Posted by Lee Brimelow - August 20, 2007
I'm finally releasing my highlights video from leg 1 of the OnAIR Bus Tour. This video combines all of the webcam photos taken on the bus with a bunch of live action footage that I shot over the 2 weeks. Hope you enjoy it. Oh and there are still a bunch of tour stops left so go on over and register and maybe we'll see you in the next highlight reel.
You can view the video here.
Lee :-)
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - August 5, 2007
Came across an interesting read talking about the progression of Adobe's logo. Check out their first version...
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - August 1, 2007
Adobe has posted a video of the session that I delivered in Denver entitled "Transitioning to the Desktop." This session discussed a wide range of design topics relating to Adobe AIR development. You can check out some of the examples that I talked about at http://www.theflexblog.com. You click on the image below to check out the video.
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - May 8, 2007
It's been almost a week since the Mix 07 conference wrapped in Vegas and I now finally have some time to reflect on what I saw. If I had to sum up the conference in one word, it would have to be Silverlight. This conference was clearly focused on Microsoft's newly branded cross-platform browser runtime. This was made especially clear due to the fact that WPF wasn't mentioned at all during the keynote except for a short highlight video. For a minute-by-minute report of what was announced you can check out this post which I wrote from the floor of the keynote. I was impressed how Microsoft really listened to what people were requesting for Silverlight and its attempt to incorporate those things into the alpha 1.1 build. I use the word attempt because there are a few areas where the hype was perhaps a bit optimistic.
Below is a rundown of the major announcements along with my thoughts after playing around with it for a week:
Cross-platform .NET supportThis is the area that I am most excited about. You can now use C# for your code-behind language in Silverlight! This is compiled into a DLL file which gets referenced in your XAML file. The .NET framework for Silverlight is only a small subset of the full framework but it is a tremendous addition for developers who don't want to program in JavaScript (Me). The performance of using the managed features is surely much greater than using JavaScript. Microsoft released new versions of Visual Studio and Blend that support this new workflow. You now have Intellisense support for Silverlight!
Controls for SilverlightAlthough this was mentioned quite a bit at the conference, don't get your hopes up here. These are NOT WPF controls, but rather a few samples in the Silverlight SDK. Having real controls for Silverlight means to have them baked into the platform. This is one area where the hype machine got a little out of control. I'm sure Microsoft is working on exposing some real WPF controls but we are not there yet.
Silverlight Streaming ServiceThis was another announcement that I was really excited about. Microsoft has started a CDN network for Silverlight content. Essentially this means that it provides hosting for your Silverlight applications. This is particularly helpful for streaming large amounts of video. The thing that really got my attention was the fact that you can get 4 gigs of space for free when signing up. As someone who does a lot of video, I'll be using every byte of that space. I have uploaded a couple of examples and it seems to work relatively well, although it is somewhat confusing when you first start out.
Expression Media EncoderThe Expression Media Encoder is a separate application that is a part of the Expression Media package. This application allows you to encode video files to a format that is compatible with Silverlight (WMV). I am REALLY impressed with this application as I have always wanted something to convert QuickTime to WMV files easily. The encoding works flawlessly. The other cool thing is the ability to add a Silverlight video player template to your encoding. This produces a working Silverlight application which you can deploy or upload to the Silverlight Streaming Service. These projects can easily be edited and restyled using the new version of Blend. The templates are ok for the most part, but the buffering and loading features need some work.
Cross-platform DebuggingThis is a feature that seemed to please a lot of people. Basically this allows you to use the debugging features of Visual Studio to debug Silverlight applications on a Mac in real-time. This was a nice feature to see as it reinforces the fact that they are thinking of both sides of the fence. I haven't talked to anyone who has actually tried it though so I can't comment on the reality of it.
Plug-in Detection and InstallMicrosoft has completely revamped the plug-in detection and install experience. The files are now referenced from a Microsoft server rather than having a million different versions out there. There is a also a more friendly image-based message informing people that they need to install the Silverlight player. Nice move.
Overall I am very impressed with the direction that Microsoft is taking Silverlight. My only complaint is that they seem to be announcing features too soon, before they are fully fleshed out. This is a dangerous thing because it has the potential of turning off potential designers and developers before the product is even released.
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - April 13, 2007
Right now there seems to be much confusion surrounding the new competition that has developed between Adobe and Microsoft. With a new technology being released seemingly every week and acronyms flying around left and right, itâs been tough to stay on top of it all. In this short article Iâll try to clear things up by talking about each technology and what its competitors are. The easiest way to talk about it is by diving things up into two categories: the desktop and the browser.
Desktop Applications
Desktop applications are stand-alone programs that run off your hard drive. They may or may not connect to the internet. This category includes all the software that you use on a daily basis such as Word, Photoshop, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. The new competitors in this space are WPF from Microsoft and Apollo from Adobe. Letâs take a quick look at each technology.
WPF
WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation and it is the new graphics engine for the Windows Vista operating system. WPF applications can still be run on Windows XP if the user downloads a 50MB runtime file. WPF is appealing to designers because it allows you to easily add animations, 3D, and excellent typography to Windows applications. WPF is backed by the immense .NET framework and it allows you complete access to the users devices, drives, etc. It is important to note here that WPF is for building Windows-only applications.
Apollo
Apollo is the code-name for the new cross-platform runtime from Adobe. Apollo allows you to use a combination of HTML, JavaScript, Flash and Flex to create desktop applications that run on both Windows and Mac. The user needs to download a 5MB runtime in order to run Apollo applications. One of the major selling points over WPF is the fact that it runs on Windows, Mac and in the near future, Linux. But this cross-platform compatibility comes at the expense of power. Apollo currently only allows simple file reading and writing from the userâs drive. As Adobe itself has said, you couldnât make Photoshop in Apollo, itâs just not powerful enough. This is why Adobe has been careful to note that Apollo is geared for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for the desktop. If you need to create a branded media player application or an offline email client then Apollo would be an excellent fit.
The Competition
There isnât as much competition between WPF and Apollo as some have made out. Like I mentioned above, WPF and Apollo are geared for different purposes. WPF for full-blown Windows applications and Apollo for lighter, internet-connected applications. But there is of course a gray area where the two technologies overlap and both companies are fighting to own it.
The Browser
Browser experiences are obviously anything that runs inside any of the standard web browsers. Here the main competition is between WPF/E from Microsoft and Flash/Flex from Adobe. Letâs take a look at each technology.
WPF/E
WPF/E is the code-name for Microsoftâs cross-platform browser runtime that allows you to create rich browser experiences using a small subset of the standard WPF technology. Unlike WPF, WPF/E runs on both Windows and Mac. You program WPF/E using XAML, which is the new WPF markup language, and JavaScript. It is still in the very early stages and only currently supports a tiny fraction of the features of regular WPF. WPF/E is a great choice if there is need to play WMV video in a branded experience and video is the area that Microsoft sees the most potential in.
Flash/Flex
Everybody knows Flash as it has become the clear leader in delivering rich content to the web. With the release of Flash 8, Adobe obliterated the competition in the web video space. This is apparent when you see that YouTube, Google, and most TV networks currently deliver their video in Flash. Flex is a companion technology that allows developers to make RIAs but the end result is still a Flash file. With the newly released Actionscript 3 language as well as incredible open-source projects like Papervision3D, Adobe is continuing to raise the bar when it comes to rich web content.
The Competition
This is the area that Microsoft has its work cut out for it. Flash has become so prevalent and powerful that it will be hard for WPF/E to ever put a dent in it. But there are definitely some situations where WPF/E would be a clear choice, such as delivering secure WMV video to users. But it is still way too early to tell how this space will pan out and I know that Microsoft has some big announcements coming regarding WPF/E.
I hope this cleared some things up. It could be that tomorrow everything changes again. Thatâs why you need to stay on top of your technology RSS feeds!
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - March 23, 2007
After reading Seanâs post about design theft I thought I would chime in with my own experience with this. On gotoAndLearn() I have made tutorials on a large number of Flash topics and I always include a working FLA file for people so they can check out the finished product. Well it has come to my attention that certain websites have been selling not only these files, but also the tutorials themselves.
One such example is the 3-part 3D carousel tutorial where I explain how to construct the, now played out, UI construct. I recently became aware that a site was selling the tutorials and the FLA file as part CD-ROM of Flash resources. Thanks to the Insomniac Syndicate for bringing this to the surface. What is lame is that they donât even take the time to put in their own graphics. Check out it out here.
Personally I find it amusing as Iâm not making any money on them in the first place. But if I was going to set out to make money by selling other peopleâs work, I would at the very least change the graphics.
Thieves have become very lazy,
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - March 14, 2007
You were right and I was wrong. Math isn't useless after all. I've been using lots of trigonometry lately at work and I now wish that I had paid attention during my high school years. I thought I knew it all. As it turns out, I did know it all, but I did however drop the ball on this math thing. My days of walking into math class with my hand on my crotch saying "Cosine this" are long gone. Goodwill hunting I'm not.
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - March 13, 2007
Have you heard of Twitter yet? Well it seems like that's all I hear about lately when perusing through the WPF and Flash community blogs. The concept couldn't be simpler. You make posts saying nothing more than what you are doing at the time. The more you do it, the more interesting it becomes. You can follow other Twitters as well as adding them as friends. Think of it like a set of one sentence blog posts that allow people to track what you're up to. This has been particularly useful for people who are attending conferences as it's a great way to find people. The popularity of Twitter seems to be exploding!
Go over and sign up and you can follow me here.
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - February 28, 2007
We have been doing quite a bit of gadget work lately here at frog. As an experiment, myself and Senior Visual Designer Tim Wong decided to create a frogblog RSS reader gadget. Since gadgets are essentially just HTML and JavaScript there is no reason that you can't include other browser technologies such as Flash and Flex. In this gadget the Flash piece is handling all of the XML parsing and the actual list of news items. Since it is running locally there are no sandbox restrictions for reading in external XML which is nice. The arrows allow you smoothly scroll up and down through the items.
There is one strange bug when you first click on an item in the Flash movie as it doesn't open up the browser. But after that first click items opens the browser to view the news items as expected. We are looking into this bug but we think it has to do with the IE 7 instance which displays the gadgets.
Having Flash in the sidebar opens up a TON of possibilities for cool gadgets like MP3 players and system monitors. Stay tuned for more!
If you are running Vista you can download the gadget here. Just save the ZIP file to your hard drive, rename it so that it has .gadget as the file extension and double-click to install.
Lee
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Posted by Lee Brimelow - February 15, 2007
There are a lot of posts in the blogosphere about how Google screwed up the Valentine's Day version of their logo. The general consiparcy theory is that they accidentally left out the "L" causing the logo to read googe. Take a look at the logo and make your own decision. I can clearly see that the "L" is the stem of the strawberry.
Google made a public statement via their blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/strawberries-are-red-stems-are-green.html#links.
Lee
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