We just had COSCUP, the biggest open source conference in Taiwan, last weekend. This year, MozTW community once again used all its power to overthrow support the COSCUP staff. Mozilla not only sponsored COSCUP but also invited Paul Rouget, Web Evangelist, to Taiwan to give a talk entitled “HTML5 and Friends: intelligence client side” about recent development of HTML5 and its capabilities.

As Paul came here from as far as Berlin, we didn’t want to let go of the chance to have further interaction with him. After Tiramisu Tim Dream, our beloved, full of passion, MozTW Web developer had a discussion with friends from Opera Taiwan, we decided to hold a mini-workshop entitled “Beyond HTML5: Dialogue between Web Developers and Browser Experts” in which Zi Bin Cheah, Web Standards Expert, from Opera would be giving a talk, along with Paul.

Paul firstly introduced HTML5 features that are already implemented, and then the recently announced WebAPI project. The projet includes DOMCrypt for client side encryption/decryption, Notifications for service notification, Mouse Lock/Capture API for game developerment, WebUSB for controlling USB, WebVibrator which sounds just erotic funny, Camera for video capturing, Orientation/Accelerometer for device activities, WebGL/Canvas for displaying, WebTelephony/WebContacts/WebSMS for telecommunication stuff, and WebNFC and so on.

Through this endless series of cutting edge APIs, Mozilla hopes to break the gap between web pages and mobile devices, and finally enables Web developers to build full-fledged (and unimaginable?) services. In the process of developing these APIs, the relevant specifications and prototype implementations will be submitted to W3C in order to turn these APIs into Web standards and benefit everyone in the world.

Zi Bin of Opera then shared several HTML5 demos with us like HTML5 games under hardware acceleration, getUserMedia for getting phone camera image and then CSS3 Transform for ruining the image, WebRTC for implementing Skype Killer video conferencing on Web pages. He also demostrated the potentials of making games using these technologies.
Finally, Zi Bin gave a demo on Opera Dragonfly, the remote bug fighting technology for mobile pages, and once again gave us a *Never Live Demo* lesson.

And then the big show began. The panel had the two speakers and Kenny, the Team Contact of the W3C HTML5 Chinese Interest Group as the moderator. Kenny prepared various intense questions such as “What should Web developers do now that different browsers implement different thing?”, “What benefits do we get by having these new features when we are making Web pages but not Web applications?”, “Among these new features, what makes you the most excited?”, “Mozilla and Google keep inventing new APIs but ignores various features in the HTML5 spec. Why?” Paul and Zi Bin gave excellent answers to these questions.

“People who are passionate about the future of the Web should go deep into it, either via investigating into the technology, experimenting with new features, participating in the community activities, joining discussions in HTML5 Interest Group and so on,” the two speakers reiterated.

(comic illustrating the Beyond HTML5 event by MozTW community member 電腦君(polliwog) )Slides of the two speakers:

Link to the slides, navigate via left/right keys.

We would also like to thank those who helped with the event: from Opera, Peko, from MozTW community Peter, shadowcrow and our Captain Bob, who really wanted to come to the event but didn’t make it due to heavy workload. Poor Bob!

More information:

Opera@COSCUP 2011 and Beyond HTML5 | Opera Taiwan
HTML5 Chinese Interest Group | zibin
HTML5 Slides Module – DZSlides by Paul Rouget

φ Reported by Irvin, correspondent of Mozilla Links Traditional Chinese Edition, and translated by Kenny.

The winners, kekeke, wrote a Firefox extension which allows users to select any keyword on any website and receive a summary of several Yahoo API search results (Flickr, Map, Knowlege Plus, and Lifestyle), without opening a new browser window. More relevant results will display in a stronger colour and users can save for later, or share results with friends.

Today, I’ll be speaking about Firefox 3.1, the new TraceMonkey announcement, and will do a quick overview of the major Mozilla Labs efforts. Tomorrow I’ll speak about Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile project.

Hope to see you there!

• Firefox 3.0.0.x Intel Mac build
• Firefox lzyc build: Firefox G4/G5/Intel optimized build for Mac OSX.
• フォクすけはクリエイティブコモンズが適用されたぬいぐるみ Foxkeh is a Creative Commons licensed plush toy
• AOL Launches Taiwan Portal: AOL? In Asia? That’s very 90′s.
• Rumor: Former Kingsoft CEO Joins Browser Company: English / Chinese
• Asia’s Fight for Web Rights: excellent Rebecca Mackinnon essay in the Far Eastern Economic Review.
• Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang says company is ‘committed to freedom of expression’
• Yahoo’s Yang: No easy answers in China Net-censorship debate

My presentation as it stands right now will use Mozilla as an example of open source in Asia, looking at our situation in both East and South East Asia.  I will try to address Glyn Moody’s question about the weakness of GNU/Linux in Japan, and puncture some myths in the process, but I’m not sure there is a clear answer for this complex question.

I would very much appreciate any information you may have about the success or lack thereof of open source software in Asia.  Feel free to leave me comments here.

Also, if you are attending Lift08, please say hello and introduce yourself to me.  I look forward to meeting fellow Lift 08 attendees and hope to hear from others who are working on open source in Asia.

Jasmina Tesanovic and Gen Kanai added to the speaker program