Web Trends

These days life is getting very difficult for web developers like me, It seems that we have to test against a bigger variety of devices than ever. It is no longer enough to check for IE 6-9, FF, Opera, Chrome, but also Safari for Apple for desktops. We now have to test mobile versions of Safari for iPad, iPhone, Android and no doubt soon Tablet variety of Android not to mention BlackBerry. Here at SalarO we have all of them except Android and now it seems this weekend I got to go out and buy one of these too since we have the first customer asking us to test against it.

We have been less worried about Andoid till now since Chrome seems to be consistent between devices. However, now we have Firefox 4 Mobile that is also not using Flash and leaning towards HTML5.

New Android Firefox browser entices with cool features and bookmark syncing across devices, while Opera gains social features, too, on its iOS and Android versions. In the early days of SmartPhones, users had no choice but to use the browser that came installed with the operating system, but now we have many choices: This week saw the release of Mozilla's Firefox 4 for Mobile, and Opera's Mini 6 and Mobile 11. Both browsers look to expand on the bundled mobile browsers' functionality by adding easy-to-use features and social network sharing. The other nice feature is snapping zoom and the tabs are in a thin left column. 

This mobile browser is said to be able to syncs all of your bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and even open tabs with your Firefox browser on your desktop this is very nice. So you can pick up browsing where you left off when you leave your desk. he browser won’t be available for the iPad/iPhoen anytime soon because of restrictions Apple places on browsing apps—for one thing, it doesn’t use Webkit. 

One thing that attracted me to this news is that Firefox mobile doesn’t have is support for Flash, even though Android has a big partnership with Adobe to make Flash work on mobile. Apparently this is because flash for Android is still not very responsive. So the focus right now is on HTML5 and CSS and the ability of the 3D effects, animations, video, and other in-browser graphics that is now possible with HTML5.

So basically these new functionalities do require us to have hands on experience when we develop cms skins and templates for customers.