Adobe announced today (or Tuesday U.S. time) that Creative Suite 5 will be released soon and that they will show-off features at an event to be streamed online on April 12th. So what are we to expect in terms of technologies? — Lightroom 3, Flash Catalyst, Business Catalyst, Adobe Story — not to mention updates to the major applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Audition and Premiere with 64-Bit Cocoa on the Mac and Windows 7 support? Whatever. I don’t really care, as long as they put this into Photoshop…
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 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
Remember that paradigm shift I talked about a little over a year ago? Well folks, it is now upon us. I’m a bit late because I was overseas, and not really keeping in touch with the latest tech news (which I tend to do less these days anyway). But anyway, I’m onto it now, and thought I would post a quick update of where Google’s Android open-source platform for mobile devices is at.
Basically, late last year, the first ‘Android phone’ was released. To see how it looks, check out the youtube video below (WARNING: Not the most exciting video demonstration, they are engineers after all!):
I don’t think the phone in that video actually features the Android phone released last year, that phone is in a demo for which I’ll post the link below. However, as I said in my previous post, the whole point with Android is that the hardware itself won’t matter. So again, further commodification of cellphone hardware, here we come. The iPhone has definitely kick-started this trend, and Android will only add to it.
So, where is Google going with all this? Well, I notice that Google now have “Offline” mode for both the Google Calendar and Gmail. Still in Beta of course. So, now, whether you’re connected to the net or not, you can access your google mail and calendar. Any offline updates will be synchronised once you connect again to the internet. Likewise, any new emails will be downloaded to Gmail offline once you connect.
Stay with me, we’re getting to the best part. Ok, so Google now has online and offline access to mail and calendars, from your desktop. From a mobile device, Google currently offer exchange like synchronisation through active sync on PocketPCs and I’m sure something similar on the iPhone.
Add Android to this and I think Google plans to basically have your mobile, your online computer world, and your offline computer world thoroughly covered. It will mean that, I can send an email to someone with a date, and straight from my mobile or computer (offline or connected to the net), add a calendar event which will then be syncronished across all platforms. Calendars can also be shared online through Google’s existing sharing capabilities, so we can have mobile-shared syncronised calendars. It’s basically what Blackberry does, but it will be much more thoroughly integrated into the internet world. For example, Facebook/’insert social networking site here’ events could be exported to calenders – even automatically exported once you register your attendance – and then being instantly synronised across all devices. All your emails, calendars, contacts, tasks, documents would then be accessible (but more importantly, syncronised) from your computer or phone, or from some random internet cafe computer in Inner Mongolia!
But we’re not done yet folks (and no I don’t work for Google, but they are welcome to make me an offer!). Add another layer to the information above, Google maps/earth, and you know add a physical, geographic layer to the information. So contacts could be viewed in Google maps/earth based on their location in this world of ours. The same is true of events and tasks, which could be visualised on maps based on location information from the event. If you were say, meeting a friend at Lounge in Swanston St Melbourne, Australia. That location could be viewed in Google maps, along with the time and date you’re supposed to be there, and perhaps information on the venue. You would just have to make sure that you don’t walk straight by the entrance while looking at you phone and being thoroughly anti-social!
And the best part of all this is that a lot of it will run on open or reasonable open platforms so communication between devices and platforms will be a breeze. Oh, and it will be free. As long as we keep clicking on Google ads that is! Although I imagine Google will also do a multi-tiered pricing system whereby corporate or sophisticated users can pay to get more storage/better features.
Whatever comes this way, I’m excited. It’s going to be an interesting year for cellphones and information.
There has been a lot of tweaking happening lately on the social side of the web. Social websites are interactive and therefore depend on user input. But more than just the user, social sites rely on networking, that is to say, interaction between the user and his/her friends, family, classmates or collegues. But without an intuitive website layout, that is relative easy to use, the user becomes lost. So many companies have recently been relying heavily on designers to make their web applications easier to use. Obviously they also want to provide content that is compelling and keeps the user returning, as well as being a pleasant and aesthetically pleasing experience.
As a web designer, an issue I often tackle is the redesign. In traditional graphic design, when commissioning a redesign of their identity, businesses and other organisations aim to bring new life to their brand, while more often than not retaining some familiarity. For example, when Telstra redesigned their logo in the 90s, they kept the color orange and the circular shape of their previous mark. This was intended to retain a sense of their established business, while providing a fresh and clean feel for their new identity. When redesigning a website, the designer faces a similar challenge. However, in addition to keeping the same sense of identity about the site, they must provide an interface for which the user can adapt.
Back in March, Happy Cogredesigned the Wordpress interface with version 2.5. Although the new interface was much simpler, they had to accommodate the same amount of information and provide navigation that was easy for previous users of Wordpress to pick up. Personally, I think they did a brilliant job, because their template has been able to adapt to a large number of plugins as well as later versions of Wordpress, such as the current version 2.6.
More recently, Last.fm and Facebook have had facelifts. It seems like ever-changing content and new portable devices such as the iPhone have had significant influence on their redos. While Last.fm retains a similar site structure, Facebook seems to have gone for a more segmented approach to displaying their content. Both have relatively easy to use navigation, but familiarity is where Facebook falls. I’ll let you be the judge… you can read more on Facebook’s redesign and Last.fm’s redesign on their respective blogs.
Yep, the full version of Firefox 3 is out now. I downloaded it today and so far have noticed that there are quite a few differences in the interface, mostly for the better. The best thing seems to be performance, notably that the app is much smoother both on Mac and Windows — not the memory hog of old. The only downside my workmates and I noticed seems to be the rendering of various elements. Certain images and html elements are sometimes slightly stretched by a pixel or so, probably due to the browser’s rounding of pixels. See this post from jQuery’s John Resig to see what i mean.
Due to Firefox 3’s support for web standards, its ability to be used across multiple systems, its consistency compared to its previous versions and it’s support for a multitude of plugins, it rules supreme, in my opinion, as the most diverse and effective browser for web design and development. For everyday use, I believe that it’s the best browser on all platforms but Mac, where– let’s just say it ties with Safari.
While you’re waiting for Photoshop Express to become an industry standard, check out these puppies:
NB: If you’re interested in making your own Rich Internet Application, make sure you meld two words into one — preferably a wacky prefix and suffix concoction. For example, “photo” and “shop” would work well together.
Fed up with Windows and Mac and their over-priced, memory-hogging obsolescence? Well, lucky for you Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released today (Australian time). For those out of the loop, Ubuntu is a free user-friendly Linux distribution operating system for servers and PCs.
You can run Ubuntu on most Intel and AMD-based computers. If you’re lucky enough to be equipped an Intel Core2 Duo or AMD64, you can run the super-speedy 64-bit version. If you’re on a new Mac, check out Ubuntu’s guides for installing on an iMac, MacBook or MacBook Pro. Unfortunately they’ve stopped making the Power PC version, but almost any PC with 256MB of memory and 4GBs of space will do.
