mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

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HTML5

Weekly recap: 7 HTML5 predictions, why banks will face more software glitches, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on HTML5 predictions, why banks will see more software glitches this year, and more. I hope you find them useful:

More bank software glitches in 2013?
As companies keep building more and more modern features into their outdated systems, software glitches will become more common. With every new enhancement or alteration, an outdated system only becomes more complex and difficult to understand. Companies looking for ways around this issue can address it in a couple of ways: Modernize, or build apps over the top of their system (without altering it at all).

HTML5 is finished: What would you like to see?

EducationBig news this week: The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) announced that the specifications for HTML5 are finally complete! While it doesn’t technically become the standard until 2014, all of the HTML5 features are finalized.

Wait…what is HTML5?

Let me quickly explain HTML5 for those unclear on the topic. HTML5 is the next iteration of HTML, the markup language used for structuring web pages. While it does bring some new features, HTML5 is simply an improved version of the HTML standard that we already know and love.

What do we need to know about HTML5?

HTML5 brings a bunch of new features, like offline storage, native audio and video, improved semantic markup, and more. If you’d like to learn more about HTML5, here’s a great resource for you. We’ve also written up some tutorials over on the techblog.

Your turn: What would you like to see in m-Power?

While we’ve already added some HTML5 features into m-Power (and plan on adding more), I’d like to get your thoughts. What HTML5 features and capabilities would you like to see added to m-Power in the next year? Which new features would most improve your web (or mobile web) applications?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section on this post.

Weekly recap: 6 ways IT still fails the business, HTML5, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on HTML5, monetizing data, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Monetizing data to drive a competitive advantage
As companies gather more and more data, they must answer one big question: What are we doing with this data? If your company isn’t using your customer data as a competitive advantage, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Weekly recap: HTML5 features you didn’t know existed, BI adoption, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on HTML5 features, BI adoption, and more. I hope you find them useful:

How well do you know your ide/development tool
Some developers worry that if they start using a tool or an IDE, they’ll become dependent on that tool and turn into a worthless developer. This article explains why you should stop worrying, and love your development tools.

Weekly recap: 4 possible futures for IT, HTML5 is growing, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on four possible futures for IT, HTML5, and more. I hope you find them useful:

HTML5 use is real: Majority of developers find it important for their job in next 12 months
If your company is considering mobile apps, you’ll face one big question: Should we build mobile web apps or native apps? While native has been popular among consumer recently, a recent survey indicates that developers think that HTML5 importance (particularly with mobile web apps) is growing.

Weekly recap: Top 10 cloud jobs, mobile BI, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the mobile BI, HTML5, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Mobile BI: Exciting but intimidating
Mobile BI is about more than just accessing BI apps on your smartphone or tablet. It’s about harnessing the new data we can now access thanks to mobile. This article goes into more detail about this emerging trend.

Weekly recap: 10 strategic CIO priorities for 2013, concerns with BYOD, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on CIO priorities, BYOD concerns, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Why you’d be stupid to bet against HTML5
If your company is considering mobile apps, what approach are you taking? Native, mobile web, or hybrid? While each approach has its benefits, this article explains the big reason why the mobile web approach is so useful for business.

Tutorial: Avoid browser differences with conditional style sheets

EducationHTML5 and CSS3 bring some great new elements to web development. These modern standards let web developers add new interface features and improve their application’s overall look and feel.

There’s just one problem: Many people still use old browsers, which don’t recognize modern standards. Unfortunately, web developers cannot control their user’s choice of browser.

So, what can web developers do? HTML5 and CSS3 hold so many opportunities, but aren’t supported by older browsers. Should developers just ignore these new standards until the use of older browsers dies out?

Thankfully, there are ways around this problem. One such way is with the use of conditional style sheets, which let developers create separate styles for old browsers. How can you use conditional style sheets in your web applications? We’ve written up a short tutorial, which you can find right here.

4 big problems caused by old browsers

EducationAbout a month ago, an online retailer made the news for imposing an “IE7 Tax” on its customers. Any customer using the Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser was charged a 6.8% tax on their total bill. In their opinion, the tax helped offset the cost of supporting the IE7 browser.

While the move probably riled up a few customers, it brings up some good questions: What’s so bad about old browsers like IE7? Are they really that expensive to support? Why are modern browsers so important? To answer those questions, let’s take a look at 4 problems caused by old browsers:

Yes, you can use GPS with mobile web apps (with proof)

EducationThere’s a lot of misinformation being spread about mobile apps. Just last week, I read yet another article from yet another mobile app “expert” that made me cringe. The article falsely claimed that native apps are necessary if you want to use the phone’s hardware sensors, like the GPS.

Okay. Let me set the record straight: No, they’re not!

Native apps are not required to use the phone’s GPS, and that’s just the beginning. Mobile web apps can actually access almost every hardware sensor that a native app can access. If you’d like to learn which sensors a mobile web app can access, read this article.

So, how can you access the GPS using a mobile web app? It’s simple, and we have two short tutorials and a demo to prove it.