I’ve sung praises over the Flash-based multimedia suite Aviary, but what’s more disruptive than an company using Adobe’s own technology to compete with them? Perhaps something that erases Flash from the equation altogether, which is what you get with Sketchpad. If enough effort is poured into this project down the road, taking desktop tools to the web browser may no longer need plugins like Flash and Air.
That still seems like a far away future, though. Even this ReadWriteWeb report, where HTML5 has been found to be sometimes more CPU-intensive than Flash, indicates it doesn’t even have that advantage in the bag.
Then there are others who can’t see how HTML5 and Flash can even be comparable, but here’s a compelling point for that argument: where are the tools for creating in HTML5? John Nack from Adobe has a few answers. Though as an Adobe guy, he advocates for Flash too.
Finally, there’s browser adoption as the biggest and most obvious issue of all. And sadly, that one might not even be resolved.
All of these beg the question: “Is it irresponsible to advocate using HTML5 before it is ready?” But when, pray tell, will it be ready?
Here’s an interesting sneak peek of Adobe’s project called “Rome”, shown at the MAX 2009 conference. It’s an application written in ActionScript that combines the features of Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and lets you work with different content types. It runs on Air, meaning it’s cross-platform and even works inside the browser.
I certainly like the idea of a mashup app of Adobe’s most indispensable tools and perhaps this is the real sort of integration people have been looking for in the Creative Suite. It’s quite smart too: the interface is not as cluttered as other Adobe programs, and the contextual palettes appear according to the currently selected object.
That it can run inside a web browser is also another golden feature; I wonder what Aviary thinks of it. If Photoshop.com isn’t enough for you, this will certainly be more than enough.
My only question is performance. Small widgets created in Adobe Air work fine (TweetDeck, for example), but can a full-blown app work better than native code? Should Adobe be building programs like this on Air? Some of the bigger questions when dealing with Flash-based apps and its cousins.
First the iPad, and now a debate on the relevance of Flash. Apple continues to ignore it and touts HTML5 as the future. Google is also pushing HTML5 on YouTube, with other video sites starting to follow suit. Even Mozilla is disabling it in its new mobile browser, Maemo. Clearly, the death knell for Adobe’s most controversial product is getting louder than ever.
But it’s still all talk, all noise. How about some real action? Thankfully, over at Binary Bonsai, Michael Heilemann has taken it upon himself to drop Flash for the whole month of February as a response to this tweeted challenge:
All those who think no flash on ipad is A-OK please uninstall flash from your current browser, use that for a month then get back to me.
Installing a Flash blocker isn’t really a groundbreaking exercise and is tamer than uninstalling Flash completely, but now is the best time to figure out how dependent we are on it.
So can you survive sans Flash? I won’t go out of my way to defend it nor suffer from withdrawal without it, but the status of HTML5 video alone seems troubling enough.
More importantly, most discussions cover only the question of replacing Flash video, not other applications like games. That would be an even tougher nut to crack, even with the dawn of purely Javascript-based games.
What’s the hottest thing on the Web right now? Twitter, and a host of other dead-simple, single serving websites. If you plan on making a new web app, make it as simple as possible, if not simpler. Take Aviary’s Screen Capture service.
Just a short background: Aviary is a suite of web-based graphics applications, all named after birds. The branding concept is fantastic, if I do say so myself. The fact that they run on Flash and are essentially competing against the very maker of said platform—Adobe—is a very interesting feat in itself. It is, however, a bit premature as Flash remains hardware-intensive.
Screencapped Google.com because the doodle today looks extra-nice.
So, back to the dead-simple part. All you have to do is enter the URL of a website you want to screencap after Aviary.com and wait a few moments until Falcon, the simplified image markup editor, loads the image up. Crop, resize, add a few scribbles, and save your screenshot. Done!
Of course some people will need options, which the Capture page and the Talon Firefox add-on can provide. But that isn’t really Aviary’s achievement here. It managed to create a screenshot tool that requires nothing but entering a URL in the browser address bar. No need to wait for the app to start up, no need to remember special conventions to make sure the thing works properly.
Simple, elegant, brilliant. We will always have huge, complicated methods that will get the job done, but most of the time it’s the leaner, less intimidating tools that win us over.
After the wildly successful first run, I’m delighted that Coudal is gearing up for another season of Layer Tennis, which are live creative matches using Creative Suite software. Heard of Photoshop tennis? It’s a more riveting version of that, since matches will use more than just PSD layers and will play with motion and sound!
The rules: two players—renowned designers like Shaun, Veerle, Jason—must build on each other’s “volley” for no more than 15 minutes. A coin toss by the referee to determine who goes first, which serves as the creative teaser for the weekly matches. And while waiting in between plays, we’ve got witty commentary from the likes of Gruber and Kottke. After 10 rounds, a winner is decided upon by voting in the forums.
Truly a star-studded yet downright geeky spectacle. Every single aspect of Layer Tennis is hilarious, and the attention to detail is just admirable. The icing on the cake? They actually have Adobe as sponsor, again. And why not, since you’d expect them to use PS and Flash anyhow.
Do you have your season pass yet? Don’t forget to subscribe, follow, and fan.
I don’t know about you, but I avoid clicking on PDF files like the plague simply because it takes ages for it to load, whether with a browser plugin or a desktop app. Microsoft Office files are almost the same. Why can’t these documents be opened as easily as webpages, anyway?
Enter Issuu, a cool platform that makes viewing digital books, magazines, and other materials much easier—try using it right now—and Smart Look, which is a piece of code you to be placed in your website that embeds various document formats (PDFs, Word documents, Powerpoint presentations) into a Lightbox-meets-Acrobat interface. Only it’s lighter and more portable because the viewer (which you can also find on Issuu itself) is powered by Flash.
What actually happens is that to copy the code, Issuu scans your site for documents to import, under your account (which you’ll have to sign up for). The files on your site stay intact, but copies are stored on their servers under your username. Try Smart Look in action here.
Better browsing experience
Let’s pause for a moment to reflect on the irony in using one Adobe product (Flash) to view another one (PDF). Isn’t that a sign that something is terribly wrong with the way Adobe has been handling PDF files? Will Adobe correct this anytime soon, perhaps through Buzzword, and eventually kill Issuu?
Issuu and Smart Look make sense. To quote TechCrunch, Issuu really wants to kill the document download
. I think that doing so makes for a better browsing experience.
I’m not saying you axe the download option altogether. Just don’t make it the default action because it’s extremely disorienting. Not everybody has the foresight to look at a URL they’re about to load and choose to save it instead of view it. “Do I choose ‘Open’ or ‘Save’? Why is my computer hanging? Why, gawd, why?”
Competition means progress
Scribd and Docstoc. Too clunky.
And as far as inteface design goes, Issuu is a bit more polished than competitors Scribd and Docstoc, which remind me of the PDF viewers I’m avoiding in the first place. Although both have text selection while Issuu does not. Smart Look, however, erases the need for embedding the files in your pages since clicking on a link will do that for you.
Now I don’t want to do any more comparisons among the three because whichever webapp you’re using, I like that there is actual development going on in this space. It’s certainly worlds better than having to open documents in a bloated old program like Acrobat!
Ben Terrett of Noisy Decent Graphics has written a list of things that describe what “his Internet” is like. From an encounter with a technologically-challenged executive comes an inspiring exercise to get everyone on the same page first.
…I thought it might be a nice idea to get everyone to describe ‘their internet’ at the first meeting of any new client. Like they do at school when the new kids arrive mid term. Get everyone up to the same level. That way, everyone would know the ‘level’ of everyone else and there would be no clangers later on.
The list is not only informative, it’s also prescriptive (in a sort of passive-agressive way!). It addresses the little things clients don’t really take into consideration when they describe what they want for their websites. But the thing is, you’re the expert, so grab the opportunity to teach what thoughtful and usable design is. Some of my personal favorites from the list:
- Not using Flash for anything other than videos
- Giving simplicty and clarity top priority
- Not reinventing the wheel
You may not agree with everything on Ben’s list, but the idea is not just to yell at your client for “not getting it”, but to explain why you’re doing “it” that way. It strengthens the relationship you have with your client, and ensures clear communication pathways in between.
Opera is at it again: they’ve announced a project called MAMA, short for “Metadata Analysis and Mining Application”, which figures out what different websites are using to construct and run their pages.
They used “3,509,180 URLs in 3,011,668 domains, from 217 identified countries”. How I wonder what Google would do in their shoes given their crawling prowess. Still, I commend Opera (again) for initiating a project like this. They continue to impress.
It will be tough digesting all the data they’ve gathered so for now, read up on the Key findings, which tackle 8 main sections. Here are some statistics I clipped from that article:
more
In an interesting development regarding web standards and the browser wars, Ars Technica reports that Mozilla is taking Internet Explorer’s problematic webpage rendering into its own hands starting with a plugin for HTML5’s canvas element.
IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.
Vladimir Vukićević says it’s “a very direct way of getting 2D (and soon 3D) graphics into web pages, and removes many of the barriers between developers and graphics rendering.” Here’s a screenshot of how it works:
HTML5 Canvas on IE, by Vladimir Vukićević
Mozilla doesn’t stop there, though. It plans bring its “next-generation JavaScript engine directly into Microsoft’s web browser” through a project called ScreamingMonkey. The plugin strategy will also be employed here.
Mixed reactions
Reactions from the crowd range from amusement to confusion to outrage. On the one hand, this move from the makers of the record-making Firefox browser is commendable. It shows that in the midst of IE’s dominating market share and FF’s sheer drive to beat it, Mozilla still wants the Web to work, one way or the other. Even if it means having to “drag IE” itself. Indeed:
Is it a sad or happy day for Microsoft, when their competitors get bored with beating them, and instead try to improve the Microsoft products to make them competitive – for free?
And what does Microsoft have to say about this? Isn’t this an insult wrapped inside a well-meaning gesture since it is coming from a competitor? Anything that gets Microsoft’s attention to hurry things up in the web standards compliance department is okay by me.
Try Adobe
But it’s not just about the browser vendors but the users themselves. How many of them will take the time to install this not-so-popular plugin? Do they care enough to see the advantages? Ars Technica thus wonders if Adobe could have been the better messenger, since Flash is ultimately indispensable these days:
This is purely speculation, but If Adobe decided to ship Screaming Monkey and the Canvas functionality as part of the next major iteration of the Flash plugin, it would rapidly accelerate adoption and get it onto lots of computers.
Cross-browser nirvana? Not quite
News of this plugin suggests that it’s taking a so much effort to make IE play nice that even competing browsers have to step in. And we’re only talking about the HTML5 canvas element here, a far less common feature, or should we say issue, than things like the double-margin bug or pixel font sizes.
A few weeks ago Google announced that it can now extract and index textual content from Adobe Flash files. We all know that creating websites in pure Flash is a big no-no if you care about being found through search engines. So is there nothing left that’s stopping web designers from switching from plain old HTML and CSS to rich interactive Flash? I have yet to find somebody who agrees with a resounding “yes!”
Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, believes that this new development isn’t compelling enough to start building sites with Flash.
Flash content is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs and being able to parse links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make Flash search-engine friendly. I think it’s great that Google’s digging deeper into Flash, but I don’t believe web developers should be any less wary than they’ve been in the past about Flash-based websites or Flash-embedded content.
If anything, I commend Google for continuing to convince web designers and search engine marketers alike to embrace web standards by pushing for the best practices in coding websites. Of course it’s the most logical thing both parties: search spiders need to parse content properly so that they can index it, and a well-formed webpage makes this possible; webmasters need not wade through nested tables and unnecessary tag soup when there’s a better way. And Google should, since it’s way more influential than Opera or any other web company out there.
However, Google’s efforts to read Flash still seem to be in the premature stages. Typical Google, they always release their products in beta without being wary of the consequences.
By consequences I mean clients who are now running around telling their web designers to create animated intros and the extravagant interfaces for their websites. I can’t really shoot down this little achievement by Google—except that it’s getting scarily smarter everyday and should try to have more features than issues when they launch a product.
More importantly, I can only continue to condemn those who misuse Flash without any regard for accessibility, much less usability, whatsoever.
