When it comes to erasing your tracks on the web, nothing is more pernicious and difficult to delete than the Flash-based cookie. Technically known as “local shared objects,” Flash cookies don’t go away when you clear your browser-based cookies. Instead they hang around, potentially collecting data without your knowledge or consent.

To delete Flash cookies you have to navigate through the Flash Player settings dialog. Unfortunately most users don’t know how to do that and Adobe has, until now, put very little effort into simplifying the process (it has at least made Flash respect the “private browsing” mode in modern browsers).

Now Adobe is finally taking some steps toward simplifying the process of deleting Flash cookies. The company has announced it is working on a new API that will allow your browser to delete Flash cookies along with the rest of your cookies. For now only Mozilla and Google are working on the API with Adobe, but presumably Adobe is talking to Microsoft and Apple as well.

While there’s no shipping code at this point, if the API were to make it into Firefox and Chrome it would give users an easy-to-find menu for quickly clearly Flash cookies. Adobe’s blog post says users can expect to see the changes “in the first half of the year.”

The move would no doubt by a small boon to privacy, but as Ars Technica points out, Flash cookies aren’t the only source of hard-to-defeat, persistant online tracking. For instance, the dreaded “evercookie” stores data in no less than 13 places and is nearly impossible for the average user to delete.

Still, for those annoyed at the complexities of deleting Flash cookies, things may soon, thankfully, get a bit simpler.

Miniature Food photo by Stéphanie Kilgast/Flickr/CC

See Also:

• Warning: This Site May Be Sharing Your Data
• Google Chrome Beta Adds Privacy and Content Controls
• New Privacy Icons Aim to Save You From Yourself

View full post on Webmonkey

Google has rather nonchalantly dropped a bombshell on the web — future versions of the Chrome browser will no longer support the popular H.264 video codec. Instead Google is throwing its hat in with Firefox and Opera, choosing to support the open, royalty-free WebM codec.

Google says the move is meant to “enable open innovation” on the web by ensuring that web video remains royalty-free. While H.264 is widely supported and free for consumers, sites encoding videos — like YouTube — must pay licensing fees to the MPEG Licensing Association, which holds patents on AVC/H.264

Prior to Google’s announcement, the web video codec battle was evenly split — Firefox and Opera supported the open Ogg and WebM codecs, while Safari and Internet Explorer supported H.264. Google took the egalitarian path and supported all three codecs.

Google’s move away from H.264 makes sense given that Google is already heavily invested in WebM. In fact, the only reason the WebM codec exists is because Google purchased On2, the creators of the VP8 codec. Once Google acquired the underlying code it turned around and released VP8 as the open source WebM project.

There’s been considerable outcry from developers concerned that they now need to support two video codecs to get HTML5 video working on their sites. However, given that Firefox — which has a significantly greater market share than Google’s Chrome browser — was never planning to support the H.264 codec, developers were always going to need to support both codes for their sites to work across browsers.

Google’s decision to drop H.264 from Chrome does raise some questions though. For instance, Android also ships with H.264 and so far Google hasn’t made any announcement regarding the future of H.264 on the Android platform. One of the reasons H.264 has become so popular is that the codec enjoys robust hardware support across devices — whether it’s desktop PCs, mobile devices or set top boxes. While WebM has made some strides in hardware acceleration since it was originally released, it still lags well behind H.264. At least for now it seems that Android most likely needs to continue supporting H.264.

The move also raises questions about YouTube, still the largest video site on the web. Currently the site serves H.264 videos to most browsers, whether through the HTML5 version of the site or using the Flash Player. It seems obvious that Google must be hard at work converting the site to use WebM, but will it continue to support H.264 for those browsers and devices that don’t support the WebM codec? So far Google hasn’t made any announcements regarding YouTube and H.264.

Critics of Google’s decision to drop H.264 support in Chrome point out that Chrome ships with Flash, which, like H.264, is not really an open web technology. Indeed it would seem hypocritical for Google to dump some closed tools while keeping others, but, in Chrome’s defense, Flash is well entrenched in the web and ditching it really isn’t practical. Rather Google’s decision seems to be pragmatic — the company is in a position to take a stand on video codecs and it is doing so before H.264 becomes as entrenched as Flash.

[Google did not respond to a request for comment on this article. A Google Spokesperson tells Webmonkey that the announcement is related to "Chrome only and does not affect Android or YouTube." Presumably both will continue to offer H.264 support. As for Flash, the Spokeperson says, the Chrome announcement "is about the importance we place on open technologies being the foundation of the emerging web platform moving forward." In other words, dropping Flash support isn't practical.]

See Also:

• MPEG LA Extends Web Video Licensing Moratorium Until the End of Time
• Major Browser Vendors Launch WebM Free Open Video Project
• On Web Video Support, Safari Now Stands Alone
• Microsoft Adds H.264 Video Support to Firefox

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Google’s URL shortening service, goo.gl, has added an API, giving third-party developers a way to integrate the service into their own apps. The new API means Twitter clients and other apps that use short URLs can hook into goo.gl just like they do bit.ly and dozens of other shorteners.

The goo.gl API is, like most Google APIs, a RESTful JSON-based API. There are only three real methods — insert, list and get — but that’s enough info for apps to shorten and expand URLs, as well as fetch history and analytics for shortened links.

The goo.gl shortener is a late entry into an already crowded field, but of course the Google name carries a good bit of weight so you can expect most Twitter clients to add goo.gl to their list of URL shortening options. The goo.gl shortener also has a couple of nice extras like QR codes and, according to stat tracking site Pingdom, it’s both the fastest and most reliable URL shortener out there.

If you’d like to play with the new service, the API documentation and developer guide can be found on the Google Labs site. And yes, the API is a labs project and may be subject to change before it graduates into a real web service.

See Also:

• Google Jumps on the URL-Shortening Bandwagon With Goo.gl
• Why URL Shortening is a Threat to the Web
• Bit.ly Pro Makes it Dead Simple to Create Your Own URL Shortener

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Whenever we write about HTML5 here at Webmonkey — whether it’s something great, like Microdata, or something not-so-great, like the flaw in WebSockets — there is an inevitable comment or two telling everyone that they should wait until HTML5 is done. Some people think even the W3C doesn’t want you adopting HTML5 just yet.

Of course all those people, including the W3C, are wrong. Not only is much of the HTML5 spec well on its way to being finalized, browsers already support much of it. The level of support varies by browser, but HTML5 is very much here today.

The real reason you should use HTML5 now is that early adopters are already helping to make it better, finding bugs and giving the browser makers a reason to fix them.

Mark Pilgrim’s site Dive Into HTML5 is a fantastic resource for learning HTML5 and it’s written in HTML5. Pilgrim recently pointed out that the site’s use of HTML5 and CSS 3 has “led to bug fixes in at least four browsers and one font.”

If we all waited to use HTML5 until it was “done” we wouldn’t know about those bugs. It’s early adopters — like many Webmonkey readers — who are helping to make the web better by using HTML5 today and helping to discover the parts that don’t work in the real world. Browser bugs aren’t always discovered by reading specs or through stress tests like ACID 3, they’re discovered in the wild, on the web. Finding them now means that than in five or ten years when HTML5 is set in stone, it will have fewer problems.

Naturally we’re not suggesting that HTML5 is right for every website. Mainstream sites don’t want to discover bugs, though that hasn’t stopped big names like Nike from jumping in the HTML5 waters.

Maybe some parts of HTML5, like say WebSockets, aren’t quite ready to be used on the New York Times homepage. But smaller sites using WebSockets are helping to pave the way so that eventually sites the size of the Times can use WebSockets and the rest of HTML5 without worrying about bugs.

Not every site needs to live on the edge, but those that do make the web a better place for all the rest.

[Note to the commenters who will inevitably point out that we don't use HTML5 at Webmonkey: those of us that write for Webmonkey do not also write the code that runs it.]

5 Mosaic photo by Leo Reynolds/Flickr/CC

See Also:

• Security Flaws Force Firefox, Opera to Turn Off WebSockets
• Microdata: HTML5’s Best-Kept Secret
• Damn the W3C, HTML5 Is Already Here
• Cool Sites: Nike’s ‘Better World’ Site Embraces HTML5

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Attention budding guitar players, the web just might turn into the best guitar teacher around.

The Mozilla hacks blog has details on an awesome web-based guitar tab player experiment from developer Greg Jopa. Using Mozilla’s experimental Audio Data API and the Vexflow HTML5 music notation rendering API, Jopa’s guitar tab player displays interactive sheet music that traces the notes of a song as it plays.

If you’re using Firefox 4, head over to the demo site to see the mashup in action. Other browsers won’t work, but the demo movie below shows how the guitar tab player works.

The reason this experiment only works in Firefox is because it uses Mozilla’s new Audio Data API, which gives web developers a way to interact with raw audio data in HTML5’s <video> and <audio> elements using JavaScript. With the Audio Data API, developers can read and write audio data within the browser, opening the doors for online tools like spectrum analyzers, audio remixing tools and 3D audio visualizations.

While Mozilla’s Audio Data API hasn’t been blessed by the W3C just yet, plenty of what we use on the web right now — XMLHttpRequest anyone? — started out exactly the same way. Because the web embraced XMLHttpRequest, it became a standard. Given this awesome experiment and some of the other great demos we’ve seen that use the Audio Data API, we’re really hoping the W3C adds the Audio Data API to the spec.

See Also:

• New HTML5 Tools Make Your Browser Sing and Dance
• Firefox 4 Beta 5 Adds Audio Tools, Hardware Acceleration
• Play Pac-Man in HTML5

View full post on Webmonkey

What language does that browser speak?

Web developers looking to play with the new features in HTML5, CSS 3 and other NEWT tools are still struggling with incomplete and inconsistent browser support. While HTML5 and its siblings are far from perfect (and complete), that doesn’t mean you can’t use them; it just means using them is a little more complicated since you need to detect the current browser’s level of support and then adjust accordingly.

One of the easiest ways to detect the current web browser’s level of HTML5 support is the Modernizr JavaScript library. We’ve covered Modernizr several times in the past and it’s a great addition to any HTML5 toolkit.

But sadly, not everything can be detected with JavaScript. If you’ve ever bashed your head against the keyboard trying to figure out why something wasn’t being detected, Modernizr has a new wiki page for you: The Undetectables.

The page lists a number of features that simply can’t be detected using general feature tests. Instead, these features can be found by either user agent sniffing (which leads to heartache and doom), browser inferences or as the wiki puts it “simply providing the same (slow) fix to everyone.”

In some cases there are workarounds, like the great keypress JavaScript effort from Google , which fixes a number of erratic, inconsistant keyboard behavior quirks in today’s browsers. However, in many cases you’re probably better off avoiding the undetectable features until browsers catch up.

If your code has been behaving strangely, despite your best efforts to detect a browser’s features, save yourself some hair pulling and head over the new Modernizr page to see if perhaps the problem is on the list of things that can’t be detected. If you discover other problems trying to sniff a browser’s capabilities, be sure to let the Modernizr devs know about it.

See Also:

• Handy Guide to Detecting Support for HTML5
• Modernizr Collects HTML5 Fallbacks for Older Browsers
• Using HTML5 Today With Modernizr

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Flickr, the grandfather of online photo-sharing sites, is giving the kids a new way to use the site with their fancy Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 devices. Yahoo has announced Flickr for Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 — native Flickr apps for Windows phones and tablets.

Flickr already offers an iOS app for Apple devices, but the new Windows 7 apps look considerably slicker and offer a much better interface than what you’ll find the iOS app. The new software won’t be available until the end of January, but you can check out the video below for a teaser.

According to our friends at ReadWriteWeb, the new Flickr for Windows 7 apps use Windows Azure, Microsoft’s foray into cloud-based software, behind the scenes. It’s an interesting choice of platform considering Flickr is already, well, in the cloud. Given that Yahoo has a considerable infrastructure of web-based services, why use Azure?

Marcus Spiering, Flickr’s mobile product manager at Yahoo, tells RWW that “Azure allowed us to build an app quickly and do it with quality.” Reading between the lines it’s hard to escape the subtext: Yahoo’s own tools weren’t up to the task.

Whatever the case, Flickr for Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 is a slick looking app and we’re hoping to see the iOS version get a similar makeover. Curiously, there’s still no official Flickr app for Android.

See Also:

• New Flickr Is Bigger, Wider and Uncut
• Mining Flickr to Build 3D Models of the World
• Flickr Adds Limited OpenID Support

View full post on Webmonkey

The Mac App Store has launched with over 1,000 OS X applications. Our sister site Gadget Lab has more details on what that means for Apple fans.

One thousand apps for the launch is impressive, but what’s in it for web developers? Here’s a quick roundup of a few apps that Mac-loving web developers might want to check out (URLs point to the Mac App Store so you’ll need OS X 10.6.6 for the links to work).

• iSlice (free) — This slick little app opens PhotoShop documents and slices them up. ISlice retains all the layer info in the Photoshop file so it’s easy to hide background layers and focus on what you need to extract. If you already own Photoshop there’s no point to this one, but if you frequently need to slice comps and don’t want to pay Photoshop’s hefty price tag, iSlice fits the bill.

• OAuth for Mac ($3) — OAuth is pain if all you want to do is pull a bit of data out of say, the Twitter API. OAuth for Mac handles the OAuth calls for you and quickly generates a token. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it looks like it would be handy for testing and developing quick scripts.

• Colorbender ($2) — A nice looking color-scheme generator with hex and RGB values. There are tons of free color-scheme generators on the web, but if you’d like a Mac-native version, Colorbender looks like it would fit the bill.

• mColorMeter ($3) — Ever wanted to know what color your favorite website is using in its menubar? With mColorMeter you can just hover over any pixel on your screen and the app will tell you the value in RGB, Hex and Munsell colors.

• Base ($17) — Base is nice-looking graphical interface for working with SQLite databases. It’s not cheap, but $17 seems a small price to pay if it means never having to work the sqlite3 command line again.

• Gitbox ($40) — Hardly a day goes by without someone claiming there are no good Git GUIs. We haven’t tried Gitbox so we’re not endorsing it, especially at $40, but it does offer a very nice-looking graphical UI for Git. And the app comes bundled with the official Git binaries so there’s nothing extra to install — just download the app and start using Git. Great for the command-line-phobic, but seasoned Git users will likely turn up their noses at the price. (See this thread on Hacker News for some more thoughts on Gitbox.)

• Honorable Mentions — There are quite a few apps in the new store that have been around forever. We love the all-in-one development tool Coda ($100), Text Wrangler (free), BBEdit ($125 currently on sale for $99) and Pixelmator ($30).

The biggest downside to Apple’s new App Store for Mac is that there are no trial versions of the software. For that, you’ll have to head to the developers’ site and (assuming there’s a trial version available) download a good ol’ .dmg file.

See Also:

• Mac App Store Launches with 1,000 Apps, Big Discounts [Gadget Lab]
• Mobile Safari Gets More HTML5 Love in iOS Update
• Apple’s HTML5 Showcase Less About Web Standards, More About Apple

View full post on Webmonkey

Image from Instructables.com

Do you have a coffee pot in your cubicle at work, set to go off at a certain time each morning? And do the vagaries of your commute often mean you arrive to either old, or not-ready coffee? Well, this awesome Instructable will show you how you can hack your coffee pot to turn on with a simple tweet. Until any of us can get a personal assistant, this will just have to do! Instructables, via Lifehacker.

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This is a video shot outside Kuroshio Sea, the main tank at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. The tank is home to an amazing array of sea life, including manta rays and — my favorite — whale sharks, the largest fish in the world. The music, which I think works well with the video, is a song called “Please Don’t Go” by indie rock band Barcelona. The video is embedded below with HD selected, so just switch it to full-screen, sit back and watch.

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There’s no question that HTML5 video is at the forefront of the web’s migration to HTML5. Unfortunately converting your site’s video to HTML5 is a little more complicated than just dropping in the video tag.

We’ve covered a few HTML5 video players in the past — SublimeVideo, FlareVideo and the DIY route — but new players seem to emerge every day and deciding which one is right for you can be complicated.

To help you out developer Philip Bräunlich has put together a great chart of 19 different HTML5 video player solutions. The chart breaks down each player, covering options like whether or not there’s a Flash fallback for older browsers, if keyboard shortcuts are supported, how easy it is to theme and use, and what license the code is available under. The sidebar also has links to demos so you can see each player in action.

If you’ve been trying to figure out which video player has everything you need, Bräunlich’s chart should be a huge time saver.

View full post on Webmonkey

Image by ThinkGeek

Over on his Ironic Sans blog, David Friedman has posed the ultimate idea for a Kickstarter (microfunding) project: putting a replica of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey on the moon. He’s thinking it’ll take $500,000,000, and wants 5 million geeks to donate $100 each. I think the industrious GeekDad community could design that cost downwards significantly. Pose your ideas in the comments!

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You might think, given the varying browser support, that no one is using HTML5 yet. But you’re wrong. HTML5 is everywhere you look. Even Nike, which has a history of Flash websites, recently turned to HTML5 to build its new “Better World” website.

The Nike Better World website uses HTML5, CSS 3 and JavaScript to create a unique scrolling storyboard-style experience. The site has received quite a bit of attention in the design community for its unique interface and fancy animations.

It also makes a great lesson in how you can use — and, sadly, now you should not use — HTML5 today.

One of the best ways Better World uses HTML5 is the awesome, and often overlooked, data- attribute. If you’ve ever used a title attribute to pass some data to JavaScript, well, the data- attribute is your new friend. HTML5’s custom data attributes allow you to write semantically valid HTML while, simultaneously, embedding data within the page.

On the Nike site, attributes like data-controller and data-scrolloffset pass information to the JavaScript scrolling function without mucking up the semantics of the page.

The best thing about the data- attribute is that you can define your own syntax — just prefix your attributes with data-. For a great overview of the new data syntax and how you can use it, check out JavaScript guru John Resig’s overview of the data- attribute.

However, impressive as the Nike site is, it also gets some things wrong. While Better World uses many of the new HTML5 tags — like article, section, header, footer and canvas — it isn’t always using them properly.

The prime offender is the ever-confusing section tag, which is scattered about the site somewhat haphazardly. Deciding when you should use section can be a headache (see HTML5 Doctor’s article on when to use the section tag), but one good rule of thumb is — does the element have a heading? In the case of Nike’s site, the answer is often no. In most cases the code would be improved by simply using a div tag.

Despite all the cool new semantically meaningful tags, remember that there’s nothing wrong with good old div. In fact, that’s one of the things it’s for — elements that don’t have semantic value.

Nitpicking aside, the Nike site is great example of a big company pushing the envelope with HTML5. Our only real complaint is that Nike is still relying on Flash for video — ironic considering that HTML5 video is one of the more common examples of HTML5 on the web today.

See Also:

• Where on the Web Is HTML5?
• Using Microformats in HTML5
• Flashy HTML5 Experiments Point to Web’s Future
• Embed Videos In Your Web Pages Using HTML5

View full post on Webmonkey

From prudentbaby.com

Great tactic to try with kids who keep popping out of their rooms at bedtime. Like all such things, it takes a steely resolve by you, the parent, to pull off, but setting visible limits like this makes a lot of sense. I wonder if using glow-in-the-dark tape would help or hurt the process?

Prudent Baby via Parent Hacks.

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original illustration – public domain

Meet the downside to great works of literature being in the public domain: A sanitized version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in the offing.

This new version, edited by a man named Alan Gribben who is actually a scholar of Mark Twain’s work, will remove the “n-word” and replace it with “slave,” and replace “injun” with “indian.” That anyone would consider himself worthy of re-editing Twain’s work is preposterous on its face; that a Twain scholar would do so is practically unthinkable.

Continue Reading

Firefox 4 will bring a significantly revamped user interface to the popular Mozilla browser, including some welcome changes like automatic bookmark and history syncing, a better add-ons manager, tabs-on-top and dozens of other improvements.

Firefox 4 is also notable for what isn’t included — the venerable status bar. The status bar is an almost universal element of browsers and Mozilla decision to remove it is, well, curious.

Mozilla says that ditching the status bar gives Firefox a simpler, smaller user interface. While that’s true, it comes at the expense of something that every other browser manages to offer — URL previews in the lower left corner of the browser window.

Defenders of the change point out that all of the elements that used to be in the status bar are still in Firefox, they’re just in different places. The page load information is now displayed on each tab, and the URL preview seen when hovering links has moved to the URL bar.

It’s the later change that irks many long-time Firefox users. Part of the problem is that there simply isn’t as much room in the URL bar so URLs are truncated with ellipses, giving you less information about where a link leads.

Mozilla plans to improve the URL preview interface before the final release of Firefox 4, but that doesn’t change the fact that Firefox’s URL preview is now in a different place than every other browser on the web (Chrome and IE 9 don’t have permanent status bars, but both still show link previews in the bottom left corner of the browser window).

Luckily there’s already a Firefox add-ons that brings back the status bar. If you’re using the Firefox 4 beta and you miss the status bar, the appropriately named Status-4-Evar will restore it to its former glory.

See Also:

• Firefox 4 Beta 8 Arrives With Faster Graphics, Better Sync
• New Beta Release Gives Firefox a Shot of Jäger
• Firefox Home Syncs Your Faves to Your iPhone
• Try Firefox 4 with Tabs in the Title Bar

View full post on Webmonkey

original illustration – public domain

Meet the downside to great works of literature being in the public domain: A sanitized version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in the offing.

This new version, edited by a man named Alan Gribben who is actually a scholar of Mark Twain’s work, will remove the “n-word” and replace it with “slave,” and replace “injun” with “indian.” That anyone would consider himself worthy of re-editing Twain’s work is preposterous on its face; that a Twain scholar would do so is practically unthinkable.

Continue Reading

Supernova in Galaxy UGC 3378 (Image from Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Press Release)

A 10 year old girl from New Brunswick now holds the record for being the youngest person to discover a supernova, according to an announcement by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Press release here. Kathryn Aurora Gray of Fredericton found the Supernova (located in galaxy UGC 3378), while being supervised by her father, Paul Gray and family friend, David Lane.

By the way, this was the 7th supernova discovery Kathryn’s father has been a part of, although his first wasn’t until he’d reached the grizzled age of 22.

From the National Post.

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Image via BBC America

BBC America has announced that David Tennant is engaged to Georgia Moffett. Tennant very popularly played the 10th incarnation of The Doctor on BBC’s long-running Doctor Who. Moffett played his daughter (actually a quasi-clone based on his DNA) in one episode during his tenure. As if that wasn’t strange enough, Moffett is also the real-life daughter of Peter Davison, who played the 5th incarnation of The Doctor. Whether or not you can wrap your head around the space-time implications, we certainly wish them well!

[First spotted thanks to @nerdvana - Jayson Peters, and apologies to Peter Davison for the extra "d" we put in your name. You'll always be Tristan Farnan to us!]

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Woolly, the CSS sheep.

Eric Meyer introduced the web to the concept of a “reset stylesheet.” The goal of a reset stylesheet is to make sure every browser starts from the same set of display defaults, correcting differences in default line heights, margins, heading fonts and so on. Now Meyer has updated what’s probably the web’s most popular reset stylesheet, the famous “Eric Meyer Reset.”

You can grab the latest version of Meyer’s reset stylesheet from his website (note that Meyer’s main reset page still hosts V1, for the updated version you’ll need to copy and paste from the linked blog post).

The latest version of Meyer’s reset stylesheet dispenses with a few CSS rules that probably aren’t necessary anymore — for example, the font selector in the first reset rule — and adds some new rules to handle HTML5 elements in older browsers.

Meyer also corrects what he considers the biggest mistake of the original code — setting :focus to invisible. The idea behind the rule was sound — reset :focus so authors can easily define their own styles. The problem was that too many people did not define their own focus styles. That meant thousands of websites that simply copied and pasted (or hotlinked) Meyer’s stylesheet, without really reading it, wiped out all the :focus styles.

In the new version Meyer has commented out the entire :focus rule to avoid obliterating :focus styles on sites that simply copy and paste the code. Those that take the time to uncomment the rule will, one hopes, notice the comment telling them they need to define their own visible focus rule.

If you’ve been using the also very popular HTML5 Doctor reset stylesheet, you’ll probably notice some similarities in Meyer’s new effort. Both make excellent starting points for those that have grown accustomed to reset stylesheets. Just keep in mind that Meyer’s update is still a beta release so, as he writes, “use with caution and test with abandon.”

See Also:

• Simplify CSS 3 With Online Code Generators
• Dealing With Browser Differences in CSS 3
• Advice From the CSS Guru: Embrace Prefixes
• CSS: Should You Use a Framework or DIY

View full post on Webmonkey

If you’re a fan of Ticket to Ride, the excellent train-building board game from Days of Wonder, here’s something new to look forward to. Alvin and Dexter is a new expansion coming in February which will work with any of the Ticket to Ride games. Alvin is an alien in a flying saucer, and Dexter is a Godzilla-ish giant reptile, and both of them are to coming to wreak a little havoc on the maps.

Whenever Alvin or Dexter is in a city, no routes can be built into or out of that city until the monster is moved by using locomotive cards. Plus, at the end of the game any destination tickets that include Alvin’s and Dexter’s locations are worth half the points, and you also get extra points for moving them the most times during the game.

I haven’t gotten to play it yet, but expect a write-up later on. For now, read up on Ticket to Ride if you haven’t played it before, and then head to the Days of Wonder website for more info on the upcoming expansion.

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Top: Maximized window with tabs in the titlebar. Bottom: Normal tab bar

Firefox 4 has entered the home stretch. The recent release of beta 8 added the last of the major new features for Firefox 4, including a new add-ons interface, better syncing and more hardware accelerated WebGL support. From now until the final release later this year, Firefox development will primarily focus on squashing bugs and refining the user interface.

The Firefox 4 UX roadmap outlines the user interface changes that Mozilla is hoping to complete before Firefox 4 is released. Most of the changes are very small — improving the contrast of the type in the URL bar or tweaking the session restore dialog — but there’s one welcome change in the list that many Firefox fans have been clamoring for — tabs in the titlebar.

The idea of saving screen real estate by smashing tabs up into the title bar of the browser windows started with Google Chrome and has since been copied by other browsers and applications.

It’s a tiny tweak, probably not more than a few dozen pixels are saved, but it can make all the difference when you’re using a netbook or other small screen device. Putting tabs at the top of the browser window also adheres to Fitts’ law, which says that the closer things are to the edge of the screen, the easier they are to click.

In Firefox’s case Fitts’ law seems to be the main reason for the new look — tabs are only pushed into the title bar when the window is maximized, making it easier to flick the cursor to the top of the screen and click a tab.

The new tabs-in-the-title-bar look is expected to arrive in Firefox 4 beta 9 (which will be the next release in Firefox’s beta cycle), but you can preview it today by grabbing a special build of Firefox for Windows and Linux. The builds are the work of Firefox developer Bill Gianopoulos, and as such are not official releases nor are they supported by Mozilla.

Also bear in mind that the code used to create these experimental versions of Firefox comes from Firefox’s nightly builds, which means there may be more bugs than you’ll find in the latest Firefox beta. That said, these builds worked just fine for us on Windows 7 and XP.

If you’ve got a small screen or have been looking for a way to make Firefox’s tabs a bit more like Google Chrome’s, grab the experimental builds. If you prefer to wait for something official, Firefox 4 beta 9 should be released in the relatively near future.

See Also:

• Firefox 4 Beta 8 Arrives With Faster Graphics, Better Sync
• New Privacy Icons Aim to Save You From Yourself
• New Beta Release Gives Firefox a Shot of Jäger

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A little more than two years ago, Little Big Planet was released to rave reviews. The game was lauded for originality, creativity and – above all else – flat-out fun. Many games might have been undone by all the hype, but LBP ended up exceeding expectations. So it was a no-brainer that we would soon see Little Big Planet 2 and that day is quickly approaching. On January 18, Little Big Planet 2 will be released.

Fortunately, Sony saw fit to get us an advanced copy of the game and after a week of swinging over fire pits, leaping past electrical arcs and endlessly customizing my Sackboy, I can happily say Little Big Planet 2 is better than ever. Read on for a preview of what this genre-breaking game holds in store for you.

On the surface, Little Big Planet 2 isn’t radically different from its predecessor. You still begin exploration from your pod, you can still customize, well, pretty much everything and environments still loudly boast mouthwatering colors and textures you want to reach out and touch. So, it’s very similar, but, at the same time, the game feels bigger and more evolved.

To begin with, Story mode actually has a cohesive narrative and an overall goal this time. As you trot around your globe, you are guided through a story line that boasts incredibly unique territories. For example, early on, a series of levels have a bakery theme. Frosting, cookies, cupcakes, and jam become elements that both aid you and hinder your progress. The Story mode has more than 40 levels, playable by up to four players at once, either online or offline.

There are many new elements – stickers, objects, wallpaper and more – but Sackboy also has some new gadgets at his disposal. The grapple hook is back and you’ll be able to throw objects and characters with power gloves and shoot out darn near any object with a customizable Creatinator.

Creation and customization were a big part of Little Big Planet and an even bigger part of the sequel. In LBP2, you are given an ample toolset to build your own levels (and can win more objects and pieces as you complete the Story mode of the game). Along with all the usual materials, the game gives the user Filters to change overall mood and colors with the flick of a switch, holographic materials to create HUDs and the ability to make more complex logic connections that can be hidden away on circuit boards. Plus, it all looks better. Little Big Planet 2 has a revamped graphics engine that makes all the visual elements look more lush and vibrant than ever before.

The possibilities are literally endless: a Space Invaders game, an 8 bit binary calculator, and a level from the recent Mirror’s Edge game are just a few of the 2.5 million user-generated levels available to download and play. (All user-generated levels from LBP can be played on LBP2, along with any downloaded levels or items.) Or you can upload your own and invite others to play. In the sequel, you can even link downloaded levels together, so you don’t have to return to your pod between levels.

Additionally, a new camera system will allow you to make complete cut scenes. Camera position, movement, transition and timings (as well as voice overs) are all up to you. Look for Sackboy versions of popular movie scenes to hit YouTube soon.

The game has a lot to offer. While we finished the Story mode in around eight hours, we still need to go back and collect quite a few goodies. But even Story mode offers a lot of replay value. While I enjoy trying to attain 100%, my kids like decorating the levels with stickers and aren’t really concerned with reaching the end. (I should mention that any LBP game session is littered with endless amounts of giggling, while everyone sits around watching the others play.)

But even when you’ve found every bubble, sticker and hidden object and you’ve broken every record and set every high score, there is still a virtually endless amount of gameplay. You could spend years playing community generated levels and still never reach the end. These never-ending game options, coupled with the astounding visuals and wonderful opportunities for creativity (and flat-out fun) make Little Big Planet 2 one of the best games you can pick up this year.

Little Big Planet 2 is $59.99 and available exclusively on the PlayStation 3. The game will be released on January 18.

Disclosure: Sony sent GeekDad a review copy of this game.

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I love iPhone games. They’re cheap, you can play for a few minutes in between other tasks, or with one hand while you’re eating lunch. They just don’t take the investment—financially, emotionally, temporally—that typical video games do. I guess they’re ideal for my stay-at-home-parenting lifestyle because I don’t have to fire up the TV and console down in the basement; I can just play a little wherever I happen to be.

But there are some iPhone apps that are just a bit more addictive than others. Even though they only take a few minutes (or less) to play a game, I find myself absorbed in them for much longer than I intended. Often I’ll be in the middle of writing up a review, pull out my iPod just to check a few details … and, oh, look at the time! So, just to give you the same time-sucking disadvantages I’ve been subjected to, here are some of my favorite apps that keep me up long past my bedtime.

• Pirates vs. Ninjas vs. Zombies vs. Pandas
• Exclusion Zone: Anti-Air Warfare
• Cookie Rush
• … and a few others

Disclaimer: I received free downloads of these apps for review purposes.

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