Tag Archives: technology trends
We’re going to change things up a bit for this month’s Tech Trends post. Instead of quickly discussing a handful of new trends in technology, the focus now will be on a single important topic. This month that topic is a hidden gem in HTML5 called Microdata. When we hear about the capabilities of HTML5, we typically see things like Geolocation, CSS animations, mobile-compatibility, native audio/video support, or even 3D WebGL experiences — but rarely is there any discussion about how HTML5 can help drive more traffic to websites via search engines. This is where Microdata comes in and it’s going to fundamentally change the way we discover and consume content on the web.
Microdata is a component of HTML5 aimed at adding more semantics and contextual information to existing content on a page. By doing so, Microdata provides others, like search engines or browsers, with more information about the contents of a page. This allows them to handle data in new and interesting ways. For example, a product detail page may list out a product’s SKU, pricing, reviews and availability — but there’s no real way for Google’s search engine crawlers to know exactly what that information means. With Microdata, we can explicitly tell Google how much our products cost and what rating our users gave it. But why would we want to do this? Read More
1. Google Introduces Dart: A Structured Programming Language for the Web
JavaScript has been the language of the web for over a decade now. It’s provided us a facility for creating dynamic experiences and complex behaviors inside of our browsers. And recent advancements in JavaScript engines (such as Google’s V8 engine that powers its Chrome browser) have allowed us to push the boundaries of what was previously impractical.
However, JavaScript developers such as myself often have a love/hate relationship with the language. While JavaScript is simple, dynamic and usually a pleasure to write, it arguably lacks the structure, speed, security and features of many other languages. However, this shouldn’t be a surprise, considering JavaScript was created in essentially 10 days back in 1995.
Google’s recognized these weaknesses in the language that powers the web — which is why they’ve created the Dart programming language. Dart’s goals, as mentioned in Google’s blog post, are to ensure the language is structured yet flexible, familiar and natural to developers, and (probably most importantly) high performance. To accomplish this, Dart borrows ideas from languages such as Java, JavaScript and Smalltalk. 
But Dart faces a number of challenges. First is developer adoption. One reason JavaScript took off so quickly was it’s ease-of-use and low barrier to entry for developers. In order for Dart to fully gain support from developers, it first needs to be widely supported in browsers which I see as Google’s biggest obstacle. JavaScript is already so prevalent. Why should browser makers go through the trouble of supporting another language? Google needs to come up with some compelling reasons and examples of what Dart is capable of.
In this third and final installment, Senior Developer Kevin Malone shares his thoughts on Facebook’s workflow improvements from a tech perspective.
What are they going to break this time? That’s probably the question most Facebook application developers were thinking at the start of the f8 2011 conference. When it comes to Facebook, change can be scary. While users of Facebook get all worked up over interface changes, those of us who build applications on top of the Facebook platform have legitimate concerns. Namely, did the changes break our applications? Unfortunately, it happens more often than anyone cares to think about.
Thankfully, this post isn’t about what Facebook broke. It’s about what they have made better. Facebook has introduced a number of changes that will make the lives of developers a bit easier.
Adobe Acquires TypeKit and PhoneGap to Broaden its HTML5 Toolset
Adobe made some big announcements yesterday at their Adobe MAX conference. Adobe announced two new acquisitions: Nitobi (creators of PhoneGap) and Typekit. PhoneGap is an impressive platform for developing native mobile applications using web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. TypeKit is a popular service used for enabling developers and designers to embed custom font faces on websites – enabling web content to be beautiful as well as accessible and search engine-friendly.
With these acquisitions, Adobe’s clearly proclaiming their support for web standards and sees standards as playing a large role in their future. There’s been an obvious controversy around Adobe’s position on standards-based web technologies like HTML5 when they’re also promoting the use of their Flash product. But today, it’s even more clear that Adobe is vying to maintain their position as a leader in publishing for the web.
After watching the responses around the web regarding these two acquisitions, it’s clear there is some hesitation and doubt that Adobe will be able to maintain the integrity of these two companies. There are some questions around whether or not Adobe will simply just introduce more corporate bureaucracy and ultimately be the demise of these acquisitions.
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Tiered, Adaptive Front-end Experiences
We all know that HTML5 is the new black — and there’s no question it’s here to stay. But there still remains a challenge for developers and designers to leverage these new technologies while not marginalizing users of less capable browsers. This is a paradigm shift from what we’ve typically created, which are experiences that work and look exactly the same in all browsers. Instead, we must create “adaptive experiences”. 
This movement isn’t a new one by any stretch, but it is finally hitting the mainstream. And for good reason too. We’re faced with the task of deciding how we should handle experiences in a browser like Internet Explorer 7 (released in October of 2006) along with Google Chrome 13 (released August 2011). Should the experience be exactly the same in both browsers? If so, we can only do one of two things:
● Spend a considerable amount of effort on ensuring compatibility with our complex experience on the fading IE7 and IE8 platforms or,
● Cripple the entire experience down to a much simpler one IE7 and IE8 can handle, while ruining it for those who are on more modern platforms
One way to avoid both of those situations is to develop experiences that are “tiered and adaptive”.
Paul Irish, citing a handful of other industry experts, wrote up a great post called “Tiered, Adaptive Front-end Experiences” explaining the benefits of NOT creating a “one experience fits all” solution. He mentions Nicholas Zakas’ brilliant metaphor using televisions. Zakas reminds us how we don’t broadcast black and white pictures just because that’s all that’s possible on least capable TV. We should be treating our web experiences the same way: don’t limit them based on the least capable browser. Read More
Adobe Edge beta brings Flash-style design to HTML5
Adobe announced a beta version of what appears to be a basic HTML5 animation authoring tool. It’s called “Adobe Edge”. Edge, sporting a very similar interface to many other Adobe products such as Flash and After Effects, allows developers and designers the ability to create and manipulate simple shapes and typography — with the final product rendering HTML5 code.
I’ve always hoped Adobe would take this direction with their authoring tools, instead of putting all their chips in on Flash. But the beta of their Edge tool still leaves me uncertain. In it’s current infant state, the tool is more of a proof of concept by Adobe — asserting their interest in open web technologies. Its creations are not compatible with older browsers, renders code not exactly easy to manipulate without Adobe’s tool, and is quite limited in its capabilities. Some have even created demos using Adobe Edge poking fun at the new tool. With all that aside, I’m optimistic Adobe will find a solution to ease the burden of creating HTML5 animations. There’s certainly a void in this space right now that needs to be filled. But for the time being, it’s back to doing by hand.
The HTML5 boom is coming. Fast.
So you’ve probably heard about this HTML5 thing. It’s a pretty big thing. Developers such as myself salivate at the chance of getting to play with some HTML5. Unfortunately, we also have to be realistic and accept that not all of our users are on modern platforms that support the latest and greatest HTML5 technologies. Read More
