If I close the tab, is the stuff still there? May 9, 12, 1:31 p.m.

Seriously.

I have some tabs open. An animated loop is running in a window in one. If I go to another tab, is the loop still running? Is it even 'there'? Or does it just vanish because it is not in 'focus'.....

Kind of practical, kind of metaphysical, i guess.

I am not a coder, obviously

Web design: the new print Mar 14, 12, 8:39 a.m.

I work at a large corp in a 25 person design group. I do motion design. However, many of the designers do web, and they way they do it makes me think of it as the new print. they create mockups entirely in photoshop (or even indesign) and hand it off to developers, who cut it up and turn it into html.

Many of them know nothing about HTML, in fact actively avoid knowing anything about it. One guy said that he thinks knowing html detracts from good design.

This was interesting to me and made me think that this kind of designer is the new print designer. Very focused on type and layout, and everything in their world is absolutely static.

So print designers know that there is a place for you in the new digital world.

Video Compression Software? Mar 8, 12, 9:03 a.m.

We are using Adobe Media Encoder but are not happy with it. Does anyone know of something better? What is the best thing out there? Sorensen?

Thanks anyone.

banner size (KB)? Feb 29, 12, 7:34 a.m.

I do motion design. I was recently asked to do some banners that had to be swf, of course.

I was told it had to be 60K. I tried to incorporate a little 3D to make it interesting but 60K is really small and I really couldn't do it.

Is 60K make sense these days? Or is that a standard from 2002 that could be updated so that the designs can be more interesting (and not have to rely on Flash!)

anyone excited about Diablo 3? Jan 9, 12, 6:07 a.m.

I cannot wait. Supposed to be our very soon. Anyone know when?

The Death of Flash and the Quiet Triumph of Open Standards 09/28/2011 Sep 28, 11, 10:13 a.m.

from here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timo…

The Death of Flash and the Quiet Triumph of Open Standards 09/28/2011

Yesterday I noticed this story about a web startup called SlideShare ditching Flash (a proprietary plugin provided by Adobe) in favor of HTML 5 (a set of open web standards that have recently been adopted by the major browsers). One announcement by an obscure startup is hardly news. But the announcement is part of a broader trend.

Two years ago, I would have predicted that Flash would be part of the web for the foreseeable future. It was used by sites like YouTube to deliver web video, and it was a popular way to deliver interactive applications. And it had been bundled with all the major browsers for more than a decade. Apple had chosen not to adopt Flash on the iPhone, but I assumed it was just a matter of time before Apple and Adobe figured out a way to fix that.

Then, in early 2010, Apple announced the iPad. It didn’t have Flash either, and Steve Jobs made it clear they had no intention of ever bringing Flash to the iPad or iPhone. Suddenly, creating a Flash-based website not only meant that it wouldn’t work on a popular smartphone, it also wouldn’t work with the world’s most popular tablet.

Jobs had two stated reasons for the shift. He said Flash was a crash-prone resource hog and that it wasn’t an open standard. To a large extent, the first point is a consequence of the second. Because Flash is proprietary software developed by Adobe, third parties like Apple don’t have access to the source code or permission to change it. That means they can’t fix bugs or to optimize the code for particular devices. They have to rely on Adobe to do these things in a timely manner.

Yesterday’s news about SlideShare is just the latest sign that Apple’s no-Flash stance has caught on. A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft announced that the tablet version of Windows 8 won’t include “legacy” plugins like Flash. And web design firms report that they’re starting to get requests from clients to move away from the technology. When ditching a technology becomes trendy, its days are numbered.

Apple couldn’t have killed Flash if HTML 5 hadn’t recently been adopted by major browsers. HTML 5 offers alternatives to most of the key features of Flash. And no one controls it the way Adobe controls Flash. Since no software company wants to build its products on a standard it doesn’t control, every company other than Adobe has a natural incentive to adopt HTML 5 over Flash.

This brings to mind Jonathan Zittrain’s book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Zittrain warned that the success of the proprietary iPhone threatened to undermine the decentralized, bottom-up structure of the Internet. The Flash story is a useful counterexample to Zittrain’s thesis. On the one hand, iOS is a proprietary standard controlled by Apple, so its ascendancy looks like a threat to open standards. Yet the rise of the iPad was a major factor in the decline of another proprietary standard, Flash.

There are two things to note about this. First, in the competition among firms, open standards have an inherent advantage even if none of the firms care about open standards as such. If Apple had tried to replace Flash with its own proprietary standard (as Microsoft tried to do with Silverlight), other technology companies like Google or Microsoft would have had no reason to support the move, since it doesn’t benefit them to shift power from one competitor to another. But adopting an open standard means shifting power from one competitor to everyone else. So everyone except the incumbent has a reason to support open standards.

The second thing to note is that the rise of HTML 5 has gotten much less press than the rise of iOS. Reporters love to cover the clash of corporate titans. The battle between Apple and Google for dominance of the smartphone business makes good news copy. But because everyone supports HTML 5, there’s no conflict and therefore no story.

At any given time, there are a few new proprietary platforms making rapid gains, as well as a huge number of open technologies that are making gradual gains against older, proprietary standards. It’s easy to get the mistaken impression that the proprietary standards are on the verge of overwhelming the open ones. But this is an illusion. What’s really happening is two things. First, the proprietary standards have marketing departments that are making sure they’re in the public eye, so they get a lot of coverage. And second, even the company pushing the hottest new proprietary standard (Apple with iOS, in this case) is simultaneously adopting—and, therefore, entrenching—numerous open standards like TCP/IP and HTML 5.

So for at least two decades, it has looked like proprietary technologies were on the verge of taking over the software industry. Yet open standards have grown more and more dominant. This hasn’t been a lucky fluke, it’s a matter of basic economics. Proprietary software is central planning. And in the long run, central planning doesn’t work as well as bottom-up organization.

Web + Mobile Design ? May 17, 11, 12:37 p.m.

I need to design and produce an interactive quiz this summer. In the past, it was a no brainer - you did it in Flash.

I want this to be viewable on any mobile device, but I also want some movement or sound or fun.

What toolkit to use? HTML5? Doesn't that eliminate a lot of IE users? Javascript? Jquery? I just don't know what toolset to use....

Anyone have any advice?

Isn't it time for a QBN contest? Mar 28, 11, 10:53 a.m.

Other than Chick of the Day - that's the most fun thing about this place.

Sleater-Kinney Mar 23, 11, 6 a.m.

Been watching Portandia some, and it is pretty good. But seeing Carrie Brownstein in the sketches made me think of Sleater-Kinney, who I hadn't listened to for years. So I got the old CDs out and wow! They were awesome.

Just sayin.

For those who don't know them, if you want to hear just one track, try this:

Smartphone help Mar 14, 11, 6:14 a.m.

I am just about to get my first smartphone (currently still using Samsung Rant) as my contract with Sprint is finally up as of April 1. Please help me understand these things:

-- For general smartphone usage (phone, text, some web surfing, etc..), is 4G that much better than 3G?
-- Is a high end smartphone, be it iPhone4 or HTC Evo or whatever that much better than iPhone3 or a lesser Android? (You can get an iPhone3 for $49 from ATT)
-- Is Blackberry worth considering (you can get them cheap....)?

thanks anyone who takes time to answer.

Eastbound and Down Nov 5, 10, 8:45 a.m.

If you haven't heard, it's amazing. I just was reading a thread about Apple/Flash, etc....yawn where someone quoted from last week's show.

It's a happening thing. You need to see it.

It's just funny as hell, and let me be pompous and say it's kind of brilliant.

Check it out.

"I hate MacIntosh" Sep 27, 10, 9:11 a.m.

Overheard:
A developer is sitting next to me. He has hard core skills - and he is working on an app of one of our software products (Fortune 500 company) for iPhone and iPad. So he is groaning.....'I hate MacIntosh, I hate MacIntosh'.

I can't understand the details (because I'm not a developer) but thought it was funny and thought it particularly be enjoyable to readers of this site.

Flame on.

Best Anti-virus? Sep 14, 10, 9:39 a.m.

I just built myself a new computer to do 3D with (Quad-core AMD with nVidia GeForce graphics card and Windows 7 64-bit) and was wondering if anyone can recommend virus protection?

For all you Mac people: Please dont tell me that I should have got a Mac because they dont get viruses. This machine cost me $650, so I will deal with viruses thank you very much!

Help! Converting flash for iPad Aug 27, 10, 11:56 a.m.

I got the call from management. They want iPad at trade shows. Real bad.

They want flash work we have done running on it.

They say to me: figure it out.

Has anyone successfully done this? For narrative content we can export to video, but I have heard about conversions that also handle interactivity with javascript or something.....

damn you Steve Jobs.

Read it and weep, Flash fans Aug 19, 10, 5:18 p.m.

"After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android
2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late"

http://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile…

New Caribou logo Aug 12, 10, 6:28 a.m.

I hate when this happens. I liked the old logo. This new, more 'stylized' one sucks.

The Onion isn't funny anymore Jul 22, 10, 9:07 a.m.

I have been noticing it is less and less funny. The latest issue is particularly bad. Anybody noticing that?

Adobe Repousse? Jul 21, 10, 7:57 a.m.

What is it? I took a look at their site, but it's loads of stuff to read, a little hard to get a handle.

Any 3D person know what it is?

OMG Jul 16, 10, 6:16 a.m.

Fear. I feel real fear after reading this.

http://www.helium.com/items/1882…

This is very cool Jul 7, 10, 12:40 p.m.

Without access to Hollywood materials, they made their own.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/…