good to great. We are watching this closely though.”

Infinity Ward’s creative strategist Robert Bowling says they are more concerned about the final product.

Speaking in an interview with IGN, Bowling was asked if he and his crew are concern about the strong competition this year.

“Not at all, there’s no buy in on that sort of stuff,” Bowling replied. “We don’t care about sales numbers, we don’t care about competition, we don’t care about beating anyone. Our 100 per cent focus is making a game that we’re going to love to play, that we’re going to be proud of, and that we know that our fans are going to play. To us, we don’t care if there are three people playing it or 30 million people playing it. If there are three people having a great time then we’ve done our job correctly and we will be happy.”

Bowling added that there primary focus has always been to produce a product that will appeal to everyone. “It pays to be extremely accessible, as we are with our audience, and make sure we’re in the trenches, having conversations,” he say. “It’s one thing to look at statistical data; it’s another thing to just get out there and get gut checks. More importantly, that’s what Modern Warfare 3 has been designed as: a platform that gives you more options to control your own experience. It’s not about catering to a specific type of player, that’s what we’ve moved away from, and baking in your ability to really just play the game that you want to play and be incentivised to do that, however you play it.”

Well, if they don’t really care about the money, how about a little more innovation in the next Call of Duty installment? And no, I’m not speaking about the Call of Duty Elite add-on. Modern Warfare 3 is slated to arrive on November 8th, 2011.

Via [IGN]

Tags:

A unique work in progress, Warco puts gamers in the role of war correspondent.
Image courtesy Defiant Development

Warco is a first-person game where players shoot footage instead of a gun. A work in progress at Brisbane, Australia-based studio Defiant Development, the game is a collaboration of sorts; Defiant is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone. Ars spoke with Defiant’s Morgan Jaffit to learn more about this political game disguised as an FPS.

The game was actually the brainchild of someone outside of the studio. Tony Maniaty, an Australian journalist who has reported from regions like East Timor and post-Soviet Eastern Europe, envisioned the game as a sort of training simulator.

He then began working on the project with filmmaker Robert Connolly, who directed the film Balibo, a political thriller about the deaths of Australian journalists during the conflict in East Timor in 1975. Eventually Jaffit and Defiant were brought into the project.

“It’s been a great partnership, with Tony giving the game a great grounding in the real world issues of war journalism, Robert lending his structural and cinematic eye, and Defiant helping to channel that into something that’s interactive and engaging,” Jaffit told Ars.

“It offers a new perspective on a familiar theme, which enables us to use the tools and techniques of other FPSes to build a completely different kind of narrative and experience. From a design perspective, that’s what excited me.”

The game itself — the title of which is actually short for “war correspondent” — follows the story of journalist Jesse DeMarco. Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story. The scenarios range from intense bursts of action to quieter moments as you discuss the events of the day with fellow journalists in a hotel. Though the main mechanic will be filming the action, Warco is also very much about choice.

“It’s also about navigating through a morally gray world and making decisions that have human impact,” he explained. “It’s about finding the story you want to tell, as each of our environments is filled with different story elements you can film and combine in your own ways. It’s both a storytelling engine and an action adventure with a new perspective.”

The scenarios are designed to mirror the recent tumultuous events in the Middle East and North Africa, in situations cribbed from Maniaty’s real-world experiences in the field.

A game that looks a lot like a first-person shooter but doesn’t actually allow players to fire any bullets could potentially be difficult to market, and one unnamed publisher recently told the studio that “it’s a hard sell to executives to suggest an FPS with no shooting, but this is definitely the sort of game we should be making, as an industry.”

Warco has been in development for four months and Defiant is currently in talks with several publishers to try and bring the game to a wide audience. When that will actually happen, and on what platforms, hasn’t yet been determined.

“We’re optimistic that we’ll find a way to make the project work as a commercial reality,” Jaffit said.

Buttons across the top let you rotate an image, adjust tilt-shift effects, switch to front-facing camera, and toggle image borders.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Today, the developers of popular photo-sharing app Instagram announced a big update. Calling it the largest revamp since Instagram launched almost a year ago, the company is introducing a complete upgrade to Instagram’s camera with a “brand-new technology layer.”

Instagram had already become a big hit for photo enthusiasts by adding a simple filter effect to photos, which could then be uploaded and shared with friends. But now, the app offers live filters so you can see your chosen effects before you snap a photo. Instagram says the filters have been rewritten to be 200 times faster, allowing you to switch between filters after you’ve taken your shot with almost instantaneous results.

The app now comes with four new filters: Amaro, Rise, Hudson, and Valencia. Instagram says it took cues from popular Instagram user @colerise to produce the new effects.

In addition to new filters that add variation to your snapshots, Instagram handles tilt-shift shots better as well. You can select blur, pinch, and pan tilt-shift effects, and see the results in an included live preview.

One of the most requested new features is the ability to take higher-resolution photos–up to 10 times larger than before. You are able to choose a resolution of up to 1,936×1,936 pixels on the
iPhone 4 and 1,536×1,536 pixels on the
iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, you’re only given the option to save the high-resolution shot to your camera library after uploading the photo to Instagram; high-res shots will not show up on Instgram share pages or Web sites that use Instagram’s API. Still, having the high-res shots in your
iPhone photo library means you can share them a number of different ways and lets you keep a high-quality shot for yourself.

To round out the new features, Instagram now offers one-touch rotation of images (no more sideways photos), and image borders have now been made optional.

To use the new features, you’ll need to have an iPhone 3GS or newer; third-generation iPod Touch; or an iPad or iPad 2.

Tags:

Tags:

(Credit:
Corel Corporation)

Corel, maker of the popular VideoStudio Pro and PaintShop Pro franchises, has today released its newest title, MotionStudio 3D. As Corel’s first entry into the animation and motion graphics software category, MotionStudio 3D targets multimedia enthusiasts looking to create stunning title sequences and basic 3D animations. While it’s not quite a big-budget Hollywood workhorse, the program certainly appears to be good at what it does.

On top of its basic 3D titling and text animation capabilities, MotionStudio also includes a powerful, yet simple particle effects tool that recreates the appearance and movement of elements like bubbles, fire, smoke, and snow. One-click features like this are sure to attract casual users who aren’t necessarily motion graphics wizards. The program also includes tons of animation presets, and lets you manipulate light sources, mimic motion blur, and adjust depth of field among other aspects.

And for the prosumers out there, MotionStudio 3D also boasts some rather powerful import and export capabilities. It can handle vector and raster graphics, and lets you easily work with files from other 3D applications. Meanwhile, it can output to a wide variety of video and still image formats including GIF and Flash (SWF) for the Web. And as expected, MotionStudio lets you easily output projects as 3D anaglyphs viewable with 3D glasses, or as side-by-side images playable on compatible
3D TVs.

Corel MotionStudio 3D (download) is available now for $99.99. Meanwhile, users of VideoStudio Pro X4 can get it for $79.99.

Long gone are the days when Adobe Systems could take its Flash Player’s position on the Web for granted.

But Adobe, to counter a strong combination of opposition and alternatives to the browser plug-in, plans to ship Flash Player 11 in two weeks. The debut at its Max developer conference early next month is geared to send a message to programmers: Flash is still relevant, and Adobe is still investing in it.

Flash 11′s highlight, an interface called Molehill for hardware-accelerated 3D and 2D graphics, won’t change the minds of those who would like to see Flash fade from the Web, nor will it reverse Apple and Microsoft’s Flash opposition. But it is a powerful new feature for games, and games are one of the Flash strongholds Adobe is seeking to defend.

“WIth direct access to the GPU [graphics processing unit], you’ll see a thousand times faster rendering over prior versions of Flash,” said Danny Winokur, Adobe’s platform general manager. With the ability to animate millions of objects at a screen refresh rate of 50 frames per second, people can expect “console-quality games” such as those on an
Xbox or
PS3, but in a Web browser.

At the same time, Adobe has another strategy for maintaining the programming appeal of Flash’s cross-platform nature. In cases where Flash apps can’t run because the plug-in is banned or simply not installed, the new version 3 of Adobe’s AIR software lets Flash apps be packaged as standalone apps.

In other words, for situations when developers can’t count on Flash being installed, Adobe lets them build it directly into the app.

Also new is 64-bit support, which helps Flash stay compatible with browsers moving toward more modern processors.

Detractors might disagree, but Adobe’s moves are real. Flash has plenty of experienced programmers, and the plug-in is installed on 98 percent of desktop browsers. It’s clear that Flash is not the only way to write apps–heck, even Adobe is embracing the competition–but it’s equally clear Flash still has a place for many.

Embracing Web standards, too
As Web standards have blossomed, Adobe has refined its Flash sales pitch to three main areas: games, advanced online video, and “data-driven” apps that provide a pleasant face to information stored in databases elsewhere on the Internet.

“There’s been a lot of debate over the past year or two about Flash and HTML and what are the right platforms. We’ve tried, while being at the center of that debate, to stay grounded,” Winokur said. “It’s become clear our customers think there are important advantages in those three areas now for using Flash. We’ve continued to invest in those areas while taking a leadership role in driving HTML5 forward. It has the potential to be a fantastic platform.”

The big question for Adobe is whether it’ll be able to capitalize on the new Web standards era in time. New challengers are arriving–perhaps most notably Microsoft, whose Windows 8 Metro interface can run Web apps, and whose developer tools are highly regarded. For the long period when Flash and Web standards coexist, Adobe will have to balance the two.

Take WebGL as an example. It’s a hardware-accelerated 3D interface for browsers, available now but still very new in the scheme of things. Microsoft doesn’t support WebGL, but other browser makers do. Programmers will have to decide whether to use it or Flash’s Molehill, and Adobe stands to lose developers to competitors if it doesn’t embrace what they want.

Turning the crank faster
Flash Player 10 arrived in 2008 and was on a more complacent old-era schedule when the software was the de rigueur way to handle streaming video, online games, interactive stock charts, Webcam chats, and any number of other advanced Web chores. But Web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and faster JavaScript have caught fire, with browser makers stoking the flames. Adobe picked up the pace starting with Flash Player 10.1 in 2010, the first to support smartphones, then 10.2 and 10.3 in 2011 to try to keep up the momentum.

At the same time, Adobe has begun an earnest effort to capitalize on Web standards with new tools for developing Web sites and Web apps. Developer tools for the new Web era are often as immature as the standards themselves, and Adobe is banking that its software will ease developers’ and designers’ coding pains. Some of those new efforts include Edge, Muse, and Wallaby.

Don’t be surprised to see new versions of some of these projects at the Max conference. Adobe has pledged frequent updates as it develops Edge in public as a tool that can add sophisticated interaction and timeline-based animation to Web sites. It’s geared for designers, not programmers.

Flash, though, is the here and now when it comes to Adobe’s business with products such as Flash Professional, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Flash Media Server, and Flex. It’s got plenty of programmers who know it well, too. So naturally, the company is working hard to keep Flash at the forefront.

It’s probably not an exaggeration to call the Flash disfavor from Apple and Microsoft an existential threat to Adobe Systems’ browser-plug-in. Apple has barred the Flash plug-in from iPhones and iPads, and Microsoft said Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8′s next-gen Metro interface won’t support any plug-ins at all.

The ally: Google
Google remains an ally, helping Adobe adapt Flash for
Android phones and building Flash into its Chrome browser. But iOS is a key mobile operating system today, Windows 8 is a key desktop and potentially tablet operating system tomorrow, and the two companies behind them have a lot of clout with programmers.

In the mobile market, Adobe is claiming progress: 130 smartphones and 85 tablets can now run Flash, Adobe says, though that includes the “captive runtime” method that encapsulates Flash inside an AIR app. The company projects that 1 billion mobile devices will be able to run Flash by 2015.

Flash 11 has a notable feature for mobile users: support for the digital rights management available for video streaming. That’s one of the big selling points in the “premium video” priority for Flash.

Another feature are native extensions, which will let programmers venture out of the cross-platform comfort zone to support new hardware in the latest smartphones even if Flash doesn’t yet.

Performance has been a problem for Flash on smartphones, though. Adobe’s working the problem, Winokur said::

There are a number of things at play on the mobile side. A complex stack goes from silicon hardware up to the device, then to the operating system, then to the browser. We are working at all those levels of the stack. With silicon vendors, there are some additional optimizations there. Some are [coming to] Flash Player in dot releases. We’re also working closely with Google with the OS layer and Android browsers. There are driver improvements from silicon and GPU [graphics processing unit] providers that are helping. And improvements to OS and browser plug-in APIs [application programming interfaces] that are helping to improve performance quite a bit.

Adobe isn’t working on pushing Flash to lower-end devices, though, he said.

The mobile market remains Flash’s toughest nut to crack. But it’s clear Adobe isn’t throwing out the nutcracker yet.

Tags:

These are instructions on how to backup and save your SHSH Blobs to Cydia using RedSn0w.

Step One
Create a folder on your desktop called Pwnage

Download RedSn0w from 0.9.9b1 here and place it in the Pwnage folder.

Extract the RedSn0w zip file by double clicking it.

Step Two
Launch the redsn0w application from the redsn0w folder we just extracted.

Step Three
Once RedSn0w opens click the Extras button

Step Four
Click the SHSH blobs button from the Extras menu.

Step Five
Click the Fetch button to fetch the SHSH blobs on your device and send them to the Cydia server for storage.

Step Six
Please plug your iPhone into the computer and make sure its OFF then click the Next button

Step Seven
RedSn0w will now guide you through the steps to get into DFU mode. You can find more help with DFU mode here

Hold down both the Home button and the Power button for 10 seconds.

Release the Power button and continue holding the Home button until RedSn0w detects the device.

Step Eight
Your iPhone will now reboot

Step Nine
RedSn0w will then begin fetch the SHSH blobs from your device and submit them to Cydia.

Step Ten
Once this is complete you will be notified that your submission was a success. Click the Back button to return to RedSn0w.

Step Eleven
Click the SHSH blobs button and then click the Query button to make sure Cydia has your blobs saved.

Step Twelve
Enter * into the ECID textfield and click OK to check all your devices.

Step Thirteen
RedSn0w will now query Cydia and display the list of stored blobs.

Important:
RedSn0w also saves your blobs in a plist located within the RedSn0w folder. We would recommend keeping these for added safety.

When operating a link building campaign, one of the most important things to get your head around is valuing a particular link prospect. The information you glean from doing this will determine how much effort to put into gaining a link, or indeed whether you should even bother in the first place. Most experienced link builders will find that they develop a ‘sense’ for whether a link is worth chasing or not. However, this ‘sense’ is developed over years of using tools and metrics to determine a links potential value.

*Top tip: Never forget that a good link sends traffic. Don’t get so caught up in everything that you forget this. If you get links that send traffic, chances are you’re getting great links!

A lot can also depend on the context of your link building efforts. If you’re aiming to gain some high quality links then being able to value a link prospect will really come into its own, and allow you to prioritise the best link prospects. In no particular order, my first thoughts when I find a potential linking prospect are as follows:

• How much effort might be required?
• What might I need to offer; content, product or a potential partnership?
• Can I find the appropriate contact details?
• Does the website in question actually link out to other sites?

These are the first things that I consider to try and decide if this is an opportunity worth working on, or if I should walk away and carry on looking for other prospects. If the website I’m looking at never links out, then getting a link is going to be extremely unlikely. A quick think about what I might need to offer in return for link gives me a starting point and should help me gain a rough idea of how much work might be involved.

This all helps me make an informed decision, and crucially balance effort vs potential reward. It’s true that in some cases one link might be worth days or even month’s worth of work, so it’s helpful to have a rough idea of the work involved and a general overview of my chances.

In order to actually value the links potential benefit I tend to use a mixture of the following metrics:

• Page authority
• Linking root domains to the page
• A rough idea of traffic (social activity, number of comments per post etc)
• Toolbar page rank
• Check for bad company (not the band!)

When added together with a bit of gut feeling, I can usually get a really good idea of how beneficial that link in particular might be, and whether it’s worth the effort.

I’ve found that used alone, some of these metrics won’t help too much but when added together you can build a very useful picture of a link’s potential quality. For example, toolbar page rank is pretty useless on its own due to it not being updated very regularly. You might be looking at a blog with a toolbar page rank of 2, that is now in fact a PR3 blog. However, when comparing page authority against toolbar page rank you might be able to spot a penalty. If the domain in question has a very high domain authority but a low PR there could be something dodgy going on.

You’ll also want to avoid websites that could be selling links. As a quick check, look at the footer or blog roll to see if there’s anything unusual.

Hopefully you’ll find this useful, it would be great to hear your ideas in the comment section below!

About the author: I run my own small SEO company ‘Go Search Marketing’ and also run a variety of websites including The Jewellery Boutique selling handmade contemporary jewellery. All in all, it’s a pretty varied life!

When Tecmo Koei showed off Dead or Alive 5 for the first time during the tail end of their pre-Tokyo Game Show party, the game came with the tagline “fighting entertainment”. Sounds a bit Engrish-y, but apparently there’s more to it than that.

Speaking to gaming news site Joystiq, Team Ninja boss Yosuke Hayashi explained that the tagline reflects their desire to bring back the spectacle to fighting games.

Where games like Street Fighter II had “some of the most outrageous graphics, fun gameplay, and really a lot of stuff going on”, Hayashi implied that most modern games have foregone the more over the top aspects to focus on online multiplayer competitions. In his view, this has led to fighting games that seem “a little bit dull, in some aspects”.

Team Ninja hopes to make things more interesting by making Dead or Alive 5‘s stages even more interactive than in previous entries where “most of the dangers were fixed”. As seen in the trailer released a few days back, there’s all sorts of chaos happening during a match. Players will be able to trigger changes to the “geometry” of the stages themselves.

It all sounds interesting and all, but Team Ninja is still skirting the question that’s foremost in our minds: where the hell are the boobs?

Via [Joystiq]

Tags: