It’s just data

Flash & the Arrow Keys

Bruce Tognazzini: He did the same thing with the original Mac, although then, Flash was not the issue. Few will remember, but, when the Mac debuted in 1984, there were no arrow keys on the keyboard. That was a big deal.

Meanwhile, Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store even though it doesn’t look like an iPhone application at all.  I guess the messages is that you can look like whatever you like, as long you do your rendering in the cloud?

Meanhwhile, Google is collaborating with Adobe to improve the Flash Player experience in Google Chrome while simultaneously working to Open-source VP8 for HTML5 Video.  It also is phasing out support for offline access to Google Docs through Gears and promising a solution based on the HTML 5 Web SQL Database spec[citation needed] which will never be shipped in IE or Firefox.

Since I don’t know what to make of this, I’ll close with Kevin Lynch’s and Tim Bray’s take.

Not sure I understand the “never be shipped in IE or Firefox” part.  If the reason is that Web SQL is not part of the HTML5 spec then why does Firefox support Geolocation and Web Workers? Robert Sayre then goes on to say - https://twitter.com/sayrer/status/12359229665 - Web SQL won’t see two independent implementations but Chrome, Opera and Safari/Webkit all have versions that do suppport Web SQL.

Posted by Michael Payne at

Presumably rsayrer knows that Google are using [link] rather than [link] ?

Posted by Phil Wilson at

Phil: got a citation?  All I can find so far is evidence of a split; that and an indication that work has begun to implement yet another standard.

Posted by Sam Ruby at

Phil - I’m not convinced that the two specifications you list are binary choices or in conflict. Can’t you have Offline Applications and Web SQL? Would be good to get a one pager showing the state of all of the storage related specs.  Local Storage, Session Storage, Web SQL / Indexed DB, Offline Webapps etc. Sayers statement that Web SQL won’t be shipped because it isn’t part of HTML5 or have 2 implementations still doesn’t make sense independent of what non-HTML5 spec we are discussing.

Posted by Michael Payne at

As I understand it, the SQL-not-in-HTML5 issue is a conversation that’s been going on for quite some time.  For example: [link]

Since most modern browsers have a SQLite library on hand, Web SQL seems to have boiled down to just use SQLite - even to the point of the SQL dialect basically consisting of whatever SQLite accepts.

I read “never be shipped in IE or Firefox” as this: Mozilla folks are uncomfortable with the vaguery of just use SQLite as harmful to the web - let alone tying a spec to a single project, open source or not.  And, Microsoft is uncomfortable with just dropping an alien database engine into their browser.

Please correct me if I’ve gotten any of it wrong...

Posted by l.m.orchard at

Actually, don’t take my paraphrasing for it. Read the big red text in the spec. [link] 

And, the SQL dialect section consists mainly of: “User agents must implement the SQL dialect supported by Sqlite 3.6.19.”  [link]

That seems rather icky for a vendor-neutral WWW spec, pinning everything on a very specific version of a particular product.

Posted by l.m.orchard at

If “Auto Space Like Word 95” can be part of a standard, why not "Emulate All Bugs Of SQLite 3.6.19"?

Posted by anonymous at

Mike Chambers: There is no technical reason that Flash can’t run on the iPhone

Posted by Sam Ruby at

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