Developer Software

Sencha, a start-up trying to make a business out of open-source tools for building Web applications, has begun an important new phase of its business with its first foray into the hot mobile browser market.

The new Sencha Touch 1.0 software is a JavaScript programming framework out of which mobile Web apps can be built. It joins the company's earlier products, the Ext JS and Ext GWT frameworks and the Ext Designer developer tool.

The tools are designed for those who need to build user interfaces out of dialog boxes, pop-up windows, sliders, charts, check-boxes, and all the … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Generally, OEM software isn't of particular interest to consumer product reviewers, but I couldn't help but be drawn in by the sweet-looking user interface (UI) development being shown off by SPB Software at the CTIA Fall 2010 show. This multiplatform solution, called Mobile Shell, is currently up to version 5.0, which is compatible with Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian operating systems.

The software is aimed at providing carriers with a way to offer a standardized UI across mobile devices, but the truly compelling part is the front-end user experience, which is pretty fantastic from what I'… Read more

BitTorrent has launched the release candidate for Mainline 7.1. And with it, the company has launched several applications and has enabled developers to create their own programs for the platform.

According to BitTorrent, Mainline 7.1 will include 11 apps at launch, including Virus Guard, a service that helps keep users safe from malicious files, as well as Torrent Tweet, an offering that allows users to follow and discuss individual torrents on the social network. Previously, the apps were available only in BitTorrent's uTorrent service.

BitTorrent's hope is to have a full-fledged application ecosystem grow around Mainline. … Read more

Apple on Thursday released an update for its iWork suite of productivity applications, adding a new feature that enables authors to add books to its iBookstore application.

While all of the applications in the iWork suite were updated, the most significant change comes in Pages 4.0.4. The word-processing app now includes compatibility with the ePub format, which Apple uses for iBooks.

Apple published a document on its support site giving users tips on creating documents in the ePub format that covers everything from using paragraph styles in your Pages document to providing a downloadable template to use.

You … Read more

Microsoft will issue 14 security bulletins on Tuesday to plug 34 holes, including eight that are critical, in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, SQL and Silverlight, the company said on Thursday.

"This will be the most bulletins we have ever released in a month; we have released 13 bulletins on a couple of occasions," Angela Gunn, security response communications manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. "However, in total CVE [common vulnerabilities and exposures] count, this release ties with June 2010, so there's no new record there."

Affected software includes: Windows 7; Windows XP; Vista; … Read more

It's a fact that Google is stuffed to the brim with really, really smart people. You might think you're a bit of a brainbox, but compared to those dudes at Google, we're all idiots. So to help us feel better about ourselves, the search and mobile OS giant has created Google App Inventor, a simple way for us to make our own Android apps.

And by simple, we mean probably not as hard as learning a programming language from scratch, but still not the sort of thing most people would find easy. It does make it possible, … Read more

In October 2006, security researcher H.D. Moore discovered a serious problem with the way applications running on Windows display rich text content.

He reported the vulnerability to Microsoft and nearly four years later it's still not fixed, despite the fact that it could be exploited to run malicious code on a PC and take control of it.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. According to the Zero Day Initiative, which serves as a broker between security researchers who find flaws and software companies who need to fix them, there are 122 outstanding vulnerabilities that have been reported … Read more

One month after releasing its open-source, royalty-free VP8 video compression technology, the company already is working on significant revisions to the technology.

VP8, combined with the Vorbis audio technology, form the WebM codec with which Google is trying to unfetter Web video from the patent and royalty encumbrances of rival codec H.264. To make WebM a stronger competitor, Google is beginning work not just on ways to speed up encoding and decoding of the VP8, but also deeper changes to the format itself.

"Like every codec, WebM is not immune to change; the difference in our project is … Read more

Browser development can be a risky place, even for a team of savvy, crowd-sourced enthusiasts. So it's no surprise that Mozilla calls their nightly Firefox build "Minefield." What is surprising is that, in general, today's version tended to be fairly stable.

The version I spent the day with, Firefox 3.7 alpha 6, offers multiple in-development improvements. Besides being built on the next version of Firefox's rendering engine Gecko, the current nightlies will eventually become Firefox 4, expected to be released later this year.

For right now, though, the nightly builds are a rough work … Read more