Author Archive

State of HTML 5

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrath

If you are a web developer or familiar with web technologies, there’s no doubt you’ve heard about HTML 5 and the “next level” of web design and functionality. It’s morphed into a buzz term that has been thrown around a lot lately. Between Apple’s spat with Adobe over Flash and the latest browsers touting HTML 5 compatibility, there’s still a lot to know about the always evolving markup language of the world wide web.

First off, what is HTML 5? Simply put, it’s the next version of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that “aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application technologies such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight”. [credit: Wikipedia] Another standard that is in the draft stage is CSS3, or version 3 of the Cascading Style Sheets spec, meant to eliminate styling woes of version 2 and “offer a more robust layout feature set”. [credit: Wikipedia] I agree to the argument that the CSS spec is more meant for styling rather than layout, but that’s another lengthy blog entry. :)

What does this mean for web developers? When implementing HTML5 paired with CSS3, it means more options to achieve the look or functionality you are after – with the use of web standards, and not of proprietary plugins such as Flash or Silverlight.

The new specs also eliminate the need for CSS and Javascript hacks to achieve, for example, rounded corners, drag and drop, animations, gradients without images, embeddable fonts, support for SVG (scalable vector graphics), a standard video playback method, and others. Of course this all depends on your browser of choice. As of this blog entry, only Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox support the current working draft of HTML 5 and CSS3.

What does this mean for the end user? For one thing, it means more engaging design and functionality on many sites. While this is, to an extent, entirely subjectable, it opens the door even wider for a diverse variety of sites to differentiate themselves from the rest. This to me, is very exciting. Creativity will play an even bigger role in site production.

HTML 5 people in-the-know:

To check your browser for HTML 5 compliance, try the HTML 5 test.

As always, Force 5 is on the bleeding edge of HTML 5 and what it offers to the web.

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Do’s And Don’ts Of Running Facebook Business Pages

Friday, March 26th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrath

More and more businesses are moving to Facebook as a platform to reach new customers and communicate with existing customers. It is becoming increasingly important to set yourself from the pack in the world of Facebook business pages. Make sure you are getting the most out of your Facebook business page by following Force 5′s Do’s and Don’ts of running a Facebook page for your business.

Do: Post at least daily. A stagnant page will often be forgotten and be viewed as irrelevant. If you don’t have the time to stay within view of your customers, you more than likely will not be the first option they think of when they need your services.

Don’t: Send frequent mass emails to your fans. This could be viewed as a form of spamming and is often annoying to many users. Although this can be determined by industry, typically the limit is weekly – although we recommend monthly or quarterly.

Do: Post questions or conversation starters. Engage your audience and let the conversation and interaction drive the relationship. This will keep you relevant with your fans.

Don’t: Post personal information. This is more common than you may think. The line of business and personal life in most cases should not be crossed and is important not to blur. Create rules within your organization to help curb any chance of posting anything sketchy and of course use your best judgement.

Do: Ask questions about your fans. Market research can be tricky to gather. Facebook is filled with opportunities of gathering customer information to better know your core audience. Ask questions, create polls, engage your audience with thought provoking questions.

Don’t: Just post links. Mix your posts up. Ask questions, post links, post photos, post a news update, ask a question, comment on posts, etc. Don’t come across as a machine, mix your content up and keep your fans on their toes.

Do: Post various forms of media. Utilize photos, music and videos as a way for your fans to see “inside” your organization. Behind the scene insight is a great way to connect with your fans and gain trust.

Don’t: Sell something all of the time. Post your deals respectfully and without salesman clichés. Create a tab where fans can find the deals you are offering and don’t let “Act Now” posts dominate your wall. Let interaction do the driving.

Have questions? Post a comment below or on Force 5′s own Facebook page.

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Adobe’s Flash In The Pan?

Monday, February 15th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrath

Adobe’s Flash has had a successful run the past few years. While the latest usage statistics show a slight decline, it still employs an impressive 95.89% browser install base as of Jan, 2010.

Some concerns have been raised lately with Apple’s decision not to include Flash support in it’s newly announced iPad (which runs a modified version of the iPhone OS). It’s been known that Apple’s iPhone does not support Flash. Apple blames Adobe’s buggy implementation of the Flash plugin as one of many reasons, causing poor battery life, security holes, application crashes, etc. While this is nothing new, the spotlight has again been focused on the lack of Flash on the iPhone OS.

Other reasons for Apple skipping Flash support that I think are much more important are HTML5 and the open standard of SVG.

One of the many critiques of Flash is that it is not an open standard. Many, including myself, believe closed platforms tend to stifle innovation and prohibit standard adoption – this, coming from a Flash developer. Also, the Flash plugin has long been sub par in performance on the Macintosh platform – but Adobe is finally taking small steps to remedy these issues. Is it too late?

In order for the web to move forward with a common standard and new innovative tools at hand for developers to use to create the next big thing, we NEED open standards. Period.

Adobe has an opportunity here to develop an HTML5 and SVG authoring tool, waiting to supplant Flash when it does eventually fade away along with proprietary video codecs and browser plugins.

As for myself, I welcome new venues and technologies to learn, as long as they allow for innovation, freedom and creativity in not only the resulted medium, but development as well. The next few years will be the litmus test for Flash in whether it has a place on the web or not. I believe strongly that openness on the web is the future and if a proprietary plugin expects to make the cut, some changes need to be made.

Robert Scoble has a good analogy:

Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.

Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail because of its own set of broken links.

But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.

What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.

The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.

Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch tackles this very topic in his blog post.

Admittedly, I would be sad to see Flash go. I love the control you have over your assets. As of right now, there really is no open alternative to that kind of control. jQuery and other JS libraries are just not there yet – but there is much promise. Combine jQuery with HTML5, SVG and time – you just may have a Flash killer.

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Finding Augmented Reality

Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath

Augmented reality. It’s a term that has been popping up in the multimedia field a lot lately. Call it the latest internet meme, call it the next generation of marketing, call it a fad. Whatever you call it, you can’t ignore it’s possibilities.

Simply put, Augmented Reality is technology that merges elements with a view of the physical environment, in this case through a webcam or mobile phone. In relation to interactive media, Augmented Reality is a newborn. It was born with the sudden increase in webcam usage and mobile video cameras over the past several years. With the development of FLARtoolkit, a Flash class library that helps your webcam see and recognize visual markers, developers have been using this technology more than ever. How we use this technology is the make or break point.

It has been noted that AR could be so overused and abused to the point where usability has been sacrificed. This initial “Wow” can only go so far.  Marketers need to look further down the road with new utility to keep the users from forgetting about you. Some great utility examples are below.

AR on iPhone exampleWhat is in the future for Augmented Reality? I believe it’s future is bright. Given the adoption of a standardized geographical mapping data, mobile phones will be the tool of choice instead of webcams.

Imagine this scenario: You are traveling abroad and would like to know what restaurants are in the area. You take out your mobile phone, type in “Restaurants”, you are presented with a list of nearby restaurants, make your selection, you look through the camera and an arrow appears on the road with directions to the nearest restaurant.

Gartner has an interesting hype timeline for Augmented Reality adoption.

Look for Augmented Reality to take off with mobile adoption. There seems to be more room for utility and innovation in that (so far) untapped realm. As usual, Force 5 will keep all eyes open to make sure we don’t miss a thing.

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Ride The Google Wave

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath
Google Wave Screenshot

Working in a team environment can be an inspiring experience. However, an efficient team workflow doesn’t just form itself. An organized system and rich toolset are often a few ingredients in a well-oiled team workflow machine. One of those ingredients may be named Google Wave.

Google this week is rolling out a developer preview of it’s new product called Google Wave. Google’s Wave is touted as “an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”.

We are used to using the traditional email method; a one way, non real time, “send and wait” approach to sending electronic messages. This method has been left relatively unchanged for 40 years since its invention. What does this mean for you? Google says it depends on how you use it. Google Wave shines in communication and collaboration – in real time with an audience of your choosing. For instance, say your team needs to come up with a script for a new 30 second spot for a client. One person initiates the document creation and invites team members to add their feedback or changes. The document can be edited by multiple people at the same time and you can watch the changes in real time. You even have the option to see the changes chronologically and play them back in the order they were created.

Another feature worth pointing out is the realtime language translation that is possible in Google Wave. For example, this enables real time communication with a French customer who does not speak English through a chat-like interface.

The extensibility of Google Wave was clearly a priority from the beginning. What this means is developers can write extensions for Google Wave to take advantage of the Wave technology, and use it with your team workflow.

What has me excited about this new technology is the possibilities that are presented for a team to streamline its workflow. With new Wave extensions, open usage for businesses to use in their unique workflow, integration with other technologies, I am very excited for the very near future and can’t wait to find our own usage for Google Wave, right here at Force 5.

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From Idea to (re)Invention

Friday, April 10th, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath

There are some exciting things happening here at Force 5 Media. One of which, is exciting for me, since it involves self-discovery and insight for the purpose of solely helping our clients realize their goals. There is an old saying, “In order to see where you are going, you must know where you’ve been.” This goes for not only our clients, but ourselves. We have something in common with our clients; our need and want for success. We are on a journey; the more we realize where we have been, the more focused we can become in realizing our goals.

There’s been some reinventing going on at Force 5 Media. This journey is represented in a new page inviting clients to join us on this new journey we are embarking on. Join us on our journey. This was a fun project to work on due to the wide variety of mediums involved as well as the awesome ideas that were generated by the Force 5 team. Sure, there’s been a fair share of Willie Nelson (On the Road Again), Rascal Flatts (Life is a Highway), and B.B. King (Key to the Highway) parodies. Some humorous, some unfortunate. Over all of the tears, we enjoyed the creative brainstorming and coming up with some amazing ideas. On the “tech/creative” side of this project, we played with Flash, 3D, Photoshop, PHP, and Javascript. What’s even more exciting is the direction this project is headed. Over the next few weeks, our journey page will evolve with different messages, animations and hidden treasures – eventually revealing our new destination.

Stay tuned – it’s a wide open road ahead.

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