Twitter's engineering team has introduced an open-source framework that aims to help developers build interfaces for Mac OS X. The standard, labeled TwUI, is said to take inspiration from UIKit for iOS devices, enabling developers to take advantage of GPU acceleration for interactive interfaces. The company built TwUI using Core Animation, with interaction ideas taken from AppKit.
Microsoft has released Silverlight 3, a new release of its multimedia software for Web. The software is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. Version 3 of new version of software, designed only for Intel-based Macs, offers better performance, GPU acceleration, tools to run on the desktop, and support for higher quality audio and video, including native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline. For developers, it new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements to enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals.
