blacksundae

As of Friday, AOL officially will end its support for Netscape, the fabled browser that helped transform cyberspace….

In 2003, … an investor in and proponent of open-source software … helped persuade AOL to spin off Mozilla.org with a $2 million cash cushion to become fully independent.

So AOL is ending support for the Netscape browser. Although I hark back fondly to Netscape, this is hardly earth-shattering news. The above-quoted San Francisco Chronicle article, however, has some interesting details of which I had been unaware.

Wired:

The web has grown and changed in remarkable ways since the release of HTML 4 in 1997. No longer are sites just a loose collection static pages joined together by some hyperlinks. The web is now Ajax-powered and full of video, audio and interactive widgets. HTML 5 is an attempt to give developers a way to create pages which harness the newest technologies but still work in any browser on any platform — be it a traditional desktop, a mobile phone, a game console or (one day) even your toaster.

HTML 5 presents a major change from HTML 4 and it will still be a long time before you’re likely to see HTML 5 markup in your browser, but the release of the draft is an important step on the path to a new, more media-aware syntax.

[SNIP!]

Among the significant changes in the draft specification:

• Support for RSS feeds within the
  page markup
• New tags for embedding media like audio or video files
• Tags like <article> or <dialog>, which can be used to markup items like the main body of a blog post or the transcript of a conversation respectively
• The <canvas> tag, which can be used to render moving graphics like data visualizations or games
• New tools for building better forms and user menus

The group is trimming the fat, too. Frames and iframes have been left out of HTML 5. They were rejected because, according the W3C, “their usage affected usability and accessibility for the end user in a negative way.” But it’s important to keep in mind that just because something like frames are being phased out of the actual spec doesn’t mean browsers won’t still be able to display them. It just means that documents using them will never be valid HTML 5.

Read on.

LA Times:

Dozens of striking film and TV writers are negotiating with venture capitalists to set up companies that would bypass the Hollywood studio system and reach consumers with video entertainment on the Web.

At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.

Read on. [via Futurismic]