Why player penetration isn’t as important as you might think
by Neil Middleton 12:05 pm Wednesday, 12 November 2008.
Something we come across a lot when we’re talking about Rich Internet Applications is the questions regarding player penetration, i.e how many people have player X installed (Adobe’s Flash vs. Microsoft’s Silverlight), as it’s generally seen as the primary measure for how easy to “see” an application will be.
However, something we’re also seeing is that the players are currently suited to different areas, Flash being very good for the public sites (video being No 1) and Silverlight being very good for Intranet based applications where Microsoft technology is used as the back end.
So, with player penetration it’s worth considering the following: Is the player penetration at all important when you are looking at an intranet application with a closed user audience? Do you need to worry about the percentage of the internet that has your runtime installed if you can go round and install it on all your users machines for them anyway?
Not really.
This raises another interesting thing, which is that of internal approval. We are now finding that for those environments where neither Flash (in a new enough version) or Silverlight are present, companies are generally more willing to take on Silverlight due to the vendor – it’s a product that comes from a company they already have a relationship with, and also one that can be pushed out via Windows Update and the like. It’s a sys-admins dream come true.
So, at the end of the day it seems that Flash vs Silverlight is definitely a case of best tool for the job. If you are building a public facing site of some kind, use the Flash platform. However, if you’re in a closed environment and MS are already in place – go with Silverlight / WPF. These choices will just make your life easier.
PS: Incidentally, we still come across lots of businesses who haven’t broken free of IE6, a seven year old browser yet (!) due to some internal policy – this goes to show how hard it can sometimes be bringing in a third party plugin to help with RIA’s.
Comments (0)Google changes the way it indexes Flash content
by Neil Middleton 11:21 pm Tuesday, 21 October 2008.
Dominic Gelineau of Twist Image has put up a post on InsideRIA talking about some changes that have been made to the way that Google are now indexing and spidering Flash generated content – a previous black-hole in the world of Search Engine Optimisation.
We knew this was coming after Adobe’s press release back in July, but it would appear that the fruits of their labour are now coming to fruition which can only be a good thing.
More from the original entry here.
Comments (0)Creative Suite 4 goes gold!
by Neil Middleton 11:26 am Wednesday, 15 October 2008.
By the time you read this post, Adobe will have finally announced the release of Creative Suite 4 after a successful period of open and public beta testing.
Creative suite as a family consists of:
- Adobe InDesign® CS4
- Adobe Photoshop® CS4 Extended
- Adobe Illustrator® CS4
- Adobe Acrobat® 9 Pro
- Adobe Flash® CS4 Professional
- Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4
- Adobe Fireworks® CS4
- Adobe Contribute® CS4
- Adobe After Effects® CS4
- Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4
- Adobe Soundbooth® CS4
- Adobe OnLocation™ CS4
- Adobe Encore® CS4
So why should you upgrade from the already very capable CS3? Well, in short:
New versions, new integration—Enjoy updated versions of the creative tools you rely on. Creative Suite 4 Web Premium includes new versions of Adobe Dreamweaver,® Flash® Professional, Photoshop® Extended, Illustrator,® Fireworks,® Acrobat® Pro, Soundbooth,® and Contribute.®
Complex pages made approachable—Design and develop more sophisticated websites with new Live View in Dreamweaver CS4, featuring interactive code editing. Rely on the new Related Files and Code Navigator features to dive deeply into complex pages.
Powerful animation tools—Give your content a greater sense of depth with the new 3D transformation tools in Flash CS4 Professional, complete with multireference rotation options. Bring your animations to life with the advanced inverse kinematics of the Bones tool.
Multiple export options from a single creative source—Design once and deploy to many formats without having to re-create your work. Move from Photoshop, Illustrator, or Flash Professional to Fireworks with confidence, thanks to a universal interface design.
Faster, more expressive design tools—Photoshop CS4 Extended introduces greater precision, more intuitive selection, and smoother image navigation, along with comprehensive 3D painting and ray-trace rendering. Illustrator CS4 incorporates multiple artboards, live preview, in-place editing, and robust gradient handling.
Intuitive audio—Amplify your impact with Soundbooth CS4. Multitrack recording capabilities and professional audio editing features make Soundbooth an essential component of your creative toolset, fully integrated into Web Premium.
Advanced application development—Design and create your Adobe AIR™ interactive prototype in Fireworks for deployment in Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, or Flex® software. Enhance your Adobe AIR application with HTML and JavaScript in Dreamweaver—and then preview or deploy it immediately.
Mobile authoring integration—Adobe Device Central CS4 offers tighter integration with Flash Professional and other Creative Suite 4 components and enables full-featured content testing including web pages, video, images, and interactive SWF files.
Direct connection with clients and coworkers—Share your ideas by accessing the Adobe ConnectNow web conferencing service. Browse and create color themes using the Adobe Kuler™ web-hosted application. Visit Adobe Community Help for quick access to tips, Adobe Help, and community-generated tutorials.
PDF collaboration—Communicate with your clients professionally with PDF export from Fireworks CS4. Fireworks automatically transforms linked pages into interactive PDF elements so clients can quickly experience how your design flows from one page to another.
Here, at Monochrome, we’re positively wetting ourselves with the thought of what we can do with CS4, and in most particular Flash from an RIA point of view.
If you would like to talk to us about CS4, or find out more about how Monochrome can help you, please get in touch.
Comments (0)New Demo Video of Flash Video in Silverlight
by Adrian Munn 5:12 pm Thursday, 2 October 2008.
We’ ve got a new video for you all to see demonstrating our Flash Video to Silverlight converter as see in the closing keynote at ReMIX ‘08 in Brighton.
For more information, please contact us and we’ll gladly help.
Comments (2)Are Flash and Silverlight the same thing?
by Neil Middleton 11:12 pm Monday, 11 August 2008.
We’ve been having a discussion in Monochrome towers over the last few days about the whole Silverlight vs Flash vs Flex etc etc etc argument, and some interesting things have turned up that I thought we should repeat here.
Both Microsoft and Adobe now have some very similar looking technologies with Silverlight and Flash, namely the ability to script code, and render applications all within a box in the browser, whilst doing various background tasks such as hitting out to web services and remote APIs. Similar sounding although they may initially seem, they do differ at a slightly lower point in the stack. Behind the box in the browser, lies two frameworks – the .NET framework for Silverlight, and the Flash Player API for Flash/Flex.
OK, so these aren’t dramatically different either – so where does the differences lie? The entire internet seems to think that Microsoft is out to get Flash with Silverlight and take over the world of the rich internet application – but we at Monochrome now think a bit differently.
For starters, lets look at the bloodlines of both formats. First up, Flash has always been flash (or Future Splash as it used to be), it’s been a tool for drawing vector graphics into a stage. Certain other things have also been added over time: video, web services, AMF, XML support etc etc. Finally, the flex framework has come trotted along to enable developers to build their applications using Flash in a more rapid way.
Silverlight on the other hand used to go by a different name, WPF/E. So, WTF is WPF/E? WPF/E is essentially Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, or another way of saying WPF (the technology now used to build applications on Windows Vista), but not necessarily on the desktop. Therefore, in a nutshell, this means that it has come from a very different background to that of Flash. Silverlight’s heritage, in a round-a-bout way comes from the ancestry of WinForms, i.e application development. It is not coming from the stable of design.
So, what does this mean? At the end of the day, not much, but it does mean something when you look more into the future. For a start, Microsoft have no intention of taking on Flash – after all, it not easy taking on the most installed piece of software on the planet. It’s a well known fact that Microsoft intend to see everything they provide ultimately in the cloud, coming down to your screen via WPF or Silverlight into the browser, which is exactly what they are setting themselves up to do. Therefore hey are developing Silverlight to be the best web based application development platform it can be, not necessarily a “flash killer”.
Therefore I think it’s fair to say that going forward, Flash and Silverlight will co-exist as two very different beasts. Silverlight will specialise in delivery applications to the web, backing up the vast library of applications available out there already from .NET developers. Flash on the other hand will continue as normal, specialising in browser based animation and video as it does now, with a smattering of applications via the Flex framework.
It will certainly be interesting to see where things take us over the next couple of years.
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