I'm quite fed up from Firefox, Chrome, Opera and all the leading browsers with too much features that I (we) don't even use.
I know there are a lot of browsers out there, open source, minimalistic etc. Can you recommend a good browser that uses the least CPU/RAM? It doesn't need to have a lot of features.
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Most questions about this topic ask "How can I use language X or library Y to get hardware information".
I want to know if this is possible AT ALL using only a browser without installing third party .exe's which are scary for most people and today are automatically labelled as "dangerous" by chrome.
Obviously i'd prefer not to use extensions, but if its possible using extensions, i'd like to know.
Generally speaking, no, you cannot get direct hardware information on a user for security reasons, and this is unlikely to change as it would be a serious privacy issue (specific hardware could be used to uniquely identify specific users).
You can get some limited information though, like the OS type, version, and architecture found in the user agent string and navigator.platform. You can also feature-detect certain functionality like touch screens, or WebGL graphics card comparability.
Generally, your webpages shouldn't need to know information about a user's hardware, and should "just work" on a variety of hardware, even hardware you don't know about or has yet to be invented. If there is something specific you think you need to detect, I'd recommend asking a specific question about that feature.
is it possible to detect the color temperature settings of a monitor or display with css, javascript, html5, silverlight, java, flash, or anything that could be used on the web?
no problem if it's not working for all the cases, I am interested in everything.
if it is not possible right now at all, is there work in progress for this field (under what name)?
No, there isn't any way to detect this from web-based tools. In fact, there isn't really any way to detect this (in general) from a computer at all. You can change your monitor's settings all you like and your computer never knows the difference. It just sends the video signal down the cord and doesn't really care what the monitor does with it.
There is some information that goes back from the monitor to the computer, but in general color temperature is not included in that information.
However, some platforms that are more integrated, like many Apple products, may have a way to get this information from the system, but it would likely need to be a native application that has access to low-level system APIs, which most frameworks (especially web ones), including those you mentioned, tend not to have access to.
I just came across Google Native Client
Now, it looks really interesting that they ported Quake to run on a Browser and you can run C++ code on a browser to process things more quickly, but I am trying to understand, what is the practical usage of NaCl?
What is the vision behind this by Google? To run software as a service on their "cloud" OS..err browser?
For example: Run Photosphop CS 5 on your browser?!
Anything you can do with ActiveX, but far more secure.
Elaboration:
Google Native Client allows you to run machine code locally and natively, but sandboxed insofar as only allowing access to protected memory regions and disabling exploits in the machine code relating to processor errata (certain sequences of machine code operations which act strangely on particular processors). Additionally, certain APIs are available (such as OpenGL) and there is interprocess communication with Javascript running with the page, allowing webapps which have a fast, powerful native backend.
It would be quite difficult to use the Win32 API to generate any native windows or controls with Google Native Client, whereas it'd be probably a bit easier with ActiveX. However, ActiveX is generally used with things like "Quake Live" to provide a fast, native experience for the player, and additionally for Internet Explorer 'plug-ins' -- the Flash plug-in is ActiveX, for instance, and uses native code (i.e., the plugin is compiled to machine code).
I've been doing a lot of work with Flex/Flash/Away3D lately, and have started looking into Unity3D and Processing, but I'm still waiting for the day (hopefully soon) when you can build Wii/PS3 like UIs that can be used from most computers. It would be amazing if I could just add simple lighting effects on panels that had 3D textures, but it seems like that's gonna be a while.
I keep hearing about flash getting openGL support, but haven't seen anything certain yet. Unity3D seems to be the best thing so far, but maybe you guys have heard some behind-the-scenes news.
What platform/language should we start learning if we want to be ready when full 3D support is released?
Well, it currently exists in WPF3D with XBAP, in IE. That's probably the best option currently on the market.
Google's O3D API is probably the most promising for the future, though, since they're pushing hard for an open in-browser 3D standard.
Java applets have had OpenGL support for decades!
WebGL by the Khronos Group, who are also responsible for the OpenGL and OpenGL ES standards, seems to be promising:
First announced at the Game Developers
Conference in March of 2009, the WebGL
working group includes many industry
leaders such as AMD, Ericsson, Google,
Mozilla, NVIDIA and Opera. The WebGL
working group is defining a JavaScript
binding to OpenGL® ES 2.0 to enable
rich 3D graphics within a browser on
any platform supporting the OpenGL or
OpenGL ES graphics standards.
I've worked on a 3D Web technology for several years; see here (requires a small, safe plugin; windows only for now). The company linked above doesn't exist anymore, but I'm currently working on a new, more open version of the technology anyway (will be called 'open3dweb').
The idea of the 3D Web fascinates me, but I'm still not sure how widely used it will become. It has huge 'cool' factor, but I think we're still working out where its actually useful, and in which ways. I believe live Web browsing on a surface in a 3D world, and World Portals linking together separate 3D websites are both game changing technologies for interactive 3D, but its not yet clear how much 3D is a game changer for the Web...
I'm looking for options to replace and old application running in a Psion Workabout mx handheld, developed in OPL.
The handheld and the application (developed more than 10 years ago) are both working fine
by now, but the device is discontinued, and each time is harder to find replacement parts for it.
Then I started to look to the newer Psion handheld models, but they are expensive and
filled with features that I don't need at all (color screen, barcode reader, ...). Also,
they look a lot less rugged than the actual Workabout mx that I'm using. I had to replace
around 50 handhelds, and i'm looking for good options with this features:
Reasonable priced
Fast numeric data entry, optionally alphanumeric data (not usual)
Readable screen, with at least 7 lines of text visible. No color needed
Rugged
Replacement parts available
Reasonable development environment (handheld emulator, IDE, minimal GUI support, PC / handheld connectivity)
Maybe an old mobile phone with Java support can do the work?
Please indicate the suggested device model and the development options available for it.
Thanks in advance
Perhaps a compaq ipaqs may be suitable replacements, but I'm not sure they make those anymore.
I was also thinking an iPod iTouch (serious suggestion!) may be a good device to get (cheapest version £165) Its a good development environment (Objective-C, free compiler download, although you'll probably have to register with apple to get your apps. a certificate so it works on the device). This may be too expensive, and far above the requirements you're looking for.
If you're thinking about java enabled phones (I'm not sure what you're performance requirements are, but sounds quite minimal if its a port of a 10 year old app) you want to be careful, some mobile java implementations won't support floating point arithmetic directly, you may have to implement a fixed point math library. Somes phone Java VMs vary quite dramatically performance wise too, again this may not be your primary concern. The mobile phone development route may be a valid one, if you're assuming that your off-site engineers all have company phones anyway!