When we started looking deeply at HTML5, we saw that it will enable a new class of applications. These applications will stress the browser runtime and underlying hardware in ways today’s websites don’t. We quickly realized that doing HTML5 right – our intent from the start – is more about designing our browser’s subsystems around what these new applications will need than it is about a particular set of features. From the beginning, we approached IE9 with the goal of enabling professional-grade, modern HTML5 support on top of modern hardware through Windows. At the MIX conference today, we demonstrated how the standard web patterns that developers already know and use broadly run better by taking advantage of PC hardware through IE9 on Windows. This blog post provides an overview of what we showed today, across performance, standards, hardware-accelerated HTML5 graphics, and the availability of the IE9 Platform Preview for developers. First, we showed IE9’s new script engine, internally known as “Chakra,” and the progress we’ve made on an industry benchmark for JavaScript performance. With the differences between script engines on benchmarks approaching the duration of an eye-blink, we described our approach for making real-world sites faster. Chakra compiles JavaScript in the background on a separate core of the CPU, parallel to IE. We showed our progress in making the same standards-based HTML, script, and formatting markup work across different browsers. We shared the

Common wisdom has it that Flash is a resource hog, and that HTML5 will prevent your processor from having to work really, really hard to show animations of videos. Well, a number of people have conducted benchmarks with the latest browsers and Flash betas, and common wisdom is starting to show serious signs of crackage.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Other Events, Developer, iPhone The 2010 Game Developers Conference kicks off today in San Francisco, and TUAW is in attendance to check out the latest and greatest in iPhone game development. The conference boasts a whole track dedicated to iPhone gaming this year, and all week long, we'll be bringing you panels, news, and interviews straight from the conference floor. This morning, panel number one was from Stephen Detwiler and James Marr, two engineers at Ngmoco, to talk to developers about how they put the server software together for Eliminate, the "freemium" first person shooter that's serving as their flagship app lately. tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/09/gdc-2010-ngmoco-explains-how-eliminate-pro-was-built/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" As they explained during the presentation, they had a heck of a goal with this project: they wanted to put together "the definitive FPS for iPhone," complete with all of the functions of a standard console deathmatch-style FPS, in just five months with just three engineers. And they started with the toughest nut of all: the networking code. They looked first at commercial solutions for game networking, and it turns out that the Quake 3 engine that they eventually used fit their ideas well. The toughest obstacle was of course the lag -- in a fast-paced game like Eliminate, even a delay of 200 milliseconds is too much. But it turns out that the way the Quake 3 engine handled dialup Internet

iPresentee has released a new set of iWeb Intros to be used with Apple's website-building application. iWeb Intros 3.0 is a collection of five short Flash animations that can be used as a way to welcome guests to a webpage. The package includes Cityscape, Sunset, Highway, Nature and Factory, with each customizable using static and animated text. iWeb Intros requires a Macintosh computer with either iLife '08 or iLife '09 installed. Each Flash intro can be purchased individually for $10, or the package of all five can be ordered for $30....

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewWhen Zooloretto hit the board game scene in 2007, it pretty much became an immediate hit. It won the Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year) that year, after all. Sure, there was a lot of love for the basic game mechanics thanks to the elegant and popular card game Coloretto that came out in 2003, but gamers enjoyed the colorful animal graphics, the new decisions that needed to be made and, as time went on, plenty of expansions (14 small and large ones, plus the standalone game Aquaretto that can also be combined with Zooloretto. The Zooloretto iPhone and iPod touch app (US $4.99) includes just one of those expansions - the polar bear - but it's a great introduction to the series. Serious board gamers who think that Zooloretto is a too-fancy version of Coloretto might find the app winning them over, because the play time is much shorter than the tabletop version (around 10-15 minutes, which is just a little bit longer than Coloretto takes, instead of 45). Gamers new to the 'retto series will find lots to like in this strategy game. The app is not a perfect representation of the board game, but it is a heck of a lot of fun. Read on to learn more about Zooloretto. Gallery: Zooloretto The Game The main challenge of Zooloretto lies in how to place animals on the delivery trucks. Each turn, you are presented with the option to either place a tile (which can be an animal, a concession stand or a coin) on a truck or take a truck w

quaith writes "With the Space Shuttle Endeavour scheduled to launch at 4:39 AM EST on Sunday for a trip to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency has released a video that shows how the modules it's carrying — Node-3 ('Tranquility') and Cupola — are going to get attached. Node-3 is a connecting module. Cupola has six trapezoidal windows and circular roof designed to provide a unique vantage-point for observing Earth. The video animations show how the station's robotic arm will be used initially to put the modules in place as a single unit, and then to detach Cupola from the end of Node-3 and reattach it on the Earth-facing side. With this addition, the ISS will start to look like something that Jules Verne would have wanted to visit."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PVI chairman Scott Liu today told the press that his company will produce some of the earliest fully touchscreen and motion-capable e-paper displays this year. Current screens often need a separate touchscreen layer and are too slow to show video or other animations, but screens with either feature should be ready by the end of 2010. PVI's touchscreen technique would put the touch underneath the e-paper and eliminate the unintentional dimming of the display, a problem that has affected e-readers from Sony and others....

theodp writes "'You have a lot of missing images, in the TV, in the news reporting,' explains billionaire Jimmy Lai. It's a gap that Lai's Next Media intends to fill with its animated news service. Artists lift details from news photos while actors in motion sensor suits re-create action sequences of stories making headlines. Animators graft cartoon avatars to the live-motion action, and the stories hit the Web. When news agencies didn't have footage of scenes from the Tiger Woods car crash, Lai's team raced to put together animation dramatizing the incident that became a YouTube sensation. Thus far, Lai has been denied a television license, but with or without his own station, he thinks his animations are headed for televisions worldwide. His company is currently in talks with media organizations to churn out news animations on demand using Next Media's graphic artists and software tools."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Software, Apple, Developer The new iPad has lots of space. The screen offers 1024x768 pixels. That's way more room to work with than the iPhone gave you. And because of that room, it's time to re-think the way you designed iPhone applications. Things that worked well with the iPhone's limited space -- things that were meant to expand the device's virtual world beyond the screen's tiny reality -- are the things that you need to readdress and confront. Why keep using visual tricks when you can expand into real pixel space? Take the traditional UINavigationController class for example. Its entire role on the iPhone is to provide the same kind of tree view used in Mac OS X's Finder windows (View > As Columns, Command-3). The animations as you select and push view controllers and the back button are both there because you can't reasonably see an entire tree structure at once, in columns, the way you do on a Mac. On an iPad, the rules change. You have enough space to reasonably present that kind of tree based view, whether you use two columns, or three columns, or more. An iPhone-style view controller begins to make less sense, unless it is embedded into a larger visual design where it needs to conserve space on that layout. Another iPhone space conservation approach is the tab bar. The UITabBarController class allows you to see up to five tabs at once, each tab hosting a separate view. Applications from YouTube to the iPod music player use this class (and its b

Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewCatan. If you've ever visited, there's a good chance you're passionate about it. First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it's a a damn good condensed version. First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn't condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple "vanilla Settlers," the basic game as presented in Exozet's iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that's great to have in your pocket. Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Gallery: Catan: The First Island The Game The Settlers of Catan is, at heart, a game of collecting resources and building a collection of settlements and cities on a modular board, with the goal of reaching a set point total (between 8 and 12, but defaulting to 10) before the other p

Beautiful new renderings of NASA data let you fly over Martian geology.

Filed under: Other EventsThank you again everyone for stopping by and sharing this live event with TUAW. We really appreciated how many of you stuck around after our CoverItLive connection died. Thank you all! We really appreciate your support for TUAW. 11:37: And it looks like we're out of there. I think I'm going to have to soak my fingers in ice water. Yikes! 11:35: iPad is up on Apple, and video! 11:35 "Thank you so much for coming." 11:35 GIZ Jason Chen: And here's IPS: In Plane Switching. Click here if you want a better explanation of the technology. 11:34: "Go to the store. Get your hands on an iPad. Once you get your hands on an iPad you'll never go back." 11:33: "We fit the users. User don't have to come to the device. We come to the users." 11:33: "We always try to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. Be able to get the best of both. Extremely fast products." 11:33: Jason Chen: "We are ready for the iPad." 11:32: "Most advanced technology", "Magical and revolutionary device", "Unbelievable price". 11:31 Back to Steve. iTunes Store, App Store, iBook Store, all on the iPad. Over 125million accounts. One click shopping. (One tap, really) 12 Billion products. At scale, and ready for iPad. 11:30: (via Macworld) Monitoring The Twitter, I see a lot of people blown away by the price here, and also a bunch of people sold on the keyboard. Fraser Spiers, a Mac developer and a schoolteacher, says the 16GB wi-fi only model with keyboard extra makes

Like pretty visualizations? This new start-up pulls spending data into Flash animations so that you can see who's spending what where.

kkleiner writes "ARMAR, or Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair, is a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist you in making repairs. An Android phone provides an interface to control the graphics you view during the process. Published in IEEE, and recently tested with the United States Marine Corps on an armored turret, ARMAR can cut maintenance times in half by guiding users to the damaged area and displaying 3D animations to demonstrate the appropriate tools and techniques."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all Web technologies, JavaScript may have the most checkered past — first heralded as a powerful object-oriented language for jazzing up Web pages, but later condemned as a source of spammy pop-up windows and horrid animations polluting websites everywhere. Yet during the past several years, Web designers and developers are increasingly using JavaScript unobtrusively, for client-site interactivity — as a supplement to server-side functionality, not a replacement, and built upon standards-compliant (X)HTML and CSS. As a result, the once-derided language is now enjoying a true resurgence in interest and use. This has been bolstered by the proliferation of JavaScript libraries, of which jQuery is clearly the front runner. Web programmers seeking to get up to speed on this exciting resource can turn to Learning jQuery 1.3: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A lot of work was put into this thesis presentation. It lasts for a whopping 6 minutes and 47 seconds consisting of numerous animations along with unique stills. Some parts appear to be done in a power point type presentation where the director calls out several facts about his creation. This feature was put together with such care, I absolutely enjoy the way it starts off with site analysis, then structure stats, then structure features, then spaces..... and then finally several seamless shots, and approaches of the whole building, showing off the design to the viewers. Great job to Michael Ka'ainoni, the person responsible for this thesis project.