March « 2010 « Steve Workman

Archive for March, 2010

HTML5 Coming of Age

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

If technology is driven forward by demand and hype, Apple is at the helm of a HTML5 labelled chariot rampaging through the streets. The iPad is coming and high-end newspaper and magazine publications are falling over themselves to change their sites to be used with Apple’s new flagship device.

The amount of power Apple holds is amazing. Forcing the likes of News Corp to change the way their content is published is a task that would normally be impossible for any external company. Even if you were coming at it from the inside, you would never have a hope of dropping Flash video players. There simply isn’t the business case to change something that so many man hours will have been put into, and backwards-compatability issues crop up all over the place. Yet with the onset of this new device, predicted to sell between 8 and 10 million units this year, companies have had to look to new, Apple endorsed, technologies.

This change, away from Flash, has forced the issue of HTML5 video. YouTube has HTML5 video mode, as does Vimeo, and this will soon be supported by the upcoming IE9. All of these major sites are now raising awareness of this new technology to people who wouldn’t normally know about it i.e. your manager AKA the person with the budget. Now they’re aware of the benefits of HTML5, they want to see what else it can do. If you are ever asked this question, show them HTML5demos.com or the IE9 test drive page. If they’ve got a more detailed question, go to the HTML5 Doctor or just twitter @brucel, Opera’s web evangelist.

With so much drive towards HTML5 at the moment, you can’t get away from it. With Apple as the driving force, the train will be unstoppable, though it will still be many years until you can use it in all situations; probably around the time we ditch Windows XP for good.

Tags: Flash, HTML5, iPad
Posted in HTML 5 | 2 Comments »

Post drought = busy

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

You know those days, the ones that turn into weeks, and when the weeks can quickly turn into months you start thinking I really should have stopped the rot when it was weeks (and before that, days). That feeling, is what I have now. Over the past few weeks (actually, nearly a month), I’ve been rushing around trying to get projects sorted, doing extra projects and starting new ones. Therefore, I haven’t had a chance to post. My bad.

Good news is, I’ve found 10 minutes to write, so, here’s my last month:
1. I’ve been asked to write articles for UX Magazine from an industry perspective. I’ll be posting once every few months, with my first one due in a week or two. I’m really pleased to be able to write for these guys who are just trying to spread the word of UX
2. I’m at a new client, doing standards-based SharePoint work. I know, those two words don’t go well together, but just go with me on this one.
3. I’m finishing an iPhone demo too. This could be really big so fingers crossed
4. I’m going to buy an iPad. I had previously said that I won’t buy one til the 2nd generation, and, like with my 1G iPod Touch, I’ll probably regret it in the end, but I want one dammit!
5. Finally, if you didn’t know already, I’m now engaged to my girlfriend/now fiancee Emily. We had a very good party last weekend and even 8 days later are still not fully recovered

Here’s a promise that I’ll have an on-topic post for next week.

Tags: iPad, iPhone, UXMag
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

O2 Broadband’s Efficient Packaging

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

I’ve signed up for O2 broadband (again) this week, and I’ve been quite impressed with their service for setting things up. For every step you get an e-mail, then a text, which is great and keeps me up to date with how everything is going.

What’s better than that is the new router that they’ve sent me, other than that it arrived before the text saying it was on its way. The packaging on it is really quite clever and space efficient. Here’s the package I got:

It’s just a box with shipping labels right? The router will be in another box inside it? Wrong.

It seems that the outer box is the whole box. Everything is tightly packed and doesn’t move around. The best thing though is under the lid:

A list of package contents, quick steps on how to get set up and a sticker with the wireless information. It’s clear, it’s informative and it’s all I needed from the box. There’s only one sheet of cardboard, only one panel is written on to save printing and it’s small enough to fit through most postboxes. A definite win for packaging and the environment.