An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design [37 Signals]

This is slightly old news but my friend and former co-worker, Geoff Stearns, has announced the beta for version 2 of his infamous swfObject on Google code. In case you haven’t heard, swfObject is probably your best, most powerful, and easiest option when it comes to embedding Flash Player content into an HTML page. The new version was rewritten from scratch and hopefully will become the official, de-facto solution for embedding SWF files in webpages. Kudos Geoff!

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Flex-Ajax Bridge or FABrige is an extension to Flex that allows you to control your flex application by writing JavaScript code without manually setting up any external interfaces. In other words, you’ll have control over all the elements in your Flex app through javascript. For example, if you wanted to get the current value from a TextField called foo then change the text field you might write something like this:

	
var flexApp = FABridge.flash.root();
var savedText;

function saveTextField () {
	savedText = flexApp.getFoo.getText;
	flexApp.getFoo.setText("Saved");
}
	

I don’t see exactly how this is AJAX yet, but it looks pretty awesome.

Update:

This isn’t a new product. It’s been around for a while but I guess it just went to version beta 4. Thanks to Paul for catching that.

Here’s a list of some of the new platforms, technologies, and languages I’m interested in learning about right now. I would love to receive comments on these if you’ve got anything to share or if you see something I may have missed.

Microsoft

• Windows Vista

  As an avid Mac user, it feels strange to be fawning over Microsoft products, but I remind myself that it’s not brand loyalty that makes me love Apple, it’s loyalty to User Experience. That being said, I sincerely hope that MS can get their shit together and produce some really amazing ways to use, and develop for Windows in their next release. On the other hand, I’m not holding my breath.

• Microsoft Expressions Studio

  Microsoft’s answer to the Adobe Creative Suite. These are tools designed for creating not only graphics, but elements for interactive media. The individual apps roughly mimic Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Bridge, however, to try to compare them is difficult which hopefully means that they will become a true alternative to CS3 instead of a knockoff.

  I’ll have more info on this platform after the official unveiling.

• WPF

  Windows Presentation Foundation is Microsoft’s new UI development system that allows designers and developers to better collaborate on crazy 3D, Web 2.0+ interfaces from space! That’s about all I know at this point.

• WPF/E

  WPF/E is a subset of WPF that can be deployed across platforms over the interweb (the E stands for Everywhere). In a nutshell, this is Microsoft’s answer to Flash Player. It’s based on JavaScript and XAML and supports animation, media, and AJAX stuff.

  WPF/E works hand in hand with Expressions Studio (specifically Blend) but can be written in any editor. I prefer FlexBuilder for the sheer irony.

  I played around with it for a while and was able to create a bunch of snowflakes but couldn’t get them to float down, but in spite of my lack of XAML skillz, this platform has a lot of potential to be good.

• XNA

  A development tool for creating XBox 360 and Windows video games with emphasis on small developers and homebrews. That’s me! MS wants to create a “YouTube” of small-fry game content.

Adobe

• Adobe Creative Suite 3

  I’m very impressed with Adobe lately. 90% of that is because they’ve done and incredible job with the Flash Platform since they acquired Macromedia – 10% because all signs indicate that the next version of Creative Suite will be a significant upgrade compared to previous ones and might even be worth the price. We’ve all played with the PhotoShop CS3 beta which is impressive and goes beyond just being a patch for Intel based Macs and Vista. The rest of it is looking good too. Illustrator is rumored to be vastly improved. The latest builds of Blaze (Flash 9 beta) are now called Flash CS3. I assume there may be InDesign CS3 as well and there are rumors that Dreamweaver and/or AfterEffects will be included somehow.

• Apollo

  Apollo is a tool from Adobe that let’s you create cross platform applications (real applications, not SWFs) built on an HTML/JS/ActionScript-like API. We could call these “Flapps”. There, I just coined a new term. You saw it here first.

• Flex & ActionScript 3.0

  Evnen though I use it every day, there’s still a lot to learn about ActionScript 3.0 and Flex. Hell, there’s still a lot to learn about ActionScript 2.0!

• Flash CS3

  Even though FlexBuilder has been out for a while, I don’t think the AS3 transition will really begin on a wider scale until Flash CS3 is launched.

• Adobe’s semi-official Flex extentions

  Lots of cool stuff in here for interfacing with APIs like YouTube and Flickr. Not to mention the countless third party packages like PaperVision. Also, what the hell is Caringorm?

Apple

• Mac OS X 10.5 – Leopard

  I’ve always wanted to take the time to learn about Cocoa development but never gotten very far. The latest version of OS X has a lot of great features for users some of which have been added to the development framework. The most significant of these, in my mind, is the Core Animation package which adds After Effects-like animation to the standard toolkit. Kinda like FuseKit for OS X. It looks like Core Animation, Core Video, Core Graphics, and Aqua are the answer to Microsoft’s WPF and Aero… or wait, I think it’s the other way around.

• iPhone

  This isn’t even announced yet but OMG WANT!!!1

Other

• Wii, WiiMote, Flash on Wii, Wii hacks for PC, &c.

  The next-generation of gaming (can we call it current-gen yet?) is putting some really incredible, wireless, network enabled hardware in the hands of the masses. Despite my earlier comments, the Wii, in particular, seems to have a lot of potential to change the way we think about gameplay. The inclusion of an Opera browser with Flash Player support has already gotten a lot of Flash developers thinking about how to leverage the technology to create new interfaces for their work. Flash games for Wii are popping up on the intarnets and some traditional flash games are even being ported to Wii or to PS3 giving us a shot at what most Flash game developers dream of. Many other projects are underway to harness the Wii’s hardware for alternative uses. WiiMote interfaces for Mac and Windows have already sprung up. The obligitory community dedicated to making the Wii run Linux has made major contributions to the hacking of the console. For legitimate developers, a more affordable development kit is available (you have to prove you’re a game development studio, believe me, I already tried).

  My hope for the future is that enough people have access to Wii’s and the PC hacks listed above that boundaries between Flash and console development continue to dwindle.

• Rails

  I know this isn’t exactly “new” but it’s still something I want to know more about. Interest in Rails as a platform has grown continuously in the past year.

• JavaScript 2.0

  Object-oriented JavaScript that looks just like ActionScript – E4X, classes, and so on. Adobe has made a major contribution to Mozilla by contributing their compI refuse to get excited about this until people stop using Internet Explorer.

• Microformats

  Design patterns for XHTML? Yes please. Although, I’m a little wary that 1. not all of these are standards based and 2. how do I convince a client to use them?

Update (more)

• Open Laszlo

  I guess this is some kind of XML based open-source RIA platform. Anyone know more?

• haXe

  Trying to unify coding across platforms by being a “web-oriented universal language”. I guess they haven’t heard of ECMA.

Update 2

• iPhone (update)

  By now you all know the iPhone – The greatest device ever conceived – The device that noone has seen and yet people would be willing to pay $1000 to have – hmm sounds familar. I think the real question on all of our minds is “will we get to develop for it?” So far the answer seems to be NO. Jobs wants to keep this thing pristine by exercising the utmost quality control, at least for the time being. I’m hoping this notion doesn’t last since this could be THE mobile platform that everyone’s been waiting for.

  Furthermore, I hope we see a spike in interest around multi-touch screens. One really successful product like this could warm up the feet of compeditors making the multi-touch interface more widespread. Then we’d all be winners.

Update 3

• The more I play with WPF/E the more I’m like WTF/Ever.
• XCode 3.0 will support Obj-C 2.0! I’ve heard that’s awesome!

I know what you’re thinking, “that’s so 6 hours ago.” But nevertheless, Adobe has just released a public beta of the new version of PhotoShop. It offers a load of improvements to non-destructive editing, a redesigned UI, and support for new Macs and Vista.

Go get PS!

Taking a back seat to PhotoShop is the somewhat less glamourous release of JSEclipse, a plug-in for the Eclipse tool (upon which Flex Builder is also built). Also, a new update to the Spry framework. Both could be very interesting. I’ll probably end up using the JSEclipse plug-in to write WPF/E code. LOL

Go get JSEclipse!

Go get Spry!

See the full review after the jump

I’ve only played with this app for a few minutes so far but I’ve already found some very exciting new features. I’ll list my favorite first impressions here. [I should note that the last version of PS I used regularly was CS1 so please forgive me if I accidentally get excited about something that's not new.]

Smart Objects & Smart Filters

The coolest thing by far is Smart Objects and Smart Filters. This is essentially your method for doing non-destructive edits. Converting a layer to a smart object recreates it as a dynamic photoshop file that you can edit as its own composition. It allows you to apply smart filters which are like adjustment layers but include the entire set of filters, yes, even gaussian blur.

Quick Selection Tool

This tool is filed with the magic wand tool. It allows you to draw over the shape of an object to magically select exactly what you want. It’s like a marriage of the magnetic lasso and the magic wand tools. It’s incredibly useful and intuitive.

Refine Edge

PS CS3 wraps up several of the selection refinement tools into a new dialog called Refine Edge. This let’s you play around with the selection’s edges with much more control than before. A preview window shows you what you’re doing and there are matting options so you can choose the best background to work from.

Surface Blur

One neat addition is the surface blur which blurs out the textures of an image selectively while keeping the general shape of the image intact. Depending on how you adjust it, it kinda makes the subject look like it was drawn in illustrator but in a much less tacky way than posterize.

Compatibility

It’s been about a 20 months since CS2 launched but it feels like it’s only been about a million years. Time flies when you’re running PPC apps on a macbook! The new version (supposedly) works great on PPC, Intel, Win XP and Vista. My experience on a MacBook Core Duo have been very smooth so far. There are no significant lags even when working with RAW files. Adding lots of SmartFilters and layering causes some slowdown but that’s nothing new.

Toolbars & Workspaces

CS3 has a brand new look that I’m not sure whether I like yet. The toolbar on the left is compacted into a single column. The panels on the right have been organized so that they group themselves together into little expandable icons. They’ve also added a workspace dropdown that lets you switch workspaces easily although this seemed to be broken or unimpressive. The menus are also enhanced with highlighted words based on what workspace you’re in. It’s a little jarring but it might be useful in the long run. Time will tell.

Image Processor

Finallly, a much needed feature the Image Processor script allows you to batch process images into another format and apply actions at the same time. The old way of doing this was to either write an AppleScript or JavaScript or use Actions to process the images. I’m sure I’ll use this quite a lot when preparing assets for the intarwebs.

These are just my initial reactions. I hope to write some more after I’ve had a chance to play with it some more. Prognosis: w00t!

So, in the spirit of friendly competition, here’s a little article on Ajax which shares some of my own skepticism.

Now I just need a few weeks to retroactively geotag my 800+ photos!