Author: Evan Mullins

Josh Clark responds to Jakob Nielson's Mobile Stance

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Nielson recently stated that he thinks we should keep building a mobile version of a site that is trimmed down and optimized for mobile, and a full version. This contradicts the growing momentum in the industry regarding among other things Responsive Web Design. Josh Clark, another expert in Mobile and Usability, correctly dissects Nielson's stance and explains why he's seeing things backwards in this article at Net Mag.

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Nielsen is wrong on mobile | Opinion | .net magazine
Designer, developer and mobile maven Josh Clark tells us that rather than stripping down, we should be asking how we can do more with the mobile experience

Responsive Images Recap

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Thanks to Chris for this high level evaluation of the state of responsive images. THis post lays out descriptions pros and cons of each of the 3 foreseeable options: a new image format, a new syntax/html element or use existing technology.

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On Responsive Images | CSS-Tricks
There are three ways we can go about dealing with responsive s : 1) a new format 2) a new syntax 3) rely on existing hacks.

Padding for elements to responsively maintain aspect ratios

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Dave Rupert shares a quick tut on how to use percentage based padding-top (and height:0) with images as background images to let them be responsive and still keep the proper proportions. Thanks for sharing Dave!

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Uncle Dave’s Ol’ Padded Box
Uncle Dave's Ol' Padded Box. Here's a CSS trick I've been using lately in my responsive designs. April 09, 2012 • Articles • Tweet. Recently on ShopTalk, we were asked about our favori…

New Flash gives Key input in Fullscreen

Posted on by Evan Mullins

This is a huge hand to gaming in flash, which is quickly becoming a big driver to the flash roadmap. Lee shows a quick tut on how to accomplish this here. I like this solution from Adobe and thought initially it should have been something similar. Better late than never though.

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Flash Player 11.3 fullscreen keyboard input
One of the greatest features in Flash Player 11.3 is the ability to accept full keyboard input while in fullscreen mode. This is really important for fullscreen games that need chat or other keyboard input. You can implement this feature very easily by using the FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE mode. See below for the ActionScript code:
1 stage .displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE ;
Much like regular fullscreen mode, you need to add a parameter to your HTML code. See the code belo…

Promising Core WP Theme from studionashvegas

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Check out the parent theme on github and use what works for you. I'm very interested to see the functionality Mitch has included in here. It is blazing fast very responsive and looks like a great place to start a new site. Check a demo: http://dev.studionashvegas.com/coretheme/

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I’m Open Sourcing My Core Theme
The last few posts I’ve made on here were diving into the introductions of a Responsive Design (and I plan on finishing

Stacked Visual with CSS pseudo elements

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Here's a great example of how to embellish a design without adding (much) markup and using tools available to progressively enhance the experience while not burdening users with downloading any more kbs.

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Create the Illusion of Stacked Elements with CSS3 Pseudo-Elements – Inspect Element
By now, hopefully you're familiar with the use of the :before and :after pseudo-elements in order to do some interesting effects with CSS. Here I'm going to show you how you can create a simple 'stack…

Flash Gaming Technology – Notes from Lee Brimelow’s Adobe Presentation

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Here are my notes on the presentation from Lee Brimelow of Adobe at the Atlanta Adobe Users Group Meeting: http://www.meetup.com/Adobe-User-Group-of-Atlanta/events/56200162/

What is flash for? Doing things the browser can’t! If you can use HTML5 then do it. Learn about it and learn the capabilities and know when to use what tool and when they are appropriate. It might not be easy, but it is where the industry is moving, don’t hide from it! If you want to do things that are to advanced for the current standards and browsers, then flash is most likely where you need to be. Adobe will always position Flash to be ahead of what is possible with browsers.

While you can do some gaming in browsers today, flash is now positioned to be the best solution for game development. It even can compile to native apps for ios and many successful apps have done so. Adobe has put in a site to showcase these games at: http://gaming.adobe.com

Adobe has a new partnership with unity. See example game: Angry bots.

Console sales are declining. We have so many other outlets to game: browsers, social, mobile devices… Soon professional games will be via Facebook and browsers.

Facebook angry birds game built in flash using stage 3D.

New gaming features:
Mouse lock.
Right and middle click events.
Concurrency, multi threading for player. Yo will not lock up with intense calculations.
Native extension Burls and extensions.

CS6:
Sprite sheet exporter!
Create js exporter, via Grant Skinner
Html 5 export to canvas a vector art.

Edge

11.3 – latest flash player
full screen keyboard input.
Background auto updates.
Audio streaming via net stream.
Improvements for low latency audio.
Stage 3D progressive texture streaming.
Lzma compression sort door byte array.
Native bitmap encoding to png and jpg.
Bitmap data draw with quality
Frame labels.

Air specific
USB debugging for ios
Native ios simulator support
Enhanced background support for ios
Android 4 stylus support
Mac app store support

Dolores, upcoming updates
As workers
Advanced profiling
Better sort for hardware accelerated video cards

Next
Refactorizing code base
Work on as virtual machine
Many action script language updates: stringent static typing as default, hardware oriented numeric types, type inference…

Flash Roadmap Update – Notes from Mike Chambers’ Adobe presentation

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Here are my notes on the presentation from Mike Chambers of Adobe at the Atlanta Adobe Users Group Meeting: http://www.meetup.com/Adobe-User-Group-of-Atlanta/events/56200162/

Honestly, the announcement from Nov was handled horribly, it was a mess. Adobe has learned a lot and there have been many changes since then to keep this from happening again. They are really pushing transparency and have begun publishing white papers that explain the flash roadmap and explain plans and commitments.

These white papers put out by Adobe is definitive resource for flash. http://www.adobe.com/go/flashplatform_whitepapers

Flash runtimes is one shared core player. Flash player and adobe air both share same core.

Flash has filled many niches: animation, video, applications, games, rich media, art (Flash as an expressive medium).

While none of these functions are going anywhere, HTML5 is bringing a lot of this capability to browsers natively.

Adobe will now focus on advanced video and gaming in Flash as they are the areas that aren’t possible in web standards.

Introducing Premium features – set of features in API available for licensing. Only example for now is Stage3D used in conjunction with domainMemory API.

“I’m doing this for the love of flash, everyone else is doing it for the money” – Mike Chambers

The funding for the flash player is contradictory since more tools to publish to flash player have come out, it draws resources and funding away from flash player. This revenue sharing model allows for the player to remain funded in the current flash ecosystem.

Linux: Ppapi = pepper codename for browser plugin API which will let the player do it’s thing rather than worry about browser and OS. Working with google chrome on Linux already.

Windows 8: working closely with Microsoft to have support for flash player and air on Windows 8.

All updates will be added to the white paper (link above) along with the 2 year roadmap.

Thanks for visiting ATL and working on making this well understood and making Flash even better. I’m Always a fan of using flash when it’s the right tool for the job.

Marketing For Apps, Case Study

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Here's a great case study about an app that sounds very impressive. It could have done decently on it's own merits, you say? This article describes how it was beneficial and even crucial for them to market the app to make it newsworthy, relative and successful. Some great marketing ideas here.

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The Art Of Launching An App: A Case Study | Smashing UX Design
The app world is becoming cluttered. The best launch initiatives are those that involve choosing strategic partners, creating clever story angles that dovetail with newsworthy occasions, and running a…

PhoneGap Build Starter Project

Posted on by Evan Mullins

I'm liking Ryan's initiative to make PhoneGap Build documentation and workflow updated, bug-free and more streamlined. I've been using PhoneGap and phoneGap Build more and more and I've really been enjoying how simple it makes the process. I'm all for making it better still and think it will be hugely useful!

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The PhoneGap Starter Project | Ryan Stewart – Mountaineer Coding
As I've been digging more and more into PhoneGap Build I've also been discovering that there are some gaps in the workflow and that it's not always easy to go from a feature I want to use …