I’m all for open source and freely sharing code, but there are also occasions when it’s necessary to hide some of the mechanics behind a web-based application. That’s where JScrambler comes in, a Portuguese startup that’s launching version 3 of its service today. JScrambler 3 allows developers to obfuscate their source code for mobile and desktop web apps so it’s… → Read More
Salesforce.com has attracted one million developers to its platform and is now making a push into the mobile market with a new hybrid environment that allows developers to use JavaScript to update native iOS or Android apps. The new hybrid model is meant to welcome JavaScript developers through the support of frameworks in its Developer Mobile Pack that include JQuery Mobile, Angular.JS and… → Read More
The next version of jQuery, the popular JavaScript library, will drop support for Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft isn’t very bullish about getting developers to use jQuery 2.0 and HTML5 to develop “a new wave of jQuery-based Windows Store applications.” As Microsoft announced today, Microsoft Open Technologies, the company’s wholly owned… → Read More
Back in 2011, Epic ported its popular Unreal Engine 3 technology to Flash and showed how relatively high-end 3D games could run in the browser. It’s 2013 now, however, and Flash isn’t exactly a hot topic anymore. So to show off what game developers can do with a modern browser and without plugins today, Mozilla and Epic teamed up a little while ago to port Unreal Engine 3 to the web… → Read More
Editor’s note: Péter Halácsy is co-founder and CTO of Prezi.
Startups identify with JavaScript. When you’re just starting out, you need to be dynamic. You need to be flexible. You need to be able to bust out a prototype that just works, and you need to be able to change it on a dime without recompiling your code. JavaScript was once the startup of the browser wars, and it crushed Java and… → Read More
Today is beta-release day at Mozilla, and the organization is launching new beta versions of Firefox for the desktop and Android. This time around, the desktop version is set to get the most interesting updates, including the new IonMonkey just-in-time JavaScript compiler, as well as support for Macs with Retina displays and W3C Touch Event support for machines with touchscreens. On Android… → Read More
Google launched Dart, its class-based object-oriented language for writing complex web apps, exactly year ago and to celebrate its birthday, the Dart team is launching the first stable version of the Dart software development kit (SDK) today. According to the Dart team, this new version of the SDK offers a faster virtual machine that can even outperform Google’s efficient V8 JavaScript engine on… → Read More
Last month as part of our TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Coverage, we wrote about Famo.us, the company behind a forthcoming HTML5 framework that its developers claim will make it easier to build HTML5 apps that perform as well as native apps. Now the company is revealing more information about how it works and what it can be used for. → Read More
The engineering team at Dropbox re-wrote its browser-side codebase one week last July, according to a post on the Dropbox tech blog. The rewrite was done to translate all of its JavaScript into a language called CoffeeScript.
CoffeeScript is a language that compiles into JavaScript. It offers an alternative syntax that looks more like Python or Ruby, with the goal of enabling “literate… → Read More
Industry analyst firm RedMonk published today its latest quarterly programming language popularity ranking. JavaScript came out on top, followed closely by Java, PHP, and Python.
The rankings are based on data collected from the open source project host GitHub and the programming questions and answer site StackOverflow, a measurement invented by Drew Conway and John Myles White in 2010. → Read More
One of the big trends of the past couple years, spurred the growing demand for programmers, is the rise of in-browser programming tutorials. Gone are the days when you’d have to buy a book and configure a development environment before you could get your hands dirty with a little code.
Maybe you want to start learning on your work computer and don’t have access to install a programming… → Read More
Google’s Chrome team just launched Octane, a new JavaScript benchmark suite that aims to measure real-world performance. Unlike most other benchmarks, which tend to use artificial tests developed to stress a certain feature, Octane is based upon a set of well-known web applications and libraries. This means, says Google, “a high score in the new benchmark directly translates to better and smoother… → Read More
Although the company behind Meteor, a framework for building real-time JavaScript applications in vein of Google Docs, just announced a nice big $11.2 million round of funding, it’s not the only game in town. In my story earlier this week I mentioned Mojito, a framework developed by Yahoo. But there’s still another framework that has escaped my attention, even though it’s around longer than… → Read More
You know how the Internet works, right? Of course you do: you’re a TechCrunch reader, a power user. You know what that “HTTP” means in your address bar (if you’re not using Chrome.) You know that behind the scenes, the Domain Name System translates your requests for domain names like techcrunch.com to numeric addresses like 76.74.254.121, and secure connections are encrypted by SSL. You know that… → Read More
Javascript Web app framework provider Sencha is today announcing the public beta launch of Sencha.io, its new HTML5 mobile cloud service. The service will allow Sencha app developers to build “shared experiences” in the browser, without having to write server code or manage hosting.
At launch, Sencha.io will provide a set of cloud services, including Sencha.io Data, Sencha.io Messages… → Read More
Today, Strobe Inc. is launching a new platform that helps developers build HTML5-based Web applications for desktops, smartphones and tablets, and centrally manage them from a single interface.
The launch is a major leap forward in HTML5 app development. From one interface, teams can manage code (both test code and production code), configure the app’s deployment across platforms (Web, Android… → Read More
Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript scripting language and chief technology officer at Mozilla, has joined the advisory board of Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based Ajax.org.
We recently wrote about Ajax.org’s introduction of Cloud9 IDE, a commercial, cloud-based development platform for JavaScript that incorporates HTML5, and supporting Python, Ruby and PHP.
Eich is known for his work on… → Read More
Over the weekend, over 200 teams of developers met up to participate in Node.js Knockout, a 48 hour coding competition with one basic rule: you *had* to use node.js to build your app. The deadline was midnight on Sunday, which means that the finished applications are currently being subjected to the scrutiny of the expert panel of judges and – perhaps even more terrifying – the general public. The… → Read More
Back in June, Google launched Sputnik, a suite of tools that runs over 5,000 tests to check a web browser’s JavaScript conformance. Last week, they made the tool a lot easier for anyone to use, with a version that works in the web browser. The results are interesting.
Notably, both the Opera and Safari web browsers beat Google’s own Chrome browser in the test. As you can see in the picture above… → Read More
jQuery is a Javascript library that is used in a large number of web applications and is popular amongst web application developers. It was launched in 2006 by John Resig, and immediately gained a large following due to its lightweight nature and design philosophy. jQuery allows developers to build Javascript web applications easily by abstracting many of the complexities and difficulties. A… → Read More
Nearly all of the time I dedicate to work and personal life on my computer is spent inside a browser, so speed and using software that ‘just works’ are very essential to me. As a Windows user, I currently use both Firefox and Google Chrome, but unless I really need a certain extension lacking on Google’s browser I’ll use Chrome as much as I can and avoid opening the many tabs I usually need to… → Read More
Are you a Mac user with Google Chrome envy? You really shouldn’t be, especially now that the latest builds of WebKit use a ridiculously fast Javascript engine called SquirrelFish Extreme. The new engine, conveniently shortened to SFE, is actually faster than Chrome Javascript engine, V8. (It’s actually faster than the version of V8 currently floating around SVN, which is faster than… → Read More
Jacob Seidelin is fast becoming the Ben Heckendorn of Javascript games. You may remember that in early April, Seidelin programmed all of Super Mario Bros. into 14 Kb of Javascript code. This month, he’s tackled Super Mario Kart in about 11 Kb of code. It’s not the full game, however. “So far, it’s just racing. No weapons or any of that fancy stuff. At the moment, you can… → Read More
This evening, I came home and loaded up Drudge Report. I found an interesting article on Google and how they’re about to challenge Microsoft even farther with offline web applications. Upon discovering the name Google Gears, I promptly typed “gears.google.com” into Firefox. Sure enough, a Mac OS X beta of Google Gears is available and of course, I downloaded it. So what is Google… → Read More
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