February 1st, 2010 by admin

Today the UX world exploded with the news of Steve Jobs rant at the expense of Google & Adobe that  was reported over the weekend.  Amongst the quotes was one about Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra being BS, (or “crap”, depending on whose report you read, but the jist is the same), and Adobe being lazy.  However, the kicker was how he finished off his attack on Adobe: “No-one will be using Flash.” he said, “The world is moving to HTML5″.

Flash developers felt the fear as open-standards proponents around the world pounced on this proclamation of the death of Flash with relish.  There are a lot of Flash haters, the following phrases are examples of the kind of things thrown around today:
“It should be no surprise then that I’m stoked to see a vigorous debate taking place about the future/fate of Flash well ahead of schedule, and even happier to see Flash sympathisers already resorting to desperate measures”
“There it is folks, basically a guarantee that Flash will never be on the iPhone! Awesome!”
“Steve Jobs kills all known forms of Flash DEAD!”

Some other comments from open-standards supporters betrayed pure schadenfreude at the potentially disastrous effects of this on the careers and livelihoods of their Flash-developing cousins.  It has to be said here that none of this is representitive of the whole open-standards movement, most of whom I’m sure are thoughtful, open-minded and interested individuals, just a very bitter and resentful subsection of that crowd.

I was beginning to prepare an objective article on the whole Flash/HTML5 issue when Richard Leggett beat me to it by a country mile and posted this article on his blog, and many developers of varied technologies and backgrounds were somewhat grateful.. Retweets of the url made it the hot topic on Twitter during the afternoon, so needless to say I binned my notes – no need to write that one.

So, with a thoughtful and well crafted article out there, I found myself wondering what a strange beast Flash is, for generating such bitter feelings among a large number of non-Flash developers.  I have friends on both sides of this divide, it’s infuriating.  Flash polarises the developer community like no other technology.  To many Flash developers, it’s as much a hobby as a job, a passion followed thru into a career, exciting and fun.  At the same time, surely no-one posts their distaste for .Net, or Java, or Python for example, with anywhere near the venom reserved for Flash.  Why is this?  Why is it also that these people are so quick to declare the death of Flash merely because Steve Jobs has decreed it so?  Over the years, I’ve had many conversations with HTML and Javascript developers who felt a resentment toward their Flash peers because:

• The Flash guys tended to get the ‘cool’ work at their place, even when that work could equally be done by a Javascript developer
• Flash developers are terrible programmers, with no proper standards, writing awful, inefficient, CPU-gulping code
• Flash is not ‘open’ and it’s ubiquity holds back standards-based development, which is bad

As with many things, there are enough negative examples out there to justify these feelings to some extent.  There are indeed a lot of awful Flash developers.  Truly awful ones, polluting the web with CPU-hogging, eternally loading garbage that defiles the very words “user experience”.  But then, bad examples outnumber the good in all walks of life – there are more poor exponents of every discipline under the sun than there are sophisticated and efficient ones, and there’s enough poor AJAX and Java out there to satisfy a hate campaign, should anyone be stupid enough to instigate one.  With Flash, it would appear that the abundance of the bad is taken to be representitive of the whole, when in fact the Flash industry is replete with amazingly talented, disciplined and creative individuals and outstanding examples of their work.

The ‘hate’ section of the open-standards crowd took Steve Jobs rant as something of a declaration, rather than an opinion.  When you really want something to happen, and someone you respect declares that it has, then there is a natural tendency to just believe that, because it is what you want to believe, rather than to actually think thru the situation and draw a considered opinion. That happened today.  Steve Jobs is indeed a genius – I love my macs, as I’ve said before – but that doesn’t make him immune to being wrong.

Some people are truly technology agnostic.  The best tool for the job.  Technology is only as good or bad as the use to which it is put.  Please let me work with these people, and shield me from the others…

January 31st, 2010 by admin

There is a debate raging in the rich UX industry right now about the future, or lack of one, for Flash.  Personally, in 12 years of major agency work in this industry I’ve never seen anything quite like it.  The arguments vary from glee-filled ranting predictions of the death of Flash to postured futures where the AS language and associated tools are used to publish native applications to the various platforms, and occasionally calm, balanced and objective opinions.  The latter appear to be quite rare tho, unfortunately.

The debates circle around separate but inextricably linked subjects:

• Apple’s anti-Flash stance and the lack of Flash on the iPad
• HTML5 vs Flash
• Flash’s future: plug-in or native

Below are a selection of highlights.  It’s always a good idea with these to assess the biases as best you can, (some of these guys are from Adobe, some wear their anti-Flash leanings like a badge, but some are harder to spot, either way).

John Gruber on Apple’s distaste for Flash
Aral Balkan on his view of a native apps future for the Flash tools
A debate at a Flash user group between Aral and Mark Doherty of Adobe
Lee Brimelow attacking the lack of Flash on the iPad, while simultaneously apologising for a slightly risque post on his blog…
Steve Jobs makes his views abundantly clear at an Apple Town Hall meeting
John Nack of Adobe with a something approaching reasonabless
Ryan Stewart, again from Adobe, with a pageful posts on Flash, iPad & HTML5
TUAW, an Apple blog, on Adobe’s reaction to the lack of Flash on the iPad
Adobe Flash blog puts their case on a number of issues, (somewhat less clumsily than some of their evangelists personal blogs)

I read that Grant Skinner is preparing a post on this subject.  I’m expecting him to see some kind of positive future for Flash, given his vast experience and celebrity in the Flash community, but it will be interesting to see whether he puts his faith in Adobe’s vision of a future for the plug-in or something more like Aral’s (and others) vision of a future where we publish native apps developed with Flash.

I would expect the Silverlight community to be watching this debate closely, because really Adobe are representing the proprietary plug-in based future, and that includes Silverlight.  If Flash falls, you’d have to expect Silverlight to fall with it. Personally I’ve acheived a lot of things with Flash, but I’m in now way tied to it. When Director was clearly going to be usurped by Flash a few people I know clung on to it with white knuckles and left themseves with a lot of catching up to do – there’s a lesson in objectivity if ever you needed one. One thing feels clear – Adobe are not happy people at the moment, the fear is almost tangible.

I’m preparing an entry on my own thoughts as to what the future of rich UX is, but to be honest there are so many variables involved when you look at the bigger picture that although I’ve written a fair bit, I have yet to reach a conclusion.  In the meantime, all I can do is keep reading, learning, and sifting thru the information – same as everyone else.

January 30th, 2010 by admin

I have a lot of Apple products, and I love them.  They look beautiful, and they are a pleasure to use.  I use pc’s and Windows devices and Nokia phones a lot as well so I do have something to compare them to, before you ask.  I used to say that OSX vs Windows was like Ferrari v Ford: you can do exactly the same things in a Ford as you can in a Farrari, but the Ferrari is a better experience to drive.

So, I love my Apple products.  This is different, however, from loving Apple as a company.  I don’t love or hate any company, they exist for their own financial ends and any feeling of ‘loyalty’ toward them is misplaced.   Companies change.  The next set of cool rebels are just around the corner, leaving yesterdays heroes looking like reactionary dads faced with some horrific new form of techno.

I saw the keynote, and I’ve read the blogs, and I’ve seen the videos – particularly this one – and from being initially hugely underwhelmed I now do see the iPad as another super-cool device, with the sleek look and the new gestures and everything.  I want one.  But will I buy one?

No.

And here’s why: there will be no Flash Player for it.

Now, before you start shouting, I am not a ’supporter’ of Flash.  Neither am I a hater.  People who love or hate Flash are deeply misguided.  Flash does not exist as a tangible entity you can love or hate.  What you love or hate is what people do with Flash, not Flash itself.  There is a lot of bad Flash.  Really bad Flash.  And an awful lot of it.  However, to blame Flash for this is akin to placing the blame for a terrible book on the paper it is printed on, rather than the author.

The simple fact is that there is a small percentage of good, useful, well designed and developed Flash on the web, and when I buy a device to surf the web I demand the choice to be able to see and use it.  If the Flash is bad, then I’ll do my surfing elsewhere thank you very much – it’s my decision.  For Apple to make that decision for me, well, it smells of deception, and control, and revenue, and other things you wouldn’t associate with the ‘cool’ or the ‘rebellious’.

Yes, yes I know – I have an iPhone and I love it.  I actually accept the lack of a Flash Player on the iPhone, because subconciously I see the iPhone as a small device that necessitates compromises over the ‘full’ experience.  I have no other ‘micro surfing’ experience to compare it to.  Apple blamed ‘performance’ for blocking Flash.  Well, maybe so. Maybe. It’s more likely to be an revenue decision linked to the app-store. Don’t think it comes down to support for open standards either, (as some people amazingly seem to believe).  If open standards presented a platform for taking revenue away from the app store then Apple would block them too.

Now, Flash on the iPad should suffer from no ‘performance issues’ as far as I can see, particularly with 10.1 appearing to run so well on a huge number of devices from different manufacturers.  And, on a device that is pretty much netbook size I will not accept any compromise over my web surfing experience.  I’d feel cheated to have to use Flash sites and apps on a separate device having shelled out for an iPad – and so should you.  The choice should be yours.

So, I love my macs, and I love my iPhone.  But I have no feelings either way for Apple themselves, and I won’t be buying an iPad.  I’ll wait to see what multitouch tablet competition arises from the Android world – I have a feeling it will give me the whole web, instead of the web that someone else has decided is fit for me to see.

January 28th, 2010 by admin

Hello World.

I’ve worked in digital media, specifically in the area of rich user experience development, for over 12 years.  In that time I have worked with some of the best designers, developers, technical architects, project managers etc in the industry, for the biggest agencies in the industry.  I’ve lead teams developing for biggest clients in the world, using every technology under the sun to do it, from Director (RIP) to Silverlight via Flash, Ajax, HTML and Java applets.  I’ve worked with Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Google in amongst all of this.  I’ve never kept a blog for my opinions.  To do so would inevitably compromise clients, strategic partners or colleagues at some point.

Lets face it tho, the internet right now is a mess.  Corporations are deploying technologies on their sites merely for strategic purposes, regardless of the impact on their users.  Paranoid developers on all sides look suspiciously at what ‘the enemy’ is doing, and seek to unsettle and defame it at every opportunity.  Debate is rarely balanced and constructive, and is more often biased and ill-informed.  Reaction over consideration, suspicion over enthusiasm, protection over collaboration.

So why am I here all of a sudden?  Well, I’ve found this abundance of misinformed rhetoric now affects the everyday conversations I have with colleagues, bosses and clients.  Quite frankly, it’s deeply irritating.  So I have created Confabulor as a platform for me to try to provide a balanced & informed opinion, (it is, after all, just my opinion), of where we are, where we ought to be, and what is going to emerge.

On the blogroll you will see people representing different positions and points of view, different technologies and approaches.   I don’t always agree with them and they don’t always represent my views, but I follow them anyway.  Alongside them are people I just like to follow because I like the stuff they dig up and they seem like good people.

So, am I a shining light in the darkness?  A voice for reason in the madness?  An area of calm in the eye of the storm?  Er.. no.  Just a guy in the UX trade, trying to create an anonymous space I can point people at and say “I don’t know who that guy is, but I agree with him”.

Confabulor.

ps.  I am not quite the pompous ass this post makes me out to be.