No big deal: Google supporting Windows XP longer than Microsoft does

by Martin Brinkmann on October 16, 2013 in Windows 8

We all know that the days of Windows XP are numbered, and that Microsoft will officially stop support for the operating system in the beginning of 2014 (April 8 to be precise).  What this means is that by then, no support patches will be released anymore by the company.

That does not make Windows XP a dead system the day after end of support, but it may very well make it a very vulnerable system due to unpatched security vulnerabilities.

Some of those may be mitigated with software, or not connecting to the Internet at all. It is however fair to say that it is safer to switch to another -- still supported -- operating system than to keep on using Windows XP.

Almost every tech site under the sun picked up a story that was posted on the official Google Chrome blog today that basically states that Google will support the company's own Chrome browser on Windows XP until April 2015, exactly a year after Microsoft has ended support for the operating system.

The impression that readers may get from those reports is that Google is doing this because they really want to support the XP operating system.For Google, it is great PR and many bloggers and journalists seem to have sided with Google on this one: Google good, Microsoft bad, but is this really a fair assessment?

Figure 3

If you look at the situation closer, you will notice that end of support for an operating system, and end of support for a product running on the operating system are not the same thing.

The most important metric for a software company are its users and which operating systems or products its users are working on. If many are working on Windows XP, it makes a lot of sense to support it at least for a while, even if the operating system itself is no longer supported.

While it is certainly also of interest if an operating system is still supported by the company that created it, it is definitely not the most important metric for individual companies.

Most companies that produce popular programs for Windows won't drop support for Windows XP the minute the operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft. Heck, I can name ten companies that still support earlier versions of Windows even though Microsoft dropped support for it. Or to take it to another level, that support older unsupported versions of Google Chrome with their browser extensions. Does that make Google the bad guy here then?

It makes sense to support a software program on operating systems that are no longer supported, provided that the user base that use the system is large enough. As far as Windows XP is concerned, it is definitely large enough.

Even if Google or other companies drop support for an operating system in the future, it does not necessarily mean that you cannot run the software on it. Much like you can run the operating system after end of support, you will be able to run most applications on that operating system after the companies that produce them end support.

You may not be able to run the latest version of an application, not necessarily, but you will be able to run the software nevertheless.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft will tackle the situation come 2014. Will it push out notifications to Windows XP users encouraging them to upgrade to a new version of Windows due to the end of support?

What is your opinion on the matter?

Official Facebook application for Windows 8.1 launches

Official Facebook application for Windows 8.1 launches

by Martin Brinkmann on October 17, 2013 in Facebook 0

Good news for users of the Windows 8.1 operating system: Facebook just launched its official application for the system so that users of it can now use the official app instead of any of the unofficial ones that were available in store before.

The app is available on all systems that are already running the Windows 8.1 RTM that is officially released tomorrow to the public.

Tip: If you just search for Facebook in store, you will find too many results which makes it really difficult to find the official application. The easiest way to find it is to filter by newest app and to limit the category of apps displayed to social.

The application itself looks very similar to Facebook's Internet site, but you will notice a couple of differences. The most obvious ones are that the menu on the left is displayed in full at all times, that the search is displayed on top of it and not in the center, and that the right sidebar does not list sponsored ads but a list of group chats and top friends instead

Facebook application

You find status, photo and check-in tabs at the top for easy access to the functionality, and you will notice that many of the buttons have increased in size to improve the usability of the app on touch devices.

The main question that may come to your mind is this: why would anyone want to use a Facebook app if they can open the Facebook website instead?

The app is optimized for touch, which is a plus as the Facebook website is not. There are other benefits. The app can run in the background and notify you about updates, while you cannot do the same if you have Facebook open in your favorite browser. While you can keep the browser window up at all times, it is not the same as running it in the background.

As far as power consumption goes, the native app may also be more beneficial to your system's battery life, but that needs to be tested in benchmarks first.

You can also share photos posted on Facebook using the Share charm, for instance to attach them to an email that you are about to write. The Share to Facebook does not seem to work right now, or may not have been implemented yet.

Verdict

If you are a regular on Facebook and run Windows 8.1 on a touch device, then you will benefit from the installation of the official Facebook app.

It may be worth a try even if you are not using touch devices, as it provides you with other benefits that you do not get when you run the website version of Facebook.

Windows 8.1 is finally getting a good share of apps for popular services, something that the operating system was missing ever since it launched a year ago

The search for the image format of the future continues

The search for the image format of the future continues

by Martin Brinkmann on October 18, 2013 in Internet 12

Images are an essential part of nearly every Internet website and service. We have seen progress in other areas of interest in regards to web formats. There is a lot going on when it comes to video formats for example, with new formats promising better quality, lower file sizes and better performance.

When it comes to image formats, the web is still relying on formats that were introduced in the beginning days of the Internet. The popular jpeg image format was introduced back in 1992 while the png image format made its debut in 1996.

These standard formats are supported by all modern web browsers and most websites use them when it comes to displaying images on their sites.

Recently, companies have started to look at successor formats that in regards to jpg, that offer better compression and at the very least an equal image quality.

Google's WebP format is one of those candidates. It is already tested in the wild on Google properties mainly, where the format is served to Chrome users exclusively (if you connect with a different browser, say Firefox, you get png or jpg images instead).

While it is clear that Google will push the company's own WebP format as best as it can, other browser developing organizations and companies are not as quick to adopt. One of the main reason here is that WebP is no the only format that promises better compression ratios.

Mozilla conducted a study recently that analyzed the compression quality of four different image formats: JPEG XR, WebP, HEVC-MSP, and the standard JPEG format to establish a baseline.  The study itself only looked at the lossy image compression efficiency of said formats, and not at other metrics and data that matters. In particular, it did not include feature sets, performance during run-rime, licensing or time to market in the study.

According to the study, HEVC-MSP performed best in most tests, and in the tests that it was not best, it came in second to the original JPEG format.

Mozilla, which rejected to include the WebP format previously in the Firefox web browser, is still considering adding support for it to the browser, especially since popular third party websites such as Facebook have started to make use of it.

One should not read too much into the study. It is a limited test that looks only at the compression quality and not at other metrics that may be of equal importance.

The quest for the image format of the future continues

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Feedly gets 3 new Pro and 3 new Free features

Feedly gets 3 new Pro and 3 new Free features

by Martin Brinkmann on October 18, 2013 in Internet 2

The RSS reading service Feedly has become a popular services in the wake of the Google Reader shutdown. Quite a number of factors attributed to the success of the service: the willingness to listen to the user base, web and application support, an API, and a monetization strategy that generates revenue required to support the service and further development.

While you may not agree with all decisions made, for instance the lack of full article search options or the delivery delay of smaller sites, it is seen by many as one of the best web-based RSS reading services out there.

The company behind the service has announced new features that it has integrated into the service. Three of the features are reserved to Feedly Pro users, while the remaining three new features are available to regular (free) users as well.

Feedly Features

All users benefit from the following three new features that are enabled for all user account levels on the Feedly website.

1. Popular section

What is popular

A new popular section is displayed on top of each feed listing popular items based on Feedly community engagement. The new feature is displayed regardless of display style and updated automatically by the service. At the moment, three popular articles are displayed in the section.

Note that these articles are not displayed under latest for the time being.

2. Different Home Views

Feedly Home page

It is now possible to change the home view -- the listing of all subscribed RSS feeds -- to a different view style. If you prefer titles only or cards view, you can change that here now.

3. Improved feed search

The feed search engine has been completely redesigned promising better and more accurate search results no matter if you are searching by title or topic.

It is interesting to note that you may get multiple listings for a single website or service. If you search for ghacks for instance, you get more than ten listings and different subscriber levels.

4. Speed Boost (Pro)

Feeds are refreshed about 30% faster for Pro users according to Feedly thanks to optimizations of the polling speed. Smaller feeds, those with fewer followers, may be updated up to four times faster as well.

5. Custom Sharing (Pro)

The new custom sharing feature enables you to add a custom send to url to your account. You can configure this feature under Preferences > Sharing > Custom Sharing.

The feature uses variables, e.g. $(url) or $(title) that you need to add to the web address of the sharing service that you want to use. A recent blog post on the Feedly blog provides you with examples.

6. Pro Roadmap (Pro)

Pro members can suggest new - pro - features and vote on which features they want the most so that development is prioritized based on those votes.