I have added a polling feature and a post rating feature to the website. You can now vote on polls which I will be posting monthly and give posts rating so I can tell whether you like them or not without visitors having to go through the hassle of adding a comment (although I would greatly appreciate more comments too).

I have come to the realization that markup languages are the bane of any evolution developers and  (especially) designers want to see in the web in the near future. With some of the new features coming out for Flex 3 I have begun to wonder why we need to still be dealing with markup languages. Markup languages have been around in some form for the better part of 30-40 years. HTML itself is nearing its 20 year old birthday. Of course, there will be all the people screaming that things have changed since the first HTML specification, namely things like JavaScript and CSS which sprouted other methodologies such as Ajax. I am certainly a fan of both JavaScript and CSS but doesn’t the problem lie with the fact that we need these technologies in the first place? Flash has been reported to have reached 99.1% of all desktop Internet users.

Now, I have become a bit of an Adobe fanboy recently, but even if that wasn’t the case I would still have to say that right now programming website with Flex 3 and AS3 is looking far more promising and headache free than anything else I’ve seen. Who else other than Adobe has offered web developers a way to render their sites the same way on many browsers with no additional effort through Flash? Sure, bookmarking and SEO have been issues in the past, but the Flex 3 release will begin to fix much of that.

Next on the list of arguments is those that argue that Flash content can be a costly download to those with slower connections. Well frankly, the people with dial-up should know that in most areas faster ISPs are available, often for less. The fact is most ISPs these days are not dial-up and as a result most dial-ups simply can’t compete in the price wars anymore and still stay in business. The onus is on the individual to be a savvy consumer.

So what’s the roadblock?

• We need browsers to treat Flash files no differently than text files.
• Keep going on making Flash internal bookmarking more effective.
• More Flash SEO.
• More Flash security. Certainly there’s no thing as 100% secure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t aim for 99%.

And the final, big one.

• We need to put the pressure on the consumer to WANT flash sites. We want anyone going to look at any XHTML/CSS site to give it the same sour look any web developer would give a 90’s era Geocities website.

Hopefully, we can begin to see some changes toward a more multimedia based web experience within a few years.

Here is my new business card design. I have been carrying around ones for far too long with old information on them and it was about time that I created a new one that reflects my current line of business. It is based on the site’s design and color theme and was partly the reason for the design tweaks I made the other day as I link the background with a pattern much better. I have sent these off to the printers and should have them within a week. I will post pictures when they arrive.

I’ve done a slight visual update to the site to make it much more compact and visually interesting. It should also be loading much more quickly than before as I have disabled a few plug-ins that have been slowing things down. Feel free to comment on the updated look and let me know if you have any issues with the site!