Google have today announced the launched a new website, called HTML5 Rocks, showcasing the power of HTML5 and related technologies.

The site currently includes nine tutorials demonstrating how to utilise some of HTML5’s new features, along with an in-depth HTML5 powered presentation on the new language.

“Because HTML5 and its related technologies cover so much ground, it can be a real a challenge to get up to speed on them. That’s why today we’re sharing HTML5 Rocks, a great new resource for developers and teams looking to put HTML5 to use today, including more information on specific features and when to use them in your apps” wrote Paul Irish, Google Chrome Developer Relations.

I encourage developers to dive in and check it out. An all HTML5 web is sure to see some interesting sites and applications.

Opera Software have released Opera 10.50 Beta 1 to the public, with a slew of stability and bug fixes since the first Alpha release.

New in Beta 1 is Aero Glass, Aero Peek, and Jumplists support for Windows 7 users, along with the new Opera Carakan JavaScript engine.

Early reviews and benchmarking shows Opera 10.50 is the new speed king, beating Google’s Chrome by as much as 20% in some tests.

A full list of changes can be found in the changelog, while Opera 10.50 Beta 1 can be downloaded from the Opera Next website.

On que, Opera have released Opera 10.50 pre-alpha to the public.

So far, the browser is showing a lot of promise, with the new Carakan JavaScrpt engine being over 7 times faster than Opera 10.

Also new in this release is the Presto 2.5 rendering engine, with greater support for HTML5 and CSS3 elements.

New graphics accelerated rendering support is also added with an updated Vega graphics engine, which will safely fall back to the CPU if need be.

Opera 10.50 also adds Windows 7 integration for PC users, and a new unified toolbar for Mac users.

Private Tab and Private Window are also new, allowing users to open a private tab or window where all history and cookies are forgotten on close.

Currently only available Mac and Windows, download links can be found in the Opera Labs.

Google has pushed out a new Chrome release to the stable, taking Chrome 3 to version 3.0.195.24.

The update fixes one security hole in the V8 JavaScript engine which is rated as high severity and could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code in the Google Chrome sandbox.

As usual, the browser will be pushed out to current Chrome users, or can be downloaded directly from the Google Chrome website for new users.

At today’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced the immediate availability of Safari 4 final for both Mac and PC.

Safari 4 contains over 150 new features, including a screen reader, basic HTML5 support, and a much improved JavaScript engine. A full list of new features can be found online.

The latest release is now the first browser not in beta to score a full 100% in Acid3 tests, which tests a browsers support for JavaScript and CSS3.

Safari 4 can be downloaded from the Apple Safari website.

Here are a few articles that may be of interest – yet don’t all deserve their own post:

Can IE8 Really Tempt You Back To Microsoft? (PC World)
How JavaScript became a browser war battle-ground (ZDNet UK)
Is the geek love affair with Firefox waning? (ZDNet)
Firefox proves a hit with web enthusiasts (VNUNet.com)

WebKit passing Acid3

The WebKit development team has just passed another huge milestone. The WebKit browser engine used in Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome now fully passes the Acid3 test.

The Acid3 test checks how well browsers comply with the latest standards, in particular JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM).

Maciej Stachowiak of the WebKit team attributes this feat to “recent speedups in JavaScript, DOM and rendering.”

Unfortunately, it will be a few months before we see this in Safari and Chrome, but while you wait you can download a nightly build of WebKit and test this for yourself.

Google has just released a new version of their Gears project which now has support for OS X and Safari.

Google Gears “is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser“.

With Gears, web applications can naturally interact with your desktop, JavaScript performance is increased, and you can store data locally in a fully search-able database.

Gears-enabled websites include Google Docs, WordPress an YouTube Video Uploader.

A full run down on new features can be found in the Google Gears Blog, and you can download a copy of Google Gears from http://gears.google.com/.

With the release of Google Chrome, John Resig has performed JavaScript benchmark tests on a wide variety of browsers on both Windows Vista and XP. These browsers include:

• Chrome 0.2
• Safari 4
• Safari 3.1.2
• Opera 9.5.2
• Firefox 3.1
• Firefox 3.0.1
• IE7
• IE8 Beta 2

Testing, using three benchmarking tools; SunSpider, V8 Benchmark, and Dromaeo, has produced some interesting results. Results show that Google Chrome is ahead in all but one benchmark test – very impressive for a browser that is still in its early beta stages. It shows the performance of the new V8 JavaScript engine and the power of the WebKit rendering engine found in both Chrome and Safari.

You can read the full JavaScript Performance Rundown article to see the other (not-so)surprissing results.