Heading up to the 2010 release of Frogans technology, this month marks the 10th anniversary for STG Interactive S.A., the company behind the development of Frogans technology. We are very fortunate to have been allowed the time to develop a technology that is robust and scalable for meeting the full demands of the Internet community, and also to prepare our company for rapid, stable and long-term growth.

Frogans technology as a new layer of the Internet was conceived from the start to address the problems arising from the Web’s lack of simplicity and security for publishers, developers and end-users. These problems were already underway in the mid-90s. But if anyone else was alarmed, no one was taking the right fundamental steps: Superior integration of online content creation, browsing and distribution.

The principles of security, stability and neutrality apply not only to Frogans technology, but to STG Interactive also. We have always planned for the long term, whether it involves building an economic model, developing our industrial base, managing intellectual property or building our team, while respecting the legitimate and various interests throughout the Internet community.

Today, due in part by the Web browser wars, and now with the proliferation of networked device platforms, the Web is more fragmented than ever. The Frogans layer of the Internet will bring easy, standards-based publishing solutions for desktop, mobile and innumerable other devices. This is made possible through ten years of achievement and maturation – probably the Frogans layer’s greatest asset to date.

In the meantime, how about some candles?

I was at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas recently. I got the impression that the wireless industry could well use an explosion in mobile content creation to come along. It hasn’t happened yet, and here are three reasons why:

1) The mobile Web. People are not crashing the gates to redo their existing websites, or create new ones, in mobile-friendly WAP format. Maybe it’s because of the unpredictability of WAP’s display on different platforms and devices. Maybe it’s because they are waiting for easier and more universal standards to come along. Maybe it’s because WAP just seems so 90s.

2) Mobile apps. Imagine that instead of just authoring content into Web pages, every site was in its own custom browser which you installed on your computer. That’s a bit the logic behind mobile apps, and this is justified when rich content, like games and video, is concerned. But there is a hefty price tag for their initial development, for porting them to different devices and for updating them regularly. Plus the store-based distribution model (find-it, download-it, install-it) is very restrictive. All this means that this will never be an online publishing option for the vast majority of us.

3) Frogans technology is not yet launched. Frogans technology will basically fill that enormous gap between the mobile Web and mobile apps. This will be the only format which simply allows you to author once and have the same online content display securely and identically on all supported devices. Plus, it’s a format that is perfectly adapted for touchscreen phones. Frogans sites are looked-up for navigation via their frogans addresses, so once your Frogans Player is installed, the (exploding number of) frogans sites of the Universe will be at your fingertips.

What’s really funny is that these same frogans sites will also be navigated on desktop computers using the same technology. That’s really funny.

I was asked how to open an LTF (“Leap to Frogans”) file. An LTF file is what we call a frogans short-cut. It’s a small file that tells the Frogans Player to open a particular frogans site. If you open one in a text editor, you’ll see something like this:

<leaptofrogans address="frogans*Demo"/>

If you have the Frogans Player installed on your computer, then double-clicking on an LTF file will make the Frogans Player open the frogans site at the frogans address written in the file.

The only version of the Frogans Player that has been available was a Windows-only beta, released 2005. We’re no longer distributing it, but are currently developing the new cross-platform version (desktop and mobile). So for now, you’ll have to wait until the new Frogans Player gets released before you can really put an LTF file to use.

For more on frogans short-cuts, see…

- its application media type information on the IANA website

- LTF extension information at FileExt.com

- page 79 of the FSDL 2.1 Specifications (attn: FSDL 3.0 will be a major revision)

Have a stratospheric one!

Frogans has been leading a double life. I’ve been itching to come clean for weeks, but didn’t quite know how to put it. Here goes: It’s not just for the desktop anymore!

That’s right. Frogans has always been intended to also work on mobile phones and other tiny-screened devices. For crying out loud, isn’t it obvious? With a 320 by 240 pixel maximum display size, you can’t say that the writing wasn’t on the wall!

That’s not to say that I haven’t been sincere about how cool frogans mini-sites will be on the desktop. It’s still as true as ever. No other format for online content goes so far for enabling harmony between browsing and other applications. The resulting visual and interactive persistence with frogans mini-sites is unprecedented. And don’t forget the benefits for security and end-user privacy.

And then there’s mobile. Even though frogans for desktop devices (running Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) has the lead on the roadmap, getting frogans on mobile has always been a key objective.

Mobile phone and PDA technology is now at a point where these devices can do a lot of the browsing that used to be reserved for personal computers only. Even so, the Web is largely a hostile place for these little devices. Content has to either be specifically authored for them (e.g. WAP) or some kind of adaptation has to take place – proxy server rendering (skyfire), content adaptation, zoomable pages (iPhone, Opera Mini). Plus, unless you’re using WiFi, it’s often SLOW.

Frogans mini-sites, on the other hand, will be equally friendly to both desktop and mobile devices. There will be no need for authors to adapt their content for one platform or the other. They’re cool in both worlds.

The very same principals for making Frogans technology universal for the desktop – secure, standard, lightweight content, easy on device resources – make it ideal for mobile. This is nothing new. Check out this post from last year.

At the end of the day, the frogans mini-site format is simply universal. Although frogans mini-sites will first be seen on desktop devices, the same mini-sites can be visited from mobile devices as the Frogans Player versions for those devices become available. Think of it as a way of jumping ahead of the mobile Web game, or as leaping across the desktop-mobile divide.

I’ve been spending time at the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 32nd International Public Meeting here in Paris last week. For me it has been a chance to learn more about current Internet addressing issues, but also to talk face-to-face with domain name registrars about Frogans technology.

And it’s been a real eye-opener on the subject of generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Right now, twenty one gTLDs exist. These include “.com,” “.biz” and “.edu”. TLDs include also those of the country code flavor (ccTLDs) like “.au” for Australia and “.cn” for China.

Thanks to the New gTLD Program, the number of gTLDs is expected to explode. While the policy details are still being worked out by the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), we can expect within the next few years a huge proliferation of domain name registries. The result will be that instead of registering “burger-and-fries.net”, it might be “burger-and-fries.fast-food”, where “.fast-food” has replaced “.net”, or “.com” or “.org”.

Not everybody thinks that this is good news. For existing registries it must be like scaling Mt Everest for a quiet summit picnic, only to find a new ski-lift bringing up folks by the twelve-pack. Not only do hard-earned gTLDs like “.eu” and “.jobs” risk losing some of their distinctiveness and meaning, but there are technical limitations to consider and administrative issues to untangle.

But it could also be a necessary evolutionary step for assuring a continued high level of innovation on the Internet. At STG Interactive, we see in this policy a reflection of our own point of view: that there must always be room for innovation on the Internet, even at the expense of “business as usual.”

It could even be a good thing for the Frogansphere. For instance, once the New gTLD program goes into effect, STG Interactive could apply to register the “.frogans” gTLD with ICANN. Imagine that for every one of your frogans addresses, STG Interactive could provide you with a free corresponding domain name. So with “frogans*burger-and-fries”, your corresponding domain name would be “burger-and-fries.frogans”.

This free domain name would be tied to a Web page for accessing your frogans. For instance, if you were to go to “http://burger-and-fries.frogans/” in a Web browser, a page could come up that contained a LeapToFrogans link to “frogans*burger-and-fries”. Here, the “.frogans” gTLD serves as a springboard between the Web and the Frogans layers of the Internet.

This idea sprung up after attending the Workshop meeting on New gTLDs. But in fact, STG Interactive could still move ahead with a similar idea if, for some reason, it were not possible to obtain a “.frogans” gTLD. STG Interactive might still provide each frogans address registrant with a free subdomain name under “frogansphere.net”, for example, “burger-and-fries.frogansphere.net”, and it would work the same way (even though it creates a dependancy on the “.net” registry). It’s longer to type, but still looks good enough to byte (pun intended).

…or, “Froggy goes to Mountain View.”

I wasn’t blogging from the Greater Silicon Valley Area from the 18th to the 25th of May, nor was I blogging in the weeks preceding. I wasn’t blogging the week after I got back, either. That’s a lot of not blogging.

The trip to the “Valley,” which included participation in the French Tech Tour 2008 was principally for evangelizing Frogans technology through presentations on the corporate level. It was also my first stint evangelizing in person, rather than on the keyboard. The main objective was to give others in the IT world a fifteen-minute overview (over the course of an hour) of Frogans technology and to give them reasons for finding out more.

To that end, things went pretty darned well.

Next up: FSDL C Libraries and easy frogans authoring.

Whatever the frogans you make or browse, it’s always going to be a frogans. You can be sure of that because Frogans technology development has always been guided by a set of fundamental principals, self-imposed by STG Interactive. The aim of these principals is to help assure a high level of user-friendliness and usability in a frogans, whatever the frogans that frogans may be.

In a sense, Frogans technology is open on one end, and closed on the other. It’s open with respect to the use of FSDL. Under the FSDL perpetual license it will always be free to use for creating frogans, and even for creating frogans authoring tools. If a software company decides to create the equivalent of Dreamweaver for frogans, that’s fine. There’s no obligation to STG Interactive.

On the other hand, if someone wants to make an alternative to the Frogans Player – say one that accepts larger images, or can detect the date and time on your system – forget it. Why? Because frogans don’t do that.

I can’t say it enough: Frogans are not widgets. I should add: Widgets are not frogans. Oh no. They should be so lucky.

Here’s a short list of annoying things that will tell you that something is not a frogans:

• If it doesn’t have a frogans address, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it opens up without you intending it to, then it’s not a frogans.
• If you can’t rescale it immediately to the size you like, or hide it, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it slows down the performance of your computer, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it doesn’t function and display identically regardless of your operating system, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it animates without your input, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it passes behind another application, or application window, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it downloads to your hard disk, then it’s not a frogans.

And here’s a list of things that will annoy your computer that a frogans won’t do:

• If it opens up an application unexpectedly, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it contains HTML, JavaScript or Flash, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it interferes with the functioning of other applications, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it depends on the functioning of software other than the Frogans Player, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it puts a wiggle in your walk, then it could be frogans, or it could be what you had with your cereal this morning.

Frogans do not use cookies per se. For storing a frogans’ session information after a frogans has been closed it may be written to an end-user’s system drive as a “session identifier”.

You can think of a session identifier as kind of a smart cookie. By default, a frogans’ session identifier disappears when that frogans is closed. However, if the end-user adds a frogans to their “frogans favorites”, sort of like a list of frogans bookmarks, its session identifier may remain persistent, available on disk for that frogans to consult the next time it is opened. (When you add a frogans to your frogans favorites, a dialog box appears informing you that in doing so, you enable session identifiers to be written to your local drive).

For example, the frogans that you’re browsing contains a chess game which you’re playing against a server app. Each time you make a move the slide refreshes, sending to the server a session identifier describing the state of the game so that the server can compose the chessboard accordingly on the refreshed slide.

It’s 3am and you have to shut down the computer before the game ends. A good night’s sleep will help you rethink your strategy anyway. If this frogans is not designated as a “favorite” the state of your game will vaporize the moment you close it.

Fortunately, you had already added it to your frogans favorites. At 5am, when you open it up again, it has the same size and placement on your screen as it did at 3am, plus it displays the last slide you were visiting before you closed it.

And what’s more, it will remember the state of your chess game, thanks to its session identifier.

“Frogans favorites” is more than just a list of bookmarked frogans addresses. By default a frogans always opens to its homeslide, at full-size, in the middle of the screen. Adding a frogans to your frogans favorites 1) puts that frogans in your frogans favorites submenu for easy access, 2) sets your Frogans Player to remember the slide, the placement on your screen and the size of that frogans from when it was last viewed and 3) allows the last session identifier to remain on your disk, like a persistent cookie.

The Frogans Player’s default manner for opening frogans helps assure that frogans be accessible without being imposing. Keep in mind that, when opened, frogans are loaded into active memory only. So there is no need to cache frogans resource files on the end-user’s local drive. This helps keep your system insulated from potentially malicious documents, and besides, why clutter up your hard drive with unnecessary files?

With the end-user choosing to list a frogans in their frogans favorites, it puts power to decide if session data is written back into their own hands.

Before investing time, energy and maybe money into developing a frogans, you might look for comparable models existing on the Web. And you’re going to look at Web widgets.

(You might look at desktop widgets also, but I’m not going to discuss them here. While they may look more like frogans, they’re even less interactive than Web widgets. Functionally they have less in common with frogans.)

Web widgets are small; frogans are small. You might get your feet wet in the Frogansphere authoring a frogans based on a Facebook widget model (for example).

Above and Beyond the Web

Widgets, like those you see on Facebook, are presented within Web pages, physically and contextually. Web widget visibility is subject to Web browsing behavior, since they are available only as long as the end-user has their page on screen.

Imagine that widgets are on pages in a magazine. Close the magazine – no more widget. Frogans are more like (browsable) pictures on a wall.

So, instead of putting a widget on my Facebook profile page, I could put in a link to a frogans, which can be browsed on the frogans layer at the same time as my profile on the Web. If the end-user goes to another page, or closes their browser altogether, they can still continue to navigate that frogans (up there on the wall).

And the same frogans can be accessed from any kind of Web page, not just a Social Web platform. So, you know that you don’t need to cater to only the 18 – 35 crowd.

More than social

Widgets not made for the Social Web are few and far between. Why is this? It’s because of the Social Web’s viral nature. Widgets are meant to be installed on a maximum number of pages, often by the grace of their fad appeal (I think of them as being pseudo-ads disguised as toys). Rather than pay for their placement like real ads, they proliferate by being fun. Where else but on the Social Web can this idea work?

While a frogans might function very well within a social context, it doesn’t necessarily have to be fun and superficial to get traffic. Frogans have that magic ingredient of persistence which means that they don’t have to play the same game that Widgets, imprisoned in Web pages, must do.

Where to go from here

Now you know that 1) isn’t doomed to being a pure phenomenon of the Social Web, and 2) is persistent beyond the confines of your Web browser. So much for models that don’t apply; what about those that do?

The key to determining a use for a frogans lies in how you tap the strength of its persistence. A successful frogans hangs out on your desktop, being all at once informative, decorative and captivating.

Maybe it’s a slideshow of the greatest National Park photos, containing links for all sorts of information on the subject like the latest news and upcoming events – all this within the same frogans.

Maybe it’s a magazine cover on its frogans home slide, with excerpts from the issue on the inside, complete with links to other frogans (or to Web pages) for supplemental information. At any rate, you think it’s a cool mag, and you like seeing it’s cover on your desktop.

Or maybe it’s your personal frogans for your friends, be they the ones you’ve met in person, or on MySpace. Maybe this is how the Social Frogansphere will operate.

The common thread here is in the end-user’s acceptance of a frogans as something with enough personal relevance and utility to merit an extended stay on their desktop. It’s kind of like that t-shirt sporting the logo of you favorite beer that you wear at barbecues. Or was that a tattoo?

A suggestion

Base your frogans on something people can identify with. It’s kind of a funny idea, but while you can express yourself through your frogans, the end-user also expresses his or herself when they decorate their desktop with it.