Firefox 3.6 FileAPI Demo

If you do any kind of front-end web development work, I’d encourage you to follow the Mozilla Hacks blog. Today’s post is a really interesting one – reading EXIF data from a JPEG file that has been dropped on the page from the desktop.

This is capability is due to the new File API that is in Firefox 3.6. This API allows you to asynchronously read a file into memory and access the data. The blending of standard desktop applications and web applications continues.

Via Mozilla Hacks.

Two New Software Updates

There are two software updates that came out recently.

1. Mozilla Thunderbird version 3. I’ve used the Thunderbird Betas and RCs ever since they’ve been available and have, for the most part, been quite pleased. It’s been so long since I’ve used Thunderbird 2, that I don’t really remember how it looked. Thunderbird 3’s new tabs and search functionality are hard to live without now.

2. Adobe Air 2 beta. I haven’t used that many Air apps – mainly as there aren’t many out there. But, I have used a few. I think Jonathon Snook’s Snitter was an Air app. I used that for a while until he ceased development of it. I also have used ExtJS’s Documentation Air app a few times. The big updates are better profiling for CPU and memory and a Webkit update giving it the latest HTML5 and CSS3 features.

Mozilla Weave

I recently read about a new Mozilla Labs project called Weave. The basic premise is that it will store information securely on Mozilla’s servers. Currently, it only backs up bookmarks and browsing history. Two of the many things that the Google Browser Sync add-on already does. It’s a very early on 0.1 prototype release, so there is still a lot that can come of it. Eventually, it will be able to back up anything an add-on would like to store remotely. That’s the theory at least. Overall, I’m fairly interested in the project; I’m curious about how Weave will play with technologies like OpenID.