Hey everyone and welcome to this very special episode of Developer Tea. Today is going to be a special episode because I have some news that I'm going to be sharing with you all. I've been able to meet with quite a few people in the tech industry and I've got a lot of awesome news, kind of breaking news, that nobody else is going to be sharing just yet because I've had some exclusive access. I don't know if you know this, but being a podcast host immediately gives you access to everyone in the tech industry. And so I've had a chance to speak with some of the industry's most important people, including CEOs of many of the companies that you might know about. So I'm going to share some news with you that you might not know yet. The first news. The first news is about Microsoft's new browser, Spartan. Spartan is going to natively show suggestions to links on Stack Overflow when you have errors that occur in your console. Now if you don't know what Spartan is, it's the new browser that is going to replace Internet Explorer. And it's being created by Microsoft and everybody's really excited about it for good reason. And all of the errors that occur in your console are going to... to come with a link to a relevant Stack Overflow post. Of course, this is going to negatively affect performance of the site. But as it turns out, 90% of the time, developers are already copying these error codes and pasting them into Google. Microsoft kind of wants to eliminate that Google-powered middleman and take you right to Stack Overflow, which is where you are probably going to go anyway. So that's a really cool feature. Microsoft also knows that even though... they are introducing a new browser, you will still have to deal with the old browser compatibility issues. And so for this reason, Microsoft has decided to provide an extension to their Office 360 subscription service that allows you to tie your browser to your Office subscription and sign up for paid access to older browser rendering engines. And by default, Spartan will provide a helpful alert message to all users on each site they load to encourage them to install the IE8 rendering engine in case the sites they are visiting just haven't been optimized for Spartan's advanced features that they are busy creating. So this kind of backwards compatibility, it's a standard that Microsoft has always been committed to. So the amazing work that Microsoft has done in the web browser industry, we can just look forward to that kind of commitment in the future. So the Apple Watch team, they are... They are the first team to launch the IE8 rendering engine. I had a chance to speak with someone there. And they announced that they will be releasing a retro version of the Apple Watch. Now, I don't know if you saw the Apple Watch keynote, but they didn't announce this retro version because they wanted to wait and announce it later down the road. This watch will have two unique modes. One is the classic unchangeable watch face. Now, this specific watch face has been handcrafted to exactly replicate the watch Steve Jobs wore. And this is just kind of a throwback to Steve Jobs. And then the other mode is the iPod shuffle simulation mode. Now, the watch does not have connectivity with the iPhone, but it does have a single USB-C port that will allow users to charge the watch and then add up to four gigabytes of songs to the watch through iTunes. So in the private press release, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the limited edition retro watch unprecedented. To get the retro version of the watch, you just simply pay an extra $100 above the normal Apple Watch price, which sounds like such a good deal to me because retro versions of things don't come around very often. So check that out. Finally, I'd like to discuss a few unique features of ECMAScript 8 that I'm looking forward to. Of course, as we all know, all functions of ECMAScript 6 are scheduled to be fully available within the next two or three weeks. So it's time to go ahead and look ahead beyond ECMAScript 7, which will probably be available by the time that Spartan is released, as we were talking about earlier. And let's look at ECMAScript 8. I'm going to call it ES8 just for short. With ES8, we're going to get a lot of amazing features that users have been asking for for years. ES8 is going to be installable as a plugin, very similar to Flash, the way that Flash worked. Pulling from the major success of Flash, Mozilla has decided to release ES8 under a formalized standard that they will own. So, of course, Firefox will come with the plugin pre-installed, but any browsers looking to bundle the plugin will probably need to purchase a recurring license from Mozilla. And this just keeps everybody happy. Of course, older versions of JavaScript will also be available as fallbacks for users who haven't implemented the plugin. So this is for people who are running Chrome or something like that that haven't caught up, that haven't taken the time to go and download the package and install it. They'll be running the older versions of ECMAScript. So Microsoft and Apple have both said that they will be developing ES8 plugins that are similar to Mozilla's, just slightly different with some syntax things, etc. Except with functionalities that they have decided to add that will better serve their user base. So, for example, Spartan will provide a WYSIWYG API that can transform any DOM element into an editable Microsoft Word widget. And Apple's version of ES8 will only be executed by sites that have deployed their JavaScript applications through their open web store. Now, this is another new thing that Apple is going to probably bring to the table next year. And the way it works is just like you can sign up to be a developer, of iOS applications, or a developer of Mac applications, you can now sign up to be a developer of web applications. And these applications will be executable in the browser, including in Safari. So if you want your web applications to work in Safari, you're going to need to go and check out that subscription service that Apple will most likely be providing. And that will give you access to ECMAScript 8. So ES8 will also provide a native implementation of Parallax and a ScrollPoint API that will allow even beginner developers to fundamentally change how the scroll bar works. So I know that a lot of people are really excited about this one because sometimes it's really difficult to get Parallax working even though there are so many implementations out there that have already done it. So this API, is going to make it just a drop-in, like a plug-in, kind of like jQuery, except it's going to be native. Now I'm really excited about this. It's going to increase the quality of user experience and everybody's website is going to work in a unique, new way. And you'll never know what the scroll bar is going to do when you go from one website to the next because everybody's going to be implementing new scrolling functionality. Another powerful and important feature that I'm looking forward to in these ESA plug-ins is that each and every feature of ESA will be optional for users. So in a configuration section, whenever you are installing the ESA plug-in, you'll be able to decide which pieces of ESA you would like to be enabled for your browser. This level of granular control will make each and every browser different, which is just an incredible advancement in web development. Now as a front-end developer, you might be worried that this will be difficult to deal with because everybody's browser will have different functionality. But luckily, what ESA is going to do is modify the user agent string so that all of the functionalities that the user has enabled will be in that user string. So all you have to do is just check that user agent string to see what functionality the user has enabled or disabled. So last but not least, the folks at Twitter have teamed up with all of the major providers of this different ESA plug-ins to create a way for users to constantly share their camera and audio feeds with the world transparently. So anytime a user opens their browser, if they have an ESA plug-in installed, it will automatically and transparently share the location, the video feed, and the audio feed of that user's device with the world using the ESA plug-in. So that's a great way to do that. the ESA plug-in. So let's go ahead and show you what's amazing is the user isn't even interrupted from what they're doing to confirm that they want the stream to start. Twitter and all of these ESA providers have decided that most people probably do want this stream to start. Another amazing advancement is that the technology also uses advanced facial recognition. It basically sends stuff over sockets to Twitter. All of that data gets sent to Twitter and then it's sent to Twitter. And then Twitter analyzes to see if it recognizes the people in that video or in that still frame as well as vocal recognition. So anyone who is around you when you open your browser will also be identified and immediately mentioned publicly on Twitter so that we're all just more connected. Of course, Twitter and ESA want you to know that they respect your privacy. So they're going to make sure that they put all of this information in the terms of service in the ESA plug-in installed. Of course, if you'd prefer not to be seen on these live streams, it's definitely important that you just stay at home and never go out in public so that no one will accidentally stream your identity live for the world to see. I hope that you've enjoyed this very special version of Developer Tea. If you have any questions, thoughts, or comments, you can get at me on Twitter at at Developer Tea or you can email me at developertea at gmail dot com. You can also join everybody else in the comments on developertea dot com. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, enjoy your tea.