A recent survey in the Register (http://is.gd/cfviE) has highlighted that a whopping 26% of the internet’s video streams are now available in HTML5 instead of the usual Flash.  This also means that the same percentage of videos can be watched using Steve Jobs’ devices.

Those who have read an earlier post will be aware the Google’s Chrome browser is growing in popularity – fast.  It has been benchmarked as the fastest browser, and being a Google product, offers numerous solutions to the web developer and SEO expert.

Like FireFox, Chrome has a range of addons that can be installed to greatly assist the web development process.  The iconic ‘Web Developer’ toolbar that has been available for FireFox, has now been ported to Chrome, offering the same functionality and flexibility as the Mozilla version.

An interesting addition to the Chrome browser comes along courtesy of Google themselves.  Chrome SEO allows web designers to get on-the-fly SEO information direct in the browser.  Google analytics and page-rank analysis has never been easier.  We expect to see much more from Google in this respect, so watch this space.

Some may be aware that NetTuts+ recently explained how many simple command-line tools can be used to greatly simplify web design tasks.  One of which, the use of the tool grep, warrants further analysis.

Firstly, what is grep?  It is a unix command line tool that stands for ‘global regular expression print’.  I  practice, it is used to hunt down a particularly string of characters, and return (print) the results.

How is this useful for web designers?  I hear you all ask.  Imagine you are working on a project, and remember a string of code that you wrote a while back that would work wonders in your current page.  You cannot, for the life of you, remember where the code was written, or even when.  You spend hours hunting around on your hard drive and Google and still cannot find the elusive code.  You give up.  Sound familiar?

Here is where grep can come in extremely useful.  By powering up the application ‘Terminal’ (under Utilities in Mac OS X and under the main program menu in Linux) you get a shell prompting a command input.  You initiate grep and the arguments that you desire.  For example:

$> grep -iR madeUpFunction ./

Would search the current directory for any file that contains the string madeUpFunction and return you the name and location of the elusive file…

To say that this use of grep is only the tip of the iceberg is an understatement, grep is a wholly powerful tool that has been improving and expanding since the inauguration of UNIX in the early days of computing.  For example, it can conduct searches that span multiple drives, pipe the output to a printer, even generate reports and documents based on criteria for you.  Check out NetTuts+ for more information.

According to the latest NetApplications survery, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has demonstrated it’s first ever drop below the 60% market share threshold.  Google’s Chrome browser has a increased share of 6.73% while Apple’s Safari has a respectable 4.72%.  This trend is looking set to continue, putting increased pressure on Microsoft to improve and expand upon it’s renowned platform.

In a recent interview in the New York Times, Google’s lead engineer behind Android has delivered a blow to Apple by announcing that the next Android implementation (2.2) will include support for Adobe’s Flash format.  Apple’s firmly reluctant stance to embrace the Flash platform has constantly been met with widespread criticism and disfavour, with users longing for the ability to stream video and music from Flash-powered web applications.  Whether the plugin will be pre-installed or an optional update, Google feels that this will raise the image of the growing mobile platform.

Despite all of this however, Google has never been an outward supported of Adobe’s Flash, in fact, quite the opposite.  And they are not alone.  They join the coalition of Apple, Microsoft, Opera, and Mozilla in an ongoing battle to oust the internet of reliance on Flash, by working on solutions in HTML, CSS, and technologies such as WebGL, O3D, and JavaScript in order to reproduce (and improve on) the abilities of Flash.