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

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!

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