One of the major players in the type industry, FontShop, has released licenses for real commercial fonts able to be used with CSS font embedding. For those unaware of CSS font embedding, the font is gathered using the @font-face construct rather than a regular selector. To embed the font files requires no use of Flash and no JavaScript. All you have to do is specify the font-family (typeface) name and its source file.
Unfortunately FontShop says its formats don’t yet support Chrome, Safari or Opera and licensing fees aren’t dirt cheap, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Adobe Photoshop turned 20 years old on Thursday. Initially developed by brothers Thomas and John Knoll in 1987 and published by Adobe on the Macintosh in 1990, Photoshop is now the industry standard image manipulation software application used by people in various creative fields and industries. And even today, Photoshop sets itself apart from its competitors with a combination of revolutionary technologies such as layers, channels, levels, curves and paths as well as various other tools, filters and features.
To celebrate, Adobe have launched a minisite, including a video (below) featuring the creators of Photoshop — Thomas Knoll, John Knoll, Steve Guttman, and Russell Brown. There are also various other celebratory posts on John Nack’s blog, Photoshop News et al.
Personally, although I have been using Macs for the past twenty years, and Windows for almost fifteen years, I had not really touched Photoshop until version 5, a little over ten years ago. Still, like many others, Photoshop has allowed me to study and have a career in the design industry. Ask anyone in photography, illustration, fashion design, product design, automotive design, publication design, graphic design, web design, animation, film production or visual effects and they’ll almost be guaranteed to have a copy of Photoshop running on their machine.
With the recent release of the iPad, YouTube’s migration to h.264 for the iPhone and Google’s decision to drop support for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 in favour of developing an HTML 5-based Google Apps, it doesn’t look like great news for the Adobe Flash plugin. The question on many people’s lips is — well, people in web and IT communities — ‘Is Flash dead?’. JavaScript libraries such as JQuery allow for rich internet applications and interfaces, HTML 5 video tags make video embedding a cinch and CSS 3 animation can be performed with a single line of code. Each one seems to be a nail in Flash’s coffin. Well, that’s on the surface.
HBO's new website, redesigned entirely using Flash
So, is Flash dead? The simple answer is no… even though Steve Jobs considers Flash obsolete and Apple refuses to support it on the iPhone or iPad. Obviously it’s within Apple’s best interest to keep developers away from allowing people to access applications outside of Apple’s App Store approval process. [Not that that stopped Google. Their Google Voice app, which was rejected by Apple in July last year, has since been redeveloped in HTML 5 so it can be accessed via a web browser, namely Apple's mobile version of Safari.] Even Microsoft claim that their Silverlight plugin beats Flash in terms of video performance and compatibility. And then there is the web standards community — web designers and developers who claim that there is not need for plugins like Flash, which breaks web standards, forces people to run download and install a proprietary plugin and often all for lesser performance than it’s HTML counterpart.
So, why isn’t Flash dead? Well, don’t get me wrong, as a web designer who is not the most proficient Flash developer, I am very much in favour of web standards, HTML 5 and the many benefits of open source software. I’ve also put up with the fair share of interface and programming language changes that Macromedia, and now Adobe, has made to the Flash application (not to mention their other software). However, I am also in favour of diversity. Let’s face it, there is nothing quite like Flash. Without it, there’d be no YouTube right now, no Vimeo, iView or if you’re in the States, Hulu. And even though we have fabulous browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari — and according to TechCrunch, Internet Explorer 6 is down to 20 percent of the market — HTML 5 is still a baby (and SVG is a very, very old foetus). There is no easier way to display vector graphics and animation, no better way to embed and share online video in terms of compatibility. In an article on the topic that is well worth reading, Adobe’s John Nack puts it best:
• Flash is flawed, but it has moved the world forward.
• Open standards are great, but they can be achingly slow to arrive.
• Talk of “what’s good for standards is bad for Adobe” is misinformed nonsense.
• Flash will innovate or die. I’m betting on innovation
What else? Despite the iPhone/iPad’s lack of Flash plugin, Adobe has already taken the plunge, giving another use for their upcoming Flash CS5 software — allowing you to output applications made in the Flash environment as iPhone Apps.
But the best proof that Flash isn’t dead is the developers creating great new content online. One of the most recent and best examples is HBO’s redesign, which is now entirely in Flash. Although there are some UI quirks in the design of the interface, it is a great example of how a large amount of content can be managed and easily accessed, not to mention the site’s beautiful design aesthetic. Oh yeah, and can’t wait for Treme (by the makers of The Wire), the animated Ricky Gervais show and a second season of Tim! And no, I am not paid by or have any affliation with Adobe or HBO
The lads at Aquafruzzl have just released to the public, their latest short film, The Business Trip. Directed by Scott Alexander, produced by Stuart Moulds and starring Elke Osadnik and Dave Kenyon, the film was shot over a few days with digital SLR cameras. I was honoured to be on set for the shoot and I must say it was quite a feat.
Watch our latest short film…. and this time it’s a comedy! THE BUSINESS TRIP was our first shoot with our new Canon 7D cameras, and boy did we learn a lot about them.
Thanks to everyone involved in the film – it could not have been made without you. It was a mighty hard slog to complete in the time frame we had, but no corners were cut and we are stoked with the final result
Forward it to your friends, work colleagues, lovers and local bishop – we just want as many people to see and enjoy it as possible.
Today marks the 3rd anniversary of Simantic.net… and to celebrate, we’re not doing anything.
More??… well, I suppose you can revisit our first anniversary post or have your say as to the future of the site. Thanks to everyone involved in this blog — particularly my thanks to Tristan, Charles and Chris. If you would like to become a writer or contribute in some way to Simantic, please let us know. We’re always open to new perspectives. We hope to have more features, a redesign and (worthwhile) podcasts ahead in 2010. ‘Til next post, have a good one.
I know these sorts of things are always incredibly subjective, but here are the albums from the last decade that meant something to me…
A pack of Caramel Crowns to the person who can name the most discs. I’ll match that packet, plus a copy of the first season of AFI award-winning East West 101 to the first person who can name all of the albums and their artists.
