Adobe onAIR Tour

To the future of applications

So yesterday I attended the Adobe onAIR tour at The Brewery in London’s east-end. And what a pleasant surprise it was as well. After being a little disappointed with the Colin Moock session a few weeks ago I wasn’t sure what to expect but the AIR team definitely turned up to impress.

Daniel Dura and Kevin Hoyt both made really interesting presentations about the flexibility of the AIR development environment and underlying interface. Particularly ion regards to integrating HTML and Javascript.

Dion Alamer from Ajaxian.com made a a great talk about Google gears and the 3rd party technologies you’ll be able to utilize within AIR. Pointing out the fact that this technology embraces the existing, rather than developers having to recreate the wheel.

Lee Brimelow finished off the show with some great mini applications demoing some key features of the app and supplying us all with a much needed laugh at the end of a long day.

Looking at the technology it’s definetely got some serious legs. At the very least the opportunity for web developers to create native applications without having to worry about learning the formalities of standard application development is great. The main sell of AIR has to be around the integrated web/desktop features. At initial review, the ability to drag-and-drop web data from your browser is brilliant but the possibilities that this opens up is just unimaginable. In a digital world where Google is taking over with online applications and slowly trying to bring your desktop to the web. An application that brings the web into your desktop and vice-versa is not necessarily in competition, but quite simply the personification of Marshall McLuhans “Global Village”.

I for one can’t wait to get my teeth stuck into developing some AIR applications.

http://www.adobe.com/go/air http://onair.adobe.com/

In Need of Process

Sometimes I do struggle when it comes to process.

Not from the idea or action of partaking in, but from the constant lack of process and understanding of structured protocol that seems to exist within the creative industry currently.

Most of my days currently seem to be spent dealing with issues, that if a suitable process had been implemented at the start, then my time just wouldn’t be needed again. Unfortunately though, often when I raise the idea of implementing processes and protocols, I’m met with an echo of moans from creatives’, claiming that such principles can stifle ideas, drown creativity in a team and really hold very little benefit to projects at all (although I do know several brand designers that swear by creative processes).

This is where things are often misunderstood. I’m not concerned with ensuring processes are being followed within the creative but in the preceding sections and areas that support it. Simple processes should be there as a foundation to raise the level of creativity. As does restraint often not give a team more room for creativeness?

Speaking from a development angle, I often find the most creative and unique solutions come from areas where very specific restrictions are enforced. But in evidence, if you look at some of the solutions to cross-browser issues and DOM problems that often appear on sites like www.alistapart.com surely you can only agree?

Personally I hope to soon start finding processes increasingly adopted in my professional life. That finally creative teams will see process as a friend rather than foe, keep their bloody folders tidy and then maybe my life will get just a little bit easier

Know your HTML elements?

How Many HTML Elements Can You Name in 5 Minutes?

It was alot harder than I expected and I managed to forgot some really obvious tags but all in all, not a bad performance.

57

And so it begins

So, i’ve finally managed to get this blog working. It’s only taken the best part of the autumn but now I’ve finally got it going.

The original plan was to stop spamming people with articles and sites I found across the ether, posting them here instead. But the more I thought about it I decided I’d also use the site to post any useful scripts, plug-ins or techniques I develop.

So hopefully over-time I’ll generate a really useful backlog of tools for fellow web-developers. Of course I’ll release any code under a standard Open Source license.