With both Tizen and Android being open platforms, there is an opportunity to enable running applications of one platform on another. RIM took this approach with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which can run Android apps that were recompiled for the platform. ACL or Android Compatibility Layer by OpenMobile offers a similar solution for Tizen. It adds support for running any Android application in its unmodified state without the need for recompilation. Unlike BlueStacks, which allows running Android applications on Windows, this is a not a software one can download on their Tizen device to make it compatible with Android. If an OEM wishes to provide support for Android, they can modify the kernel and add support for Android applications in the very core. Android has accrued a huge...

A very welcome feature embedded in the new JavaScript Windows Metro style app templates in the Visual Studio 11 beta is that they accommodate built-in support for databinding, using sample data in a JSON array. People who have XAML world background might not see this as a particularly big deal, since Silverlight and WPF have supported databinding for a long time. G. Andrew Duthie in this blog titled "Databinding in Windows 8 JavaScript Metro style Apps" introduces you to databinding in Windows 8 JavaScript Metro style apps. This Microsoft Developer Evangelist in this article covers the basics of the databinding implementation. It is easy and straightforward, and having a template that provides a clear implementation with sample data can help you get started with your own...

It seems Microsoft is making it difficult for third parties to create browsers for Windows 8 tablets. A blog post on Mozilla’s website claims that Firefox will not be able to bring a proper version of Firefox to Windows 8 tablets due to restrictions by Microsoft. Since then Google has also chimed in with the same concerns.Restrictions on tablet platforms aren’t unheard of, but this move is still a little odd. It is due to restrictions on iOS devices that the only browsers available for it use WebKit, so why is Mozilla concerned about Windows tablets but not the iPad? Turns out there are some very good reasons. Before we go into those, let us see how these restriction affect Firefox in the first place.Two KindsIt is well known by now that there will be two kinds of...