ScottKing.com.au

It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve joined Adobe as a Product Specialist and I must say it’s easy to see why they’re the industry leader in digital content creation and digital marketing. The crew at Adobe are an incredibly switched on, dedicated and intelligent group of professionals.

I’ve joined at an exciting time as the company looks to strengthen it’s place as the digital marketing leader, the upcoming launch of CS6 and the range of incredible touch and mobile applications about to drop.

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted, a lot has been happening professionally and personally of late.

Time to start posting.

As the Technical Director at Reborn I worked alongside the owners to build the company from 12 employees to 30 within 12 short months. I watched the company develop from a small digital agency into a fully fledged creative agency with the might to take on the best in Australia.

A few friends of have asked my thoughts on HTML 5 and posing questions such as “Will HTML 5 replace Flash”. Firstly, HTML 5 is simply a new markup, it will replace HTML 4. Canvas is the SVG graphics technology that will enable HTML 5 and JavaScript to create rich and dynamic graphic, much like Flash, native in the browser.

Old dog, new tricks?
Canvas is an SGML based graphic language – however it is by no means the first SGML SVG, some of you will remember VRML that was around in the mid to late ’90s. If you remember VRML you’ll know how well that turned out.

Browser Penetration
3-5 years for browser support to reach a level that allows real world usage of HTML 5 + Canvas. Sure us tech heads love jumping onto the latest and greatest browser and it’s support for the latest cutting edge technologies. Most users, don’t. Most big companies don’t. And remember most Government systems, banking systems, etc are still using Internet Explorer 6 and some are even still running IE 5.

Browser Compatibility
If there is one thing that Browsers can agree on, it is to disagree. Each browser implements their technologies differently. Always have and always will. Even W3C strict standards based technologies get implemented differently. Even the exact same verison of a browser on Windows may have inconsistencies when compared to the same browser on a Macintosh. It’s about time us web developers got used to the fact that “browser standardisation” is .

Flash major flaw is also it’s major strength – it is a plug-in, a browser component so it must be installed seperatley in each browser implementation (or packaged with the brwosers by default) which can be a pain. However because Flash is run through, propietry player it is all but standardised across all browsers and operating systems.

Hardware Acceleration
SVG is a Vector graphic format, it is therefore quite processor intensive. Flash has overcome many of the hurdles of Vector based animation through years of development and by recently introducing hardware acceleration to it’s Flash Player. Canvas faces the same potential performance problems however it is up to each indepent browser vendor to implement it’s own opimistion and hardware acceleration meaning Canvas applications will run faster on some browsers, then others.

HTML 5 based image editors – visual image editors such as Photoshop that output to Canvas

Writing Canvas based code is very difficult. Lets take a look at a sample rectangle in Canvas:

HTML Mark-up:

<canvas id="example" width="200" height="200">
This text is displayed if your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas.
</canvas>

JavaScirpt:

var example = document.getElementById('example');
var context = example.getContext('2d');
context.fillStyle = "rgb(255,0,0)";
context.fillRect(30, 30, 50, 50);

To do the same thing in Flash you can either write the ActionScript to create the rectangle, which in actual fact looks quite similar to the JavaScirpt component of Canvas example. However, you can also just open up your Flash editor, grab the rectangle tool, pick a color and draw it onto the Stage.

What the Flash editor is doing is essentially creating the ActionScript (or more correctly the MXML) for you.

Until a few “WYSIWIG” style image editors come out with Canvas support (a future Photoshop Save to web option perhaps?) we will not see complex interfaces created with Canvas. 7 lines of code to create a simple colors rectangle with no animation or interactivity is a lot to write. Creating an entire interface in this way would be impossible.

Community
For Canvas to be successfull it must be adopted by a strong community of developers. I have no doubt that we will see JavaScript libraries to manipulate Canvas – animation packages, Tween packages, colorisation and the likes developed and released to the development community. But these things take time. There have been plenty of promising web technologies come and go. However, given it’s adoption by most major browser vendors and the hype surrounding Canvas it appears it will be with us for some time.

Conclusion
Canvas is a nice new technology to have in the toolkit, although a lot of the hype surrounding it at present is unfounded as real world corss-browser implementation of the Standard is sitll a long way off. Flash is a powerful technology with over 15 years of development behind it, 99% browser and market penetration and the worldwide multimedia leader Adobe behind it. Will Canvas replace Flash? No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MXML

A few Flash banners I created for Osmocote and Scotts Lawn Builder on behalf of the guys at Rhodes Wingrove (rhodeswingrove.com). Banner designs by Nathan Willdig at Rhodes Wingrove.

The tap banner was a bit of a trick as it’s always difficult to simulate flowing water nicely, especially when it needs to be interactive and dynamic. There were the usual file size restrictions to work within but I was quite pleased with the final banners.

Scotts Lawn Builder:

Osmocote:

This is a site I put together for Tour East, a division of Qantas

http://www.toureast.com.au

Decided to post about this because I couldnt find much information on it myself.

I just baked a pair of 2009 CCM U+ Skates in my oven. Here’s the recipe:

Pre heat oven to approx 200 Fahrenheit/93 Celsius

Place the skate on a ceramic plate, I find the girlfriends “expensive plates” work best.

TURN OFF THE OVEN

Put the sktes in making sure nothing is touching any metal, just the “expensive plate”.

REMEMBER TO TURN OFF THE OVEN

My CCM’s specified 2-3 minutes for senior size skate (2 min for a junior). I gave mine 2min 30sec each.

Strap them on fairly tight all the way up.

Make a few passes tightening up laces a bit more each time until you’ve got the boot strapped a little tighter then you would on game day.

Kick back and watch the Redwings beat someone.

I left mine on for about 40mins until I couldnt take the pain and loosened the laces back, re-tightened and sat for another 30mins or so.

People keep asking me about my thoughts on HTML5 and Silverlight, I decided to include CSS3 for the ride. So here you go.

HTML 5 – I cant see it seriously competing with Flash for at least 5 years. Firstly, browser vendors will implement their own take on the standards, Microsoft will implement their own take on the standards implementation and force web devs into several more years of IE hacks and work arounds. Secondly, for the market penetration of those browsers to really become wide spread enough for mainstream development will take at least 2 years. However, once implemented correctly and teamed up with the power of CSS3, the web will be a better place for it.

I loathe Silverlight. It is the epitome of everything that is wrong with Microsoft and in many ways, the internet. We have a perfectly good, well developed platform with 99.9% user penetration, Flash, and along comes Microsoft simply trying to cash in with their own, inferior albeit it infant version. They then use their usual strong hand tactics to force it into the market place in places it is not needed. Effectively creating another browser war scenario. Thanks but no thanks Microsoft, we’re happy with our Flash.

This further fuels my love/hate relationship for Microsoft. Stick your fantastic OS and get off the web.