Who's @ Google I/O - spotlight on the Open Web

Web developers face many limitations when trying to develop web applications that match the functionality of desktop applications. Many people are working on removing these limitations and helping make the open web an even more powerful platform. Browsers have recently focused on and significantly improved JavaScript performance, and new HTML5 and related APIs are currently being formulated and implemented, giving developers even more capabilities. Through efforts like O3D, Chromium, and Native Client, we want to contribute our technology and web development expertise to developing and promoting open web standards that will ultimately help developers build better apps and make their users happy.

Here are some of the developers who'll be at Google I/O (only 19 days away) and speaking or demoing their products built on open web technologies:

• Browser Perspectives: An Open Discussion
  Web developers are asking more from today's browsers — more speed, more functionality, and a greater ability to build web applications that make users happy. To talk about how browser development happens with respect to new standards, such as what influences decisions around which new APIs to implement first and how to implement new features in the face of still-changing standards proposals, we have a panel with representatives from Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera. The discussion will be moderated by Mike Schroepfer, VP of Engineering at Facebook.


• Bespin Project (Mozilla Labs)
  Bespin is a Mozilla Labs experiment that proposes an open, extensible web-based framework for code editing that also promotes the use of open standards. The Bespin web code editor is built on HTML5 technology. Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith will be leading a session, Bespin and the Open Web, where they talk about their experiences.
  


• Opera Software
  Opera is actively involved in contributing and deploying open web technologies. Specifically, they are currently helping specify GeoLocation, HTML 5, CSS 3, cross-device widgets and SVG, amongst others, and dev.opera.comshowcases techniques and technologies to developers. The Opera Dragonfly developer tools are built using the latest Web technologies. Charles McCathieNevile will be one of the speakers on the Browser Perspectives talk.
  


• Yahoo! Pipes
  Pipes lets users remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. This visual editor allows you to drag pre-configured modules onto its canvas and wire them together. Pipes use the HTML5 <canvas> tag extensively in the Pipes Editor and Pipe thumbnails.


• Large Animal Games
  Large Animal Games has developed over 75 games for a variety of platforms, many of which are fully integrated with OpenSocial. They've developed a cross-network game platform called Toga which enables the simultaneous deployment of games across multiple social networks, including those that support OpenSocial. They're also in the process of developing a game using O3D that will ultimately be integrated with social networks via Toga.


• Crazy Pixel Productions
  Crazy Pixel Productions is a full service 3D animation and game development studio that specializes in top notch art and incredibly immersive worlds. Crazy Pixel has worked on producing art for the O3D Beach demo and is now developing a new game based on O3D.

You can also take a look at our sessions page for a full list of sessions. In particular, sessions under the "Client" track focus on making changes in client products such as browsers to empower the open web platform, implementing HTML5 and related APIs, discussions around 3D and native code, and more. The Sandbox will include engineers of Google product teams that are deploying open web technologies, like the Gmail for mobile HTML5 app, Native Client, Chrome extensions, and O3D.

Google I/O is only 19 days from now - to sign up, go to code.google.com/io!

*Keep up with the latest I/O updates: @googleio.

By Christine Tsai, Google Developer Team