One of the distniguishing characteristics between Flash and Web Standards is the rate at which Adobe advances the Flash Platform. Every 18 months or so a new version of the Player and authoring tools is released with additional features, performance enhancements and general improvements. This pace can be maddening (and expensive) for developers to keep up with, but it also really drives innovation. 

In the grand tradition of Max, Adobe launched, announced, or otherwise went public with a flood of new things for the industry to wrap its head around. Here is a cheat sheet to help keep some of the Flash related advancements straight.

Read the rest of this post »

The term Responsive Web Design was coined By Ethan Marcotte to describe a new technique for providing alternate layouts for multiple screens sizes within a single HTML page. In his article on A List Apart Ethan details how to use Media Queries (part of the CSS3 spec) to use different styles for the page based on the width of the browser window.

It is easiest to see the effects in his demonstration page by adjusting the width of your browser window. You will notice that his fluid grid snaps to a new layout when the window’s width is 480 pixels or less. You will see the same layout on your iPhone or Android phone.

Since the release of this article, there has been a good deal of discussion about the technique. I'll review some of that after the jump.

Read the rest of this post »

It will be interesting to see if recent statements by the W3C will impact the growing demand for open Web standards. My bet is they won't.

At face value the comments may seem pretty damning, but they are specifically addressing the HTML5 spec, not the cocktail of standards-based technologies commonly bundled under the HTML5 buzz-word. HTML, JavaScript and CSS and supporting supporting technologies like Web Fonts and SVG are feasible alternatives for many cases where Flash was once the only choice.

The comments do lend support to a strategy of using Flash for richer media whenever possible and falling back to HTML5 video, canvas when Flash support is not available.