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After reading Charlie Brooker’s comments in the Guardian on the new series of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, I must admit, I agree wholeheartedly with what he’s said. However, I also think there’s something else that’s worth mentioning about this programme which has really impressed me. Continue reading

Apropos to my previous ramblings and musings on the Apple/Flash debate, I find that Jonathan Snook makes a far better argument, and I agree wholeheartedly with him.

When Apple announced the release of the iPad, they specified that, much like its sibling the iPhone, it wouldn’t support Flash technologies. This fact sent ripples of reaction throughout the computing world, especially with web designers. Despite Apple’s own reasons for not supporting the well known web technology, which Adobe acquired from their takeover of Macromedia in 2005, Flash continues to increase its prevalence throughout the web, with around 99.3% of all web users having installed it to view animations and films, hear music and play games.

Some have taken Apple’s decision to not support Flash in their latest products as a death knell for the web technology. This provides a cause of celebration for the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman and the other perpetrators of HTML5 and a more “semantically” coded web, and the likes of Jakob Nielsen, the web’s self styled expert on usability. My own personal programmer friends balk and sneer whenever I mention Flash, however, I personally believe that we would be worse off if disappeared entirely from our browsers.

Before you vent hot coffee on your screen with disgust, let me explain. I’ve been working with Flash for over a decade now, watching it grow from it’s infancy when Macromedia released it as little more than a drawing tool. As time passed, and its capabilites grew, like many technologies, people began to realise its true potential, and began to make some beautiful things with it. Some of the early Flash sites were, in comparison to their static HTML counterparts, breathtakingly beautiful, full of entrancing functionality. Games were produced, lifting the web from mere textual hyperlinks into fully blown graphical experiences, much easier and stable than other technologies such as Java. It seemed that Flash would be the way to go.

Sadly, then, the rot set in. Because it was easy to obtain, sites began to be produced which were poorly designed and clunky, with badly timed animation and graphics which were somewhat below par. What’s more, hackers began to exploit security weakpoints in the software, allowing them to hijack peoples’ browsing sessions. And then unscruolous advertising took full advantage, breaking out of their pre-ordained boxes and taking over whatever you were looking at, with no way to stop them. This triad of bad experiences turned a lot of people away from Flash, and some would not even enter a web page which incorporated the technology.

Despite all this, as I’ve previously stated, I don’t think this should spell the end for Flash. Not even Steve Jobs’ unabashed hatred should cause this. What Flash designers and developers need to do now, in order to keep the technology alive, is rethink their strategies and how we make use of it.

Flash, as we know, doesn’t work as the sole technology on a website. The advent of mobile browsers and other devices means that the vital information on a page does need to be easily recognised by everything which reads it, and, until Adobe manage to incorporate this into the software, allowing everything, including the all important web crawlers for search engines, to recognise what’s published on a page, Flash is best used for something other than rendering main body text. However, there’s much more it can do on a page – decorative headlines, using techiques such as sIFR and Cufon to render non-standard font sets still requires Flash, and its animation does mean it can breathe life to a still page with ease. What’s more, the possibilites it can present with video and games can also be incorporated within a site, either as part of an HTML page or a seperate entity.

Flash also works very well as a standalone local package for producing presentations, advertising and media that isn’t necessarily being piped through an Internet cable, which then, in turn, easily converts to a format which can be repeated online. I also certainly believe that, when we get to the stage of providing a navigable information interface on a television set, Flash will be a strong and capable ally for us, providing much more than just links to click on. I can only hope here that the way in which it’s produced is responsible and done with care.

I’m fortunate in having studied Computer Animation at University, which, while giving me a high appreciation of the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks, also makes me not a good person to sit next to when watching something with sub-par tweening. Flash work is, mostly, to do with movement, and success with it requires a knowledge of the principles of animation, as much as a knowledge of layout and typography is vital to knowing how to make an attractive web page. If you’re a Flash designer and don’t know anything about weighting, squeeze and stretch, or even a double bounce walk cycle, I suggest you learn. The knowledge of how to time things correctly, give them weight and reaction, will lift your work far beyond those of others who haven’t taken the time to learn. Like layout, it’s intuitive, and any viewer will be able to spot there’s something wrong, even if they don’t know what it is.

So, while Apple customers might get caught up in the fight, and be prevented from viewing Flash media, which is a real shame, I certainly hope the rest of the Internet keep Flash alive, by visiting sites which use it, and creating work with it that’s interesting, exciting, and well thought out. Otherwise we may well be not knowing just what we’ve lost until it’s gone.

I was asked some time ago to produce some templates for non-web designers to be able to create artwork for HTML emails in a variety of editors, which could then easily be turned into a working version. As I created these myself, and the client was happy for me to do so, I thought I’d share them with you. Links and instructions below.

All the templates are set up for a standard 550px wide HTML email, with six columns, but feel free to adjust them to your purposes. The size was chosen as that’s the size of the preview pane in Outlook, and there’s also a guide to indicate the first 150px of depth to indicate the height of the preview pane in other email clients.

Downloads:

Photoshop CS3 PSD file – 482kb

The standard template many accomplished HTML email designers already use, I adapted this blank version from the templates available at Campaign Monitor’s resources page.

InDesign CS3 INDT template file – 828kb

For those more suited to a print background, and in possession of InDesign, you can use this as your template. Just make up your design, File > Export to turn it into at JPG file, and then use your graphics package to slice it up.

Quark XPress 7 QPT template file – 57kb

Yes, there are some out there who still use Quark, despite Adobe’s dominance, and, as my client did too, I felt it only fair to make sure you guys weren’t left out. As before, use the template to make up your design, then print your design into a PDF file. Then load your PDF file into a graphics package such as Photoshop, making sure the whole page is included, rather than just the parts used (in Photoshop, set it to Media Box, rather than the initial Bounding Box), and hey presto, your design is ready to slice and dice into a working HTML email.

Check back soon, as I’ll be following up these with tutorials on HTML best practices, as well as guidelines on what to avoid. In the meantime, if you find these useful, do please feel free to leave a comment, and even a link to what you’ve produced – I’d love to see what you can create using these templates.

Peter Mandelson - Image from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Share Alike License

Since the beginnings of civilisation, man has managed to reach beyond the capabilities and restrictions of the individual by working with his fellow human beings. Through this alliance and cooperation with his compatriots, the capability, productivity and worth of the group can grow exponentially. This practice has allowed mankind to ensure survival in times of hardship, prosper more, and even achieve feats which one individual could have never thought possible. If this has caused us to achieve so much, why are those in power now trying to encourage us to do otherwise? Continue reading