January 27, 2010
JavaScript Panoramas from Rio (what’s up with Apple and Flash?)
Filed Under Cllents, Photography, Web | 6 Comments
I have taken many panorama photos over the last ten years and used Flash scripting to put them on the web. (See Italia) But since 2008 I have limited using Flash for websites. Friend, colleague and mentor Uzi Halimun first alerted me, saying “Steve Jobs has it in for Flash.” (Do a search and you will see.) Once I saw that Flash did not run on my iPod Touch (or the iPhone), I knew Flash would not be in my future until that changed. Mobile computing is the future. This week I did stumble upon this usabilitypost.com post that addresses just that. Many of the features that make Flash so flashy can now be done with javascript and that is where I am going to develop my skillz.
I am very pleased with this example. I miss Rio de Janeiro and my family and friends there. But this being late January, I miss the sun, the beach and especially the Aterro where I would go almost every day to draw and play basketball. I love this panorama of the Aterro. Does it seem a little jerky? It is a big file.
I just looked. It does run on my iPod Touch. Maravilhosa!! I have set it to scroll automatically upon loading but there are controls that can be set to scroll left, right and pause. This went fairly fast. Good, because I have clients waiting.
UPDATES 2.10.10: Remy Sharp’s HTML vs Flash is another in depth post about the limitations of Flash and the future web standards.
2.19.10: It has been widely reported that Steve Jobs told the editors of the Wall Street Journal to forget Flash. Handsome Phil Elmer-DeWitt gives his expert opinion as to why Jobs is so obsessed with Flash. And Flash creator Jeremy Allaire explains that this is a battle for the future of web content.
4.29.10: Steve Jobs shares his thoughts onWhat Is Wrong With Flash
-Phil Elmer-DeWitt comments of the Fortune tech blog: Steve Jobs Says What Is Wrong With Flash
-As does the New York Times: Apple’s Chief Makes Case Against Flash
8.12.10: Evan Blackford sent this link http://gigaom.com/2010/08/08/open-source-and-economics-how-the-hold… It has excellant insight and historical notes about Flash and Open Source.
10.29.10 Mashable reports here on a demonstration by Adobe of a Flash to HTML5 converter. This is exciting but Adobe points out that this is NOT in development but mearly a demonstration of possibilities. I will follow this closely.
1.2.11 I just read this very informative InfoQ post: HTML5 vs. Flash: Where does Adobe Stand? Wish I could find something that tells me what Apple is thinking. Good luck. I am thinking Apple may have to bend a bit. I got an iPad in December and most disappointing was the NY Times app. I am convinced they are not putting all they could into it because their Times Reader web app is far superior. It of course runs Flash.
1.17.11 Worth a look for coding a scrolling panorama.
2.21.11 I am shocked! MacWorld reviews Packager for iPhone from Adobe. This stand-alone tool “takes your ActionScript 3 code and cross-compiles it to run on an iOS 3.0 or later device. The output is native code, not interpreted Flash bytecode; for Apple, this packaging step pretty much guarantees you won’t be shipping new bytecode to the device over the Internet and circumventing the gatekeepers at the Apple App Store.”
4.22.11 This continues to obsess me, especially because no one really writes about it. I was talking with Flash wizard Gabriel Hill (note his animated favicon). I asked him his opinion. He believes it is an OSX core issue. “Flash has never played nice on Macs. They would have to rewrite OSX and that is not going to happen.” I did a search and found a post by Polygeek that goes into the same territory. Worth a look. And the comments.
9.19.11 Following the link Apple vs Adobe lead me to a great roundup of more discussion at ConvertMyFlash.com.
11.9.11 Just saw this link that says Adobe “will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.” To me, that speaks volumes. Adobe does not expect Apple to “play nice” now that Steve Jobs is the final word. HTML5 is HUGE.
November 12, 2009
Typography on the Web
Filed Under Cllents, Web | Leave a Comment
Typography on the web
…..
The large lettering above is not a graphic but done with HTML CSS styling. Notice that you can select and copy it. This is very cool. I saw this on the design blog idsn.org. Check it out for a good review of the history, future and politics of website type. (My take: Open Source VS Microsoft, more or less)
This may seem like a topic for designers only but it is not. Google can read and rank HTML type more accurately than text that is displayed as a jpeg, png or gif image. Very important for your SEO (search engine optimization). Also, the fonts used give your site identity making it memorable. (Are you going to make me say the word “branding”?) My Delicious bookmarks on Type can be found here.
June 26, 2009
Recently I discovered two website features that could be of interest to my clients: Apture and Mobify.
First Apture. Apture gives a web page reader hyperlinks without having to leave the page. You can see it at work in the text on this page of drawings I recently did on my iPod Touch. (Or see it now by clicking on the iPod Touch link.) I think it is a great advantage to not leave the page to see maps, video or Wikipedia snippets, but you will be the judge of that. Another great feature of Apture is that it can be added by the client without special software. After I add some code to the selected pages, he/she can edit the Apture links from within his/her browser (Firefox, Safari, IE). There are some quirks to it. Or maybe it is me, but the more I use it, the more I expect I will master it and the developers at Apture will improve their code. See the Apture website for more details. It is not as simple as drag and drop, but for certain sites, the payoff is well worth it.
Now Mofiby. I sent the Flower Series page to a friend to beta test and got back the reply, “Sorry, Flash is not iPhone friendly.” Damn! That’s right, I use Flash to show the time lapse drawings. I also know that Apture can demand a lot from the iPhone Safari browser. Though it is much improved on the OS 3 upgrade, it should still be thought of as Safar Lite.
I love my iPod Touch and believe that smartphones are definately the future of digital data. My web sites need to designed to account for this. If you are viewing this on a smartphone now, the Flower Series page is a good test for adapting rich media pages to the small screen. I had heard of Mobify from web guru Chris Coyier but had not had a chance to explore it. Mobify is also a bit glitchy. But like Apture, I am in the process of mastering it and believe it can be a good solution for this web development issue.
April 12, 2009
Border Hopping with Cory Mawhorter
Filed Under Blogging, Web | Leave a Comment
In mid February, I undertook a tutorial about changing fonts on a web page*(see footnote at the end of this post for details). I had tried other solutions but this one called FaceLift was better. I am using it here on this blog. Notice that all of the headlines are in a slab serif font? See also Pages, Categories, etc. in the sidebar? This is Gold to a web designer. This enables me to give my clients unique design (aka “branding”), my raison d’etre.
I like to learn more about these authors. Many are engineers in school or just out. Always interesting to see what other projects they have done and what kind of work is in their portfolio. http://facelift.mawhorter.net/ was the homepage. Odd thing here was that the author, Cory Mawhorter, was not very forthcoming. No portfolio. Just one other project which looked like a precursor to FaceLift.
I started digging in his personal blog and found a post from October that he was finalizing plans to take his van on a quest to see America. 50 states in 52 weeks. He had a number of delays, but by the time I was reading his blog in mid February, he was three weeks into his trip. It was the Monday before Mardi Gras and Cory was in New Orleans…. Read more
February 14, 2009
My name is Ken and I am hopelessly addicted. (response: “Hello Ken.”) Last November I joined The New York City WordPress Meetup Group to meet other WordPress junkies. I wanted to see what they score and where. Always looking for that Blue Magic plugin. (see American Gangster)
In February, I went to a MeetUp titled WordPress as a CMS: The Strategy of Content Publishing. It was well presented but it wasn’t what I had expected. (That could be another post: expectations. But not here.) My comments did lead to some good discussion with the presenter Johnathan Andersen, who started a message board thread about CMS. Below is an excerpt of my post there. I am including it here because I think it begins to explain my evolving approach to web site design.
What do you think it means to use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)?
I have been designing sites for about ten years. Most of my clients are writers, photographers illustrators, a book publisher and a few small business owners. The more computer literate have been using Adobe Contribute to edit their sites. I started using WP about three years ago with some of my authors. Publishers Weekly wrote that an author should be blogging whenever they have a new book coming out. That’s when I added WP blogs to their sites. I have always wanted my clients to maintain their own sites and WP seems like a great solution.
WHAT IS CMS TO ME?
Content Management. For starters, that means pages for Press, Bios, News, Coming Events, Portfolios (Galleries) and Contact as well as posts for a Blog. It also means an eCommerce Store, though I have not had any demand for that yet. The traditional Blog and the Magazine formats can accomplish this.I want to do some work outside of the available Theme Templates. I am a graphic designer. This is what I love. I also believe original site design gives my clients unique branding. But that probably doesn’t apply to this thread, except to say that I am learning to design my own modular WP sites (Thank you Chris @ www.css-tricks.com)
Because I want my clients to have as much control of their site as possible, I have been building some sites with Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme. (see www.thesisterproject.com) This has great promise, particularly because of the two extra Thesis Dashboard panels.
I will be very interested see if this generates any discussion. I have only been to two meetups but am looking forward to seeing what develops. It is great to get out from behind the monitor and meet with people. Even better when we are sharing the techie bong.
This is Valentines Day. I love my wife. (and my new iPod Touch)
113011UPDATE: see Smashing Magazine articleHow WordPress Took the CMS Crown.
November 7, 2008
Galleries, NextGen Solution
Filed Under Blogging, painting, Photography, Web | 1 Comment
I have been working on a new site for Margaret Roach that will be known as The Sister Project. It has greatly expanded my belief in blogging as the new publishing and WordPress as the leading software. I will be writing more about The Sister Project (TSP) after we launch in late November.
One of the five TSP blogs is Galleries where we will display curated submissions of poetry, prose, photography and art. The Galleries need software to organize and present the art and photography. There are many WP gallery plugins available but our research led us to NextGen Gallery. It offers a variety of options and seems to be well maintained–many plugins are not. As with many Open Source programs, the instructions and tutorials could be more thorough. After spending many hours “under the hood,” I think I know how NextGen runs but some things are still not clear. That is why I am doing this test post using paintings I made almost twenty years ago. I want my clients to be aware of this solution and it gives me a chance to post some paintings from one of my favorite series.
Below and in the sidebar are thumbnails of my Field Report art. Almost all of the drawings and paintings are based on one avocado plant that I grew in my apartment. Other works based on the direct observation of nature are also included as part of this series. This last week I went to the Morandi exhibit at the Met. I suppose Field Report is my “Morandi” statement.
(This is the navigation for the NextGen Gallery.)
slideshow
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Field Report
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Kenneth's bookshelf: read
Berger wrote this while Picasso was still alive. Quite interesting to read why this Marxist critic thinks the communist artist failed.
First in the trilogy and my favorite. He reminds me of Louise Ehrdrich. I wrote and told him so.
