Filed under Rants

Another clear example how it should NOT be..

I found out today that in order to try Adobe CS5.5 software, one is required to use the 'Adobe Download Manager' to install it.

How does this work?

• First you need to signup for a Adobe Account using their website
• Next, verify your account by e-mail
• Now you can download (and install) the "download manager". You'll get Adobe Air with that wheter you want it or not..
• Done installing, run the download manager and pray the thing starts to download your trial
• While downloading awnser some questions regarding your profession and intended usage of the software (!?)
• Done downloading, browse to the folder you downloaded the file, open it and follow the installation application

Clearly the download manager is a cough hughe benifit to users that want to quickly trial Adobe software...

My guess is that the only one benifiting from this crap is Adobe itself.

Why?

• An Adobe account is mandatory
• Installing Air is mandatory

I believe Adobe keeps moving into the wrong direction and this download manager is yet another clear example.. It's time they drop their monopoly behavior and start focussing on actually improving their paid products.

Note: If you are behind a corporate proxy or firewall you're probably out of luck..

Recently Mozilla released Firefox 5, Microsoft showed a new preview of IE10 and Google has taken a 20% global market share with Chrome. A lot is hapening that continues to shift the browser landscape.

What is the best browser? Which one is the fastest?

Right now my personal favorite — as a webby — would be Chrome, followed by the Mac OS version of Safari 5. Here is why.

I've been a Firefox user since 1.0. Plugins, tabs and it's robust rendering engine made it the best browser of it's day, on both Windows and the Mac. Hell, I've even helped with the Spread Firefox campaign. Firefox was the instigator of the downfall of IE and added valuable tools for styling and scripting websites.

On the Mac it wasn't until Apple updated it's Safari browser to version 3 that (to me) added a good alternative to Firefox.

I know Opera is a long time player, but to be honest, I never liked it. As I've read on the interweb, you either love Opera or you don't. I'm with the latter.

With Windows it wasn't until Safari and Chrome entered the arena that made Firefox look slow and outdated. Mozilla did a great job with Firefox 4, but right now it still feels a bit sluggish and bloated.

You might be wondering why I'm not mentioning Internet Explorer? IE is one of the downsides of modern webdesign and -development. IE6, IE7 and IE8 are all crap. Legacy we are saddled up with. IE9 is a LOT better, but to me it's just catching up — and adding yet another browser version to the test. Besides, it won't even run on other platforms than Windows 7.

The reasons I prefer Chrome for my day to day job has to do with a couple of things.

Speed and edge

Chrome, like Safari, is powered by the WebKit engine. It's fast, standards compliant and supports the latest and greatest from HTML5 land. Chrome also sports a V8 Javascript engine that massivly improves performance. It feels faster than Firefox and Safari at the moment on both Windows and OSX.

Up to date

Chrome will keep itself up to date. As a user, you'll only have one version of Chrome. For web developers this is great news! Firefox adopted this updating strategy, for the good! Safari, Opera and others still rely on the user for upgrading the browser. Hopefully this will change in the near future.

Integrated tools

You think Firebug is great? Well Chrome and Safari have something similair built right in and it looks and feels far better!

Javascript debugging, CSS inspector, CSS live editting, even viewing Json structures — it's all availble in Chrome without installing any plugins. The developer tooling on Safari and Chrome look alike, but Chrome is a bit more leaner and meaner.

The Javascript debugger, network inspector, profiler etc. help a lot when developing for the web.

With Firefox, plugins can add a lot of the same functionality, but in general they do not look, feel and work consistent.

The devil is in the details

The latest browser versions are getting more and more of the same features. Speed, plugins support, bookmark synchonisation etc. Which browser you prefer becomes more and more a matter of taste and personal preference. User experience plays a big part. Too me it's all in the details. Chrome isn't notably faster than for instance Safari 5 on the Mac, but it does feel like it. Same goes with the development tools.

Some argue Firefox has much better plugin support. I disagree, but I don't use a lot of plugins. The plugins I do use, like measureit and adblock, are available on Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

I'm really starting to hate the terminology User Experience , UX, User eXperience or whatever fancy acronym you want to give it.

Somehow, something fundamental as 'experience' has been put in a box and slapped a red sticker on it. Like some design tool creates UX.

Look John, you can buy off the shelve User Experience for our App for just $299!

The reason I'm wrting this flame is because of my day to day job. People there have a completely distored vision of UX.

Most of my internal customers and coworkers think UX is some fancy rotation animation.

They fail to realise UX is anything but that... (Same goes for the word design, but thats another discussion altogether)

I'm not the only one experiencing this frustration by the way, so from now on I'm dropping UX as a word alltogether. To me it's meaningless now. It's, ahhhummm, dead to me.

Just some thoughts on Apple's soon to be released tablet. Many critics out there don't like the device because it lacks features like video conferencing and third party multitasking. There has been so much fuzz about it, as a NUI developer, I'll also shed my opinion on the subject.

Right now I don't feel the need to own an iPad. Pretty much the same that I don't feel the need to have a Microsoft Surface Table in my living room. With a computer, smart phone and laptop within reach, I don't see the point of adding another device to my collection.

I do see potential in these kind of evolutionary devices though. I really like the 'emphasis' and 'opportunities' they bring to me as a developer/ designer.

The iPad is the first true tablet computer I know of that has a complete finger / gesture based user interface. Just like the iPhone was the first successful smart phone with a true finger and gesture based User interface.

No need to worry about managing files, virus scanners or other standard computer operations. The iPad is completely task based making it a different computing experience we techies are used to.

Another thing that makes me excited about this device are the movies I watch. When I take a look at yesterdays Sci-Fi movies (Serenity, Start Trek to name a few).. I keep seeing people walking around with iPad like devices. Arthur C Clare wrote about a Newspad device years ago. Hell, even Microsoft's 2020 concept movies show multi touch tablet devices that have a stunning resemblance with Apple's tablet.

So whats up with that? Apparently people, like myself, were expecting a video conferencing, sketch book, note taking internet device ... not a device that puts emphasis on a consistent task driven, touch based UI...

Some people even suggest the iPad isn't targeted at us nerds at all, being the reason the device lacks some 'most wanted' features.

Instead, it's believed Apple sees the iPad as a complete new way of computing. Especially for people without any technical knowledge (your grandparents for example).

I see the iPad as a new opportunity to create task focussed applications. I wouldn't be able to sum the possibilities such a device presents for example healthcare automation.

So, if the device will be a success or a failure, no one can predict that. I do believe the iPad brings the future a little closed, and you gotta give it credit for that...

I like Channel 9 video's.. but this is just stupid... or hilarious, your pick ;-). In order to watch a video about IE9's Standards and Compatibility you are required to download the Silverlight plugin... LOL! PS. yes, I known about the download link... still made me smile :-P

Microsoft is promoting Silverlight as the next best thing for web development. While Silverlight looks promising and feature rich with version 3.0 on it's way, how do Microsoft's competitors look at the future of web development? What will we use to code our web apps in a few years?

Microsoft introduced Silverlight late 2006 as an alternative to their traditional ASP.net Website and Web Applications. Using an XML like language called XAML, it enabled developers to deliver web animations and rich internet applications 'comparable' to Flash.

With version 2.0 Silverlight reached an acceptable level (feature richness, and bug prone) and shifted it's aim towards true Rich Web UI development like Adobe's Flex (that was released back in 2004). To date, however, Silverlight adds little more to Rich web development then Flex does. Apart from the C#, Visual Studio and .NET Framework support, most 'features' have been available to web designers for years.

On the other hand we've seen the evolvement of Javascript and Ajax development the past few years. Embraced by all camps, advanced Javascript and web standards have grown to a professional level.

It's pretty clear that Microsoft's competition, Google and Apple (amongst others) aim at the next version of HTML, Javascript and CSS. All their present Web applications make heavy usage of HTML, CSS, Javascript frameworks and AJAX technology.

Recently Apple released an updated version of MobileMe. A web based application using SproutCore. They also updated Safari 4 and the iPhone Mobile Safari browser to support CSS 3 and HTML 5.

Google, on the other hand, introduced a Gmail web application running online and offline on both an Android and iPhone using the offline data storage engine of HTML5. And of course their Chrome browser supports most of the latest standards as well since it uses the same WebKit engine like Safari does.

The current HTML 4 specification is pretty limited and dates back to 1999. HTML5 is primarily the same to older HTML 4 / XHTML specification. It's first focus is to be backwards compatible besides pouring in a lot of new elements and functionality.

CSS 3 adds animations and other new possibilities to style HTML pages. JavaScript development is simplified by frameworks like Prototype and jQuery (amongst others).

Microsoft, with Silverlight, chooses for a solution a lot like Adobe's Flex and Flash, which requires specialized software to develop and compile executables. But why do they aim there arrows on Silverlight? Vendor lock-in anyone? :-)

Personally I don't believe a single technology will be the "next best thing". My guess would be that HTML is the ubiquitous standard, adopted by every platform, and won't go away anytime soon (nor will Flash for that matter).

Silverlight does nothing more then Flash does at the moment. I do believe the programming environment and framework is superior to that of Flash (in sense of userbase, language development etc.).

On the ohter hand Flash has the edge when it comes to animation software. And although the Silverlight player runs much smoother then the legacy, and security risks plagued, Flash player, more the 90% of web users have the Flash player installed (at max 25% has Silverlight right now).

Another important factor to keep in mind is the target group of designers and animators that Microsoft would like to see creating Websites with Silverlight. A lot of Flash animators and designers simply love Flash. They won't run away from one of their daily tools overnight.

As you have read, Microsoft hasn't convinced me yet. I'll still use HTML / CSS and JavaScript for most of my Web development. If I'm not able to use these technologies I would still prefer Flash.

Only reason for me to use Silverlight right now would be if I was asked to create a compelling intranet site that would be maintained by C# developers... Or when my boss tells me too... ;-P