BitTorrent Torque web app turn browser into a file-sharing hub

The company behind the popular torrent downloading software uTorrent has announced a new project called BitTorrent Torque, an alpha release set of tools that can be run from HTML5-compliant web browsers like Google Chrome, turning them into a fully-fledged file-sharing hub.

Lead developer Patrick Williams explains in the blog announcement that Torque works by providing a JavaScript hook to a custom BitTorrent backend. "Torque is a JavaScript interface to a custom torrent client that exposes all the power of BitTorrent to web developers.  Simply put, it allows anyone to utilize our powerful technology to create completely fresh and new experiences for users with just a couple lines of code."

There are currently two extensions available, the first (pictured below) is Paddle Over, which integrates drag and drop file transfers via social networking and sharing as well as other computers. The second extension is OneClick, which is currently available for Google Chrome and is used to convert a typical torrent download into a simple to manage standard in-browser download.

Future Torque extensions will further demonstrate the potential capabilities of its APIs and will eventually provide video streaming, file transcoding and antivirus scanning, among other functions. Right now bugs are expected as it's currently an alpha build, but as time passes its creators hope to increase functionality.

"Torque is both an underlying, fully fledged torrent client, as well as a simple JavaScript interface designed to make the technology as accessible as possible," Williams told TorrentFreak. "Our hope is that the development and use of torrent technologies can scale the same way that a torrent swarm does, and this is our initial effort towards that goal."

The software is still in its infancy, but with web apps gaining more functionality due to CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript maturing it has resulted in developers being able to create web apps that run across multiple OS ecosystems, saving them resources, time and money.

Firefox 9 released, touts 20-30% more JavaScript performance

The latest stable build of Firefox -- version 9, for those not up to speed with Mozilla's rapid-fire release schedule -- is readily awaiting your download (Windows | Mac | Linux). The update comes just over a month after the release of Firefox 8 and the first beta of Firefox 9. Despite the relatively brief development cycle, Mozilla has crammed plenty of changes into December's revision.

The largest change appears to be the addition of Type Interface, which reportedly improves JavaScript performance by 20-30%. It remains to be seen how that translates to real world performance, but every millisecond counts. ExtremeTech tested a pre-release build of Firefox 9 this summer and recorded notable gains in Kraken, V8, Fishbowl and other benches with Type Interface enabled.

Folks updating from Firefox 8 can also expect support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript, font-stretch (a CSS property), better text-overflow support as well as improved theme integration for OS X Lion. Apple's operating system also receives two-finger swipe navigation, though we're not entirely sure what this entails. Firefox 9 also touts improved support for HTML5, MathML and CSS, as well as the obligatory bug fixes, which are too numerous to list here.

Given Mozilla's hasty development cycle, Firefox 10 and 11 are already available in alpha forms and we wouldn't be surprised if the former reached beta before the end of 2011. We don't see anything particularly exciting about the next stable build, but it should fix an annoying bug that causes the back and forward buttons to stop working when visiting Google+. WebGL gains anti-aliasing and the forward button will be hidden until you navigate back. More details here.

Free Software Foundation to Google: free Gmail's JavaScript

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched a new initiative in the form of a series of features that explain how to use common websites without using proprietary JavaScript. The organization wants to protect users from what it calls The JavaScript Trap, in reference to proprietary software running inside your browser. The first target is Google's Gmail service.

FSF explains that as JavaScript becomes more and more powerful, it has the potential to do more and more harm to a user's computer. In certain cases of new found vulnerabilities, companies advise customers to temporarily disable JavaScript in their browser while waiting for the security fix.

FSF argues that users should thus be able to see what the code running on their computers is actually doing, and change it if necessary. The group also argues that many sites, such as Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter rely on JavaScript too much, when they don't need to (as demonstrated by their mobile sites). Where there is a useful need for JavaScript, it should be released as free software, and where JavaScript provides an optional enhancement, a basic version of a site that doesn't rely on JavaScript can be provided.

In short, FSF wants Google to develop a "basic HTML" version of Gmail, which does not rely on heavy JavaScript to build the user interface. If you use Gmail, FSF wants you to ask Google to take the next step towards making Gmail free software friendly by releasing the JavaScript for Gmail under a free software license.

"When you visit a website such as Gmail, your browser will download and run several thousand lines of JavaScript code," an FSF spokesperson said in a statement. "JavaScript code is no different to languages like Python, C++ or Ruby — applications written in those languages running on our computers should be free software, so we can run, modify and share them if we wish. JavaScript today is not the JavaScript of the past — it is now used to write powerful, server-side applications thanks to free software like Node.js and the V8 JavaScript engine."

Frankly, we understand FSF's argument but we're not sure it's valid. If the code for JavaScript were to be provided to the public, we don't see why all code in all other languages shouldn't be as well. Then again, that's FSF's goal: for all software to be released under a free software license.