Over the past few years designing and developing I’ve come to rely on a number of tools. Most of these are obvious like Photoshop and Firebug, however I’ve come to realize that a few tools I use aren’t as well known.

Mobile application development has many challenges. The announcement of Google Gears on Mobile Devices will help solve the problems of network connectivity, network latency, and limited bandwidth.

SitePen was in the news recently: Simplexity Rising: Web usability reveals itself to be a game of hide-and-seek covers our session, “Your Mom, 2.0”, for the upcoming SXSW 2008, and offers some choice quotes about building web apps that are feature rich yet easy to use. At this session, we’ll be discussing the things that make an app that’s easy for Mom to use but still delivers the features everyone wants to use.

From a recent interview with Kevin Hakman on Ajaxian: “I personally love the ability to write a script that runs on the server, but call it from the client as if it were running on the client. In this case Jaxer handles all the sync or async communications for you transparently, and soon will provide end-to-end debug capabilities as well.

While the media has beat us to the punch with countless “on AIR” puns (and the list of companies using the word air grows), we completed work to make the Dojo Toolkit compatible with Adobe AIR in time for its recent launch. It’s a platform for web app deployment that’s somewhat similar to a browser: web applications are deployed to the desktop using AIR, giving web applications some of the capabilities of desktop apps while retaining the ability to use web app development tools like the Dojo Toolkit.

I’ve just had a whirlwind trip to Stockholm for JFokus 2008. It was a focused conference with some really interesting presentations.

With the release of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update, Apple has given us the ability to create custom “webclip” icons (think “favicon” for your iPhone and iPod Touch) by adding a special file called “apple-touch-icon.png” to the root of your website (same place as the favicon). As an example, to the left is the new icon for SitePen.

As we kick off 2008, I’m pleased and extremely excited to announce that we’ve added some awesome, new talent to the SitePen team. Eugene Lazutkin is highly respected in Dojo circles for his work on Drag-n-drop, GFX (2D and 3D), Charting, and many other crucial 0.9 and 1.0 features.

In response to recent articles by Andy Clarke and David Baron, Alex recently said that the W3C cannot save us. The most significant point being made is that you cannot standardize the future, and you should not punish those who attempt to push the envelope through experimentation and invention.