With recent release of OS X Lion, Apple also updated its Safari browser, which is now getting back on its competitors: Chrome and Firefox.

I decided to test latest version of these browsers against http://www.html5test.com/ to compare Safari 5.1, Chrome 14.0.825.0.dev and latest release of upcoming Firefox 6 (still in beta at the time of writing).

Results have been a bit of a surprise to me as I was expecting Safari to rank 3rd and, actually, it wasn't the case.

With no surprise, Chrome is ranked #1, followed by Safari #2 and Firefox #3.

Chrome scored 329 points and 13 bonus points

Safari scored 307 points and 11 bonus points

Firefox scored 302 points and 9 bonus points

* on a 450 point scale.

Stay tuned as this ranking is fast evolving.

Working on a new project I found out a web site of interest http://www.html5test.com/ to test your favorite browser and see how it performs in terms of HTML 5 compliance.

Have a look and use it as much as you want.

IE6 was released on August the 27th, 2001. At the time of writing this means almost 10 years ago... and it still represents in march 2011 about 11% even though some major web sites like Facebook, Youtube and Google Apps have dropped support for this version of Internet Explorer in 2010.

This example just illustrates how difficult it can be to operate world wide changes in the IT world, making difficult the emergence of new standards such as HTML5 and CSS3 and dramatically increasing web design complexity.

IE6 lack of security has been a long term concern, but, it doesn't support CSS properly too... And, given its current market share it is sometime difficult to keep of potential customers away from a web site forcing web designer to trick CSS to support all current browsers and IE6...

Let's hope HTML5 roll out will not be affected by the remanence of non compatible browsers so that we can ease web design.

Were Oracle is driving ?

Cutting Java FX was a good idea, but it seems that today there is no pilot in the plane regarding Java.

Used in entreprise for large projects Java never encountered the expected glory. Write once, run everywhere is more and more becoming write once and hope that you're client has the right Java VM.

And more and more security researchers are asking to system admins to remove the platform since it appears to be used for "cross platform" viruses (yes, those hackers seem to be the only ones who can write once and use everywhere... ;-) (see this article for more information).

In addition to Java, Netbeans is now removing Rails (next step PHP ?) while it was the best IDE to support it on many platform.

Developing under OS X I noticed that many good IDE (including Aptana) where not properly supporting Rails in RVM environment, while Netbeans 6.9.1 is just running this configuration soomthly.

After killing JavaFX, being kicked out of OS X, opening a war with Apache and Google, it's pretty hard to understand what's the future of Java (being kicked out of the market ?)

This is confirmed by Oracle: Apple will help Open JDK to be ported to its OS X (particularly the future Lion release).

Oracle made a statement on Novembre the 12 (available here) so the Apple's JDK will be deprecated but Open JDK will come aboard and replace it and this is the result of on going discussion between Oracle and Apple.

"You're deprecated !"

If Apple had deprecated Java without any replacement plan, then many application, mostly used by developers, would have been dumped or kicked out of OS X. Some of them are Eclipse, Netbeans, Aptana Studio, Vuze and more.

The fact that Open JDK is now fully backed by Apple insure a native JDK for OS X and a more stable release. Many of us have complain in the past that Apple's JDK were not release in synch with JDK core. Now, things should be different and all platform, including OS X, will follow the same pace.

Well more than a year ago I moved to Adobe CS5 and discovered a very annoying process: automatic update.

In previous version it was easy not to enable this feature and thus spare bandwidth and CPU when you need them for something else.

With CS5 things are different and the Suite install with automatic update on, which some times is pretty annoying (particularly when you are not home with 20Mbps or more of bandwidth).

So, here is how to disable this and how to go back to "manual" update after having installed CS5 on your system (there is an option to disable these connections at the time of deployment using features in the Creative Suite 5 Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition):

Machine Wide Disablement:

First: create an admin preference file by opening your favorite text editor and name it AdobeUpdaterAdminPrefs.dat

Second: copy the following lines in your text editor:

1

Third: save the file in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/AAMUpdaterInventory/1.0/AdobeUpdaterAdminPrefs.dat and you're done.

Important notice:

This will also prevent administrators from checking for updates and installing updates through that update check. Either rename the file and perform check and then put it back in place or just download updates at http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates

So, in order to be able to perform on demand update through update check the User account disablement is preferred.

First: open your favorite text editor and create a plain text file and name it AdobeUpdaterPrefs.dat

Second: past the following lines in

3

3

Important notice: the above lines are for post-installation, post usage. For any other case please refer to Adobe knowledge base.

Third: save it in /Users//Library/Application Support/Adobe/AAMUpdater/1.0/AdobeUpdaterPrefs.dat overwriting the existing file.

Source: Adobe knowledge base

Mac favorite developer text editor has been updated.

No, it's not the expected 2.0 version it just an update to 1.5.10.

This update mostly corrects bugs and add some improvement to the editor.

As many of you have noticed I was too busy to publish some review and tricks on Liferay 6, but I have to mention that the new version is now out and running.

It's easier to install and manage and brings a lot of new social features very promising for small to large Intranet (and event portal sites).

Just a quick reminder on a Packt book "Liferay 6 Entreprise Intranets" which is for sale here and for those who need to make up their mind before buying sample chapters are available here.

Last October announced that OS X 10.7 (aka Lion) will not include Apple's JDK and that this language will be banned from iTune Apps for Mac, which is 100% Objective C oriented.

This raised a wave of questions and protests among many developer using Java for web, desktop and mobile applications even-though Java never kept its promises and its mid-term future looks gloomy (Oracle is canceling some Java related project (Java FX for example) and never really explained its strategy regarding this language which is now competing with other multi-platform programming tools such as Adobe AIR).

After questions and uncertainty, Apple made things clear by announcing in a press release that the company is now backing Open JDK and will offer all support and information to have Open JDK 7 running on OS X.

Java was the sole non Apple language directly supported by Apple in addition to Objective C which is THE Apple language.

PHP, Rails, Adobe AIR and their pals are all directly supported by their respective editors in charge of portability across systems and operating systems.

As many of you have noticed, Java on OS X was always lagging behind Sun's (now Oracle) core releases and improvement cycles were not regular at all.

Apple never fully embraced this language which not running on iPhone and iPad without jailbreaking those devices.

So, from a developer point of view Apple's politics regarding Java should keep OS X in JDK main stream in stead of putting it on the side.

One year ago I made a post regarding a move toward mobile development from OS X.

At this time, Java ME was not available for OS X. At this time Sun (now Oracle) showed a non public beta of Java ME for OS X.

I was too busy working on other projects that I forgot to mention that there is now a official OS X Java ME platform and that this article is now part of history.

In January 2010, Sun released a full version of their SDK for mobile running on OS X. This mobile SDK is available here and works seamlessly with Netbeans 6.8 and 6.9

It features many tools and tutorial to easily develop mobile applications while installing nicely on OS X.

Aptana 3 is a full revamp of previous leading open-source product: AptanaStudio 2 and RadRails.

Both IDE were great but it was a real mess to have tools split. Those dealing with HTML and PHP on AptanaStudio and all the rails part on RadRails.

Developers heard this and started developing a great and promising IDE: AptanaStudio 3 (now in beta and available to download here).

AptanaStudio 3 is offering tools for web developers ranging from HTML, PHP, Java, Rails (2.x and 3.x) and much more.

For those who don't know it, AptanaStudio is Eclipse based and previous version could be added to Eclipse IDE as plugin(s). The upcoming version, AptanaStudio 3, remains Eclipse based and offer a full support of web technologies such as HTML 5, CSS3, Rails 3, etc.

Studio 3 (RadRails 3) Preview 3 from Aptana, Inc. on Vimeo.

Have you ever tried to have the webform portlet in Liferay running on Glassfish ?

Well, in many cases it just crashed. And this is due to a missing jar... Motzilla Rhino, which is needed by this portlet and not installed by Liferay and, of course, not present in default Glassfish libs.

So here is what to do to have this portlet running:

1. Download Rhino here

2. Unzip the bins and make upload js.jar and js-14.jar to your Glassfish server

3. Put these jars in /domain/domain1/lib

4. Restart glassfish (if running Glassfish v3: ./asadmin restart-domain)

And now you should be able to deploy and use webform within Liferay.

As mentioned earlier Packt Publishing has release a new version of their administrative book for Liferay.

The new version covers the new Liferay, version 6.

The previous version of their book was perfect for administrator. I consider this one as more than just an upgrade to cover Liferay 6. This book is offering a new vision on Liferay existing and new features with better explanation of portlet life cycle, Service Oriented Application and much more.

As in previous version of their book the following chapters highlight the use of Liferay in real life. You will learn how to define welcome page, customize them, connect to LDAP (Microsoft Active Directory), use blogs, wikis to share information across departments and much more.

I keep it clear, as the last time, this book is not for developer but administrators. It contains concrete examples to be used to setup an Intranet whatever the size of your company is.

A good investment for your iPad ;-)

You can buy it online here or see a sample chapter here to make up your mind.

I just started a new blog called "My mac and I" focusing on Mac tools and tips.