Gooii :: Blog :: Website Design Nottingham, Programming, iPhone and iPad App Developer, Midlands, UK (2)

Some sites are wrongly suggesting Adobe has abandoned Flash, it hasn’t. What Adobe has announced is they’ll no longer be developing Flash for mobile browsers, which is something very different indeed.

Adobe aren’t stupid, nor have they beaten by Apple’s refusal to allow the Flash player on iOS, despite appearances and reports the contary. Adobe will now be focussing on developing HTML5 software that incorporates all the Flash features we love (and hopefully leaving out the bugs and ones we hate) into new applications. An early demonstration of this software was showcased in the preview release of ‘Adobe Edge’, their HTML5 animation tool. How advanced the final software will be and the price is shrouded in mystery but if Adobe get these things right, they could once again help change the face of how we create web content.

So the big question is, does this mean the end for Flash desktop? The answer clearly is no, not for now at least. Currently Flash offers designers and developers the ability to create content rich software, games and applications that can be delivered online far quicker and cheaper than via any other web platform.

Like any good software house we use all the technologies available to us and pick the best one for each job. Thankfully fewer websites are being built in Flash, with the software instead being used to create interactive applications that anyone can view – as long as you’re not on an iPhone or iPad and if you are, we can build you a very nice app for that.

Mac OS X Lion is sitting in my dock, winking at me, waiting to be installed. Despite the great temptation to install, I'm going to hold off for a day or so, as my current copy of Xcode, the software used to build and complile iOS apps, isn't Lion compatible. In the meantime the Lion compatitble Xcode 4.1 is downloading on our spanking new Mac, to ensure we can code and compile effectively without interrupting our workflow. What I have seen of Lion so far looks very, very good.

Mac OS X 10.7, or Lion as it's better known, is released today and it's just not its weatlh of features that sets this release apart. Lion is the first operating system to be released almost exclusively as a download, as well as being one of the cheapest OS at only £20.99 (or $29.99 if you're dollar lucky). This is compared to Microsoft Windows 7 Professional, which retails at a whopping £219.99.

So what's OS X Lion like? I have now idea, over an hour in and my download's still not even 25% complete.

For more infomation the Lion's roar visit: www.apple.com/macosx

The ever insightful Jeffrey Zeldman recently lectured on the skills and opportunities that should be the top of every web designer's list. Titled 'What Every Web Designer Should Know', his keynote speech in Atlanta confirms the best practices we feel important here at Gooii. Great importance is placed on designing around content, my personal belief is that “content is king" but I guess in a world where the web is made up of people from many different skill sets, it's a timely reminder for some.

One of his final points is that with the advent of HTML 5, "every website is now an application." A great way of thinking and approach to the products we use every day, for a long time the web has no longer been about online documents and its easy to forget that a website serves a greater purpose than simply being an online presence.

Visit www.lukew.com to read LukeW’s notes from the lecture or the always excellent www.zeldman.com

This is a great story about how an app called 'Hidden' was used to recover a stolen MacBook. Apple has long had an app that can locate a lost iPhone or iPad but 'Hidden' goes one step further by taking photos from the laptop's webcam and sending them back to the owner. In this case owner and interative designer Joshua Kaufman was able to retreive his machine after posting pictures of the machine's "new owner" on his blog and providing police in Oakland, Canada with the information.

For more on this story visit the BBC website