In the past week or so I’ve begun development on a Flex-based Blog Engine. I don’t have any screenshots or videos of it yet, as it is not entirely functional yet.
It uses Flex,PureMVC, PHP, MySQL, and WebOrb for PHP.
In the meantime, check out the preliminary information and keep an eye out for updates!
I had an interesting thought tonight that I thought I’d share. Most of the recent Flash/Flex website fall into three primary categories in terms of interaction: applications, web page emulation or the ever-loathed eccentric designs. Obviously, applications are Flash sites that behave much more like traditional desktop applications. However, the other category is usually seen when someone is making a flash site in lieu of an HTML site, so we get a design that has behavior similar to HTML pages. Click button (Request), go to “page” with content (Response). “Page” transitions are pretty, but the use of these transitions usually add an extra unnecessary 200-300kb on the download. We’ve all seen our fair share of these sites, some hit some miss. The last category is the eccentric design category. These are the Flash sites you go to and spend 5 minutes trying to figure out how to navigate (or read instructions) and when you do, you get an experience worse than category 2.
Everyone hates the last category, tolerates, the second, and are usually very accepting of the last (only for those applications that follow typical application behaviors). There has to be some middle ground between the second two. Interaction that is neither entirely Request-Response nor eccentric. What would that be? I think what I’m looking for here is a paradigm that allows for standardized navigation but also asymmetrical flow of information. I’m not saying it would work, but it would certainly be worth exploring. Possibly some type of AI could be used that acts as a broker between the user and the content. How’s that for out of the box? An AI driven website?
As of tonight, I decided to discontinue pursuing future projects in the area of traditional HTML/CSS design. This is partly based on my mounting frustrations with the CSS standard, that despite being explicitly defined by the W3C, has never been fully and properly implemented by any browser. Every designer instinct tells me that CSS is necessary and not to use table designs, but recently I’ve found it increasingly hard to rationalize this as a benefit against productivity.
As far as I’m concerned, technology should be an aid in my pursuit of the holy grail of Design. If the technology is too old, or just not up to par with my needs and expectations, than I have no other recourse but to pursue other technology that lets me do what I want consistently and with the relative ease I expect. To this end, I have recently put much time into developing with Flex, and in the future plan on working with Silverlight (as much of an Adobe fan as I am, I’d be a fool not to learn more about the competition, for more info, see Blue Ray). I like pushing the edge, and to me, CSS feels like a hack to make HTML, nearly a 30-year old technology, look decent. Ditto on JavaScript in terms of AJAX (that aside, I love what JavaScript is, just not how it is used).
Another factor in this decision is a shift in career focus for me. While I intend on continuing my design skills, I find myself enjoying application programming more and more each day. I find myself more challenged with this, but challenged in a good way.
I find it so much more rewarding not to be fighting the technology, but instead fighting against my own lack of knowledge as I push myself into these areas of programming that are, at least to me, new. I don’t feel like I’m giving up on HTML/CSS. In fact if anything, I consider my journey through HTML/CSS based design complete. It’s been a mix of good and bad, but what I take from it are the lessons and the experience.
So here I am, feeling at a crossroads of sorts. While I find comfort in what I’ve learned, I feel the urge to push forward, and while my past and the present is important, in many ways they both hold me back.
Now all along you’ve probably been wondering about that little picture up there. It’s for the analogy I’m about to give you: Living as a developer/web designer is much like swinging along on monkey bars. You want to keep moving because if you stop too long on one rung, you lose your momentum, you risk losing your grip, and even if you want to start moving again, it’s not that easy.
RIP, HTML/CSS
2002-2008
So it almost the New Year again (already is for some). I figure I should make a list on things I want to do this year as a programmer/developer. This last year I’ve accomplished very much as far as learning new technologies, programming languages and stuff. I didn’t have a list last year though, so here’s a list for this year in order of how much I want to do them (I think of this as more of a “could-do list”):
I figure if I do at least 60% of this I can be happy with myself. Leave a link to your own Developer’s Resolution I’d love to read through others. Don’t forget, 2008 is a leap year so you have a whole full extra day to get stuff done!