Barnes & Noble launches Nook for Web browser-based eReader

Barnes & Noble has launched Nook for Web, a browser-based eReader that the company claims works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari for the PC and Mac. Nook for Web allows users to preview the first 10-15 pages of most eBooks for free; the eBook can then be purchased by clicking a button in the eReader. Nook for Web has one- and two-page displays, and a choice of eight fonts and eight point sizes. It also has a slider for navigating through eBooks, and a drop-down table of contents. However, it doesn't have any way to search within a book. In addition, Nook for Web doesn't support B&N's Nook Kids titles or graphic novels. Those can only be read on the Nook Tablet, Nook Color, and for some titles, B&N's iPad app.

Improve Firefox's performance by turning off plugins

This is a bit off-topic, but if you're a Firefox user, it may be helpful. Like many Firefox users, I've installed many extensions, but since those extensions are essentially separate programs, they bog the browser down. Eventually, I go through and turn off or uninstall all but the essential extensions. However, that doesn't always fix the performance problems.

There's another category of Firefox add-on that most users pay much less attention to--plugins. Media players, such as those for Adobe Flash and Apple Quicktime, are installed into Firefox as plugins, but there are many other applications that silently add plugins to Firefox. You can uninstall an application, but its plugin may be left behind.

To review and clean up your plugins, go to the Tools menu, select Add-ons, and then click on the Plugins icon. Turn off all the plugins for media formats and applications that you no longer use. If you see a plugin that you don't recognize, you can turn it off, and if it causes problems with viewing certain content or running applications, simply turn it back on. Depending on the number of plugins you've got, you may see a significant improvement in Firefox's performance.

Flash Player 10.2: A big improvement?

Like many users, my experience with Adobe's Flash Player hasn't been a happy one, and it's gotten worse as Adobe has "improved" the player over time. Video playback using the Flash Player in both Firefox and Internet Explorer has gotten so bad for me on Windows that I've switched to Google Chrome for viewing Flash video. Adobe has apparently been paying attention to the criticism, and the beta of Flash Player 10.2 November 30th that the company released on its Adobe Labs website is the first version in a long time with significantly better video performance for virtually all users, not just those with dedicated H.264 acceleration.

Flash Player 10.2 is the first public implementation of Adobe's Stage Video architecture, which makes better use of whatever video acceleration (usually in the GPU) is available in the user's computer. Adobe claims that Stage Video decreases CPU usage by up to 85%. As a practical matter, Flash videos are playing cleanly, without stuttering or dropouts, on Windows using Flash Player 10.2 in both Firefox and IE. Windows 7/IE 9 users will also benefit from graphic acceleration using any available hardware rendering capabilities. If you're using Flash Player 10.1 or earlier and you don't need to continue using it for development purposes, I strongly recommend uninstalling 10.1 and replacing it with 10.2.

How serious is Microsoft about HTML5?

A few weeks ago, Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer group, went on the record declaring the company's support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer 9. The Internet community generally applauded his remarks, although there was some consternation about his statement that IE9 will only support H.264 video. However, one point was generally ignored: IE9 will only be available for Vista and Windows 7, not for Windows XP, nor for any other desktop platform. It's not even clear that a full implementation of IE9 will be available for Windows Phone 7, which may well become a tablet platform in the future.

Microsoft claims that IE9 won't work on any platform besides Vista and Windows 7 because of the "magical" acceleration features they're using in the operating system. Bulls#!t. Firefox, Chrome and Opera are all cross-platform and all work much better than IE8. The reason that Microsoft will only support Vista and Windows 7 is that, as usual, they want to encourage upgrades to Windows 7. Thus, Microsoft is all for HTML5, but only if you buy Windows 7. If you're running another operating system, they won't support HTML5 at all.

Microsoft's corner of the universe keeps getting smaller and smaller, largely through the company's own actions.

Obligatory Google Chrome Post

Yes, I've installed Google Chrome, and no, it's not an Internet Explorer killer, at least not yet. My browser of choice is Firefox 3, and I see nothing in Chrome at this point that will get me to switch. The biggest advanage that I see so far is that Chrome seems to be considerably faster in loading pages than either IE or Firefox. Chrome uses the same WebKit rendering engine that Safari uses, and Safari has been roundly praised for its speed, so it's no surprise that Chrome is fast. Google benchmarks show that Chrome's V8 JavaScript compiler is much faster than the interpreters in IE, Firefox and Opera, but the forthcoming Firefox 3.1 will have its own JavaScript compiler, so Chrome's performance advantage may be short-lived.

It's going to take a long time for Chrome to get the same kind of third-party developer support that Firefox already has, but I don't think that's Google's objective: I think that they're targeting users who want simple, fast browsing, and couldn't care less whether the browser supports add-ons. Click one button and it's installed. Every visitor to Google Search is a potential user. That's got to scare Microsoft, even if Chrome is less sophisticated in many ways than IE.

I've visited some sites that don't recognize the Chrome user agent, and thus either limit access or won't give access to Chrome users at all. Therefore, the onus is now on Google to get site developers to support Chrome. That's not going to be easy, because other than the Google name, I haven't seen anything compelling enough to get most people to switch from their existing browser to Chrome.

Confronting the Great Firewall of China

I returned yesterday from China, where I was in Shenzhen, attending ZTE's Global Analyst Conference. (More on ZTE in a future post.) Using the Internet there was an adventure in finding out what I could, and more usually couldn't, get to. Many of the sites that I regularly visit (most of which could hardly be called political or provocative) were blocked.

Pretty much any blog, no matter its contents, was out of reach. I tried accessing blogs through both a feed reader and Firefox to see if the problem was that RSS feeds were blocked, but I got the same result. Even blogs that are completely politically innocuous, such as Engadget and Gizmodo, were unavailable.

Interestingly, I could post to my own blog, but I couldn't read it. Similarly, my mail client could send mail, but not receive it; the only way that I could receive mail was through a web client. I was in Shanghai and Hangzhou last year, and I didn't notice the same level of interference.

On my way back to the States, I had a wait for my return flight at Hong Kong International Airport. Using PCCW's free WiFi service, I fired up my browser, feed reader and mail client, and everything worked just fine. I could access all of the sites that were blocked just a half-hour away on the Chinese mainland, as well as get my mail.

It may have been the combination of the Great Firewall with the fact that my hotel was right next to the local police station, but I felt more than a little paranoid and uncomfortable while I was in Shenzhen. The city is very modern (it's the place where China's experiment with Capitalism inside of Communism began,) and the people were very friendly, but I frankly don't look forward to going back.