I am starting to hear that all too familiar nerd-buzz of premature excitement – this time it’s about HTML 5 and all it’s cool new capabilities.
Yes, HTML 5 does have a lot of cool things it can do, and so it’s tempting to jump in and start learning. But that would largely be a waste of time … at least for now.
What?! Isn’t HTML 5 the future?
It sure is. In fact, I’ve been telling people for years that XHTML was a pipe dream (because IE would not support it) and I advised people to stick to good old HTML … even when it was heresy to say so! Here’s the problem (now) with HTML 5 – most of the browsers being used today don’t support it AND it will take a few years before the majority of people out there will have HTML 5 equipped browsers.
… Man, reality does bite!
Hard-core nerds tend to ignore reality
A time long, long ago, in an Internet that is now far, far away … back in the mid to late 1990’s, CSS was invented and naive nerds such as myself started playing with it, investing precious time that could have been spent playing video games, only to find that most of the browsers being used did not support it … so using CSS was basically useless.
… It took several years before CSS enabled browsers had penetrated enough to use CSS in a serious way. Using CSS prior to wide adoption, only ended with wasted time and disappointment, since you could not actually use it live. The same will be true for much of HTML 5 – unless you start hacking and browser sniffing and all kinds of other nonsense.
Let me conclude by quoting Coder’s Code #36:
The wise web designer shall not waste precious time on learning cutting edge technology … if said nerd wishes to earn a living.
If you are a web designers/developer or just a geek, you’ve probably heard about the recent ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe.
The fight revolves around Adobe’s Flash and Apple’s iPhone and now the new iPad – basically Apple has blocked both these devices from running the Flash player and thus, any Flash delivered content, whether it be video or applications … can anyone say NO Flash games!
Apple says that they blocked Flash because Flash runs terribly on Mac OS. This is true. But recent events tells me that there is more to it than protecting iPhone and iPad users from the evils of the Flash player ….
“Apple Gives Adobe The Finger With Its New iPhone SDK Agreement”
This title (form a Techcrunch article) tells it all. You see, not only does Apple prevent Flash from running on iPhone and iPad, they are even blocking Flash-created programs that would then be ported to (translated into …) native iPhone-code based applications!! This is truly a poke in the teeth … from Apple to Adobe.
… Apple is blocking Flash with their new license agreement – basically, applications must be “originally written†in C/C++/Objective-C:
3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
I don’t normally swear on my blog … but WTF!?
Bottom line for web designers and developers:
We is screwed! Especially if you are Flash developer …
😉
Ok, not really … but read on for details how to get around this mess.
Apple basically want’s to kill Flash … this is clear. They want to kill it because they want to replace it. This is nothing new for Apple, they nailed Adobe with Finalcut years ago … and Apple basically took over the video editing market … took it away from Adobe.
More evidence:
Apple just announced a new tool for creating HTML 5-based interactivity, I’m not sure of the details but it just ads more fuel to the fire. There’s going to be a battle and nerds will take sides; in the end though, everyone will loose.
So what should web designers do?
Code is code and good design and good design – continue to work on your basics:
As I have been saying for years, don’t get married to a particular language or technology. Instead, try to concentrate on the key fundamentals and become language/technology agnostic … and use what works best for the project at hand. Personally, I’ve used 8-9 languages over the years to build web applications; I would look at the project and then choose the language, rather than trying to shoehorn everything into same technological box.
If you haven’t already caught them, I am releasing FREE videos from our new course on how to properly build a page layout in Photoshop to then take it to the Web.
In this video, we learn about preparing the screen dimensions for the Web in Photoshop:
What software do you need to become a web designer?
This is actually a good question, because you’d figure with all the web design programs that you see out there, that you’d have to shell out a lot of cash to get going. Ah … it would seem grasshoppers … but do not be deceived!
… You don’t need to buy any software to build websites – that is one of the beauties of web design.
Are you sure Stef? I thought you needed to buy something like Dreamweaver or Web Expression to build websites?
No. Web design programs like Dreamweaver CAN speed up the process but so can being smart about how you build websites. In fact, my beginners course on web design teaches you how to build websites using free software that you already have.
I am now starting to release a bunch of free videos from our soon to be released Photoshop for the Web course. The complete video course (with source files) will be soon available on our video tutorial subscription service and soon thereafter as a download or DVD purchase.
The main goal is to teach you how to take a Photoshop CS4 based web page layout and to turn it into a website with the help of Dreamweaver CS4. Along the way, you will put to practice lessons learned from our series of articles on proper design.
Note: Even though we are using Photoshop and Dreamweaver, the lessons learned are pretty much usable with any Photo editing (The Gimp, Photopaint etc …) and web design software (Web Expression, Net Objects etc …) – these days, all these programs work in much the same way.
We just launched our brand-spanking-new forum/community for web designers and aspiring web designers. It is basically a forum with extend personal profiles and social networking capabilities like friends lists, private messaging, galleries, chat .. etc.
Beyond the obvious, we will be including a few interesting features:
Script banks for people to contribute useful PHP and Javascript.
A web template library … again, for people to contribute to and use.
A photo sharing section for people to showcase their web design work.
The idea is to create a community of web professionals that can share not only knowledge of web design, but also potentially pool talents and secure jobs. For instance, maybe you’re are great coder but lack on the design side of things, you being a member of the community, will undoubtedly get to know a few great designers – people you can get to help you on more design intensive projects.
Dreamweaver has a collection of web design templates to make the web design process much easier – all the funky cross browser CSS issues have already been solved in the provided templates.
Check out the video:
Of course, the complete set of Dreamweaver videos (and a lot more) can all be viewed by joining our video subscription service.
A common question that is put to me by aspiring web designers is:
What are the job prospect looking forward, for web designers and web programmers?
Oftentimes, they will mention web templates and other tools/technology that speed up the process of web design, seeing them as potential roadblocks for the profession:
… if these tools keep getting better and making web design easier, who’s going to need web designers?
Let me first start by saying that web designers, programmers, market specialist and all other web professionals are going to become even MORE SOUGHT AFTER, over the next many years.
Why? Simple young nerdlings, everything is jumping onto the Web. Radio stations and newspapers are going bust, magazines and books are going digital … even TV is fragmenting, where video sites like Youtube have huge audiences that rival many traditional TV networks.
But wait, there’s more!
Besides traditional media business having to go online, just about every business (large and small) NEED to have a Web presence. Today, a business without a website is like a home without electricity.
So it’s pretty clear that business needs to be on the Web and so the Web is growing like crazy. But how about them pesky templates and blogs that make putting up a website easy? Well, let me ask you, do you know how to install a blog, set up a database? Do you know how to choose a good domain name, structure a website so that it is search engine friendly? Do you know how to add sound, video, contact forms, forums …. e-commerce systems to a site? Do you know how the design a custom theme for WordPress or Drupal?
… Now, as a web professional you may know how to do some of these things, but what I can tell you with great certainty, is just about all non-web designers no nothing about how to do these things. That’s where a web professional comes in:
– installing that blog.
– customizing the theme.
– adding the forum.
Now the article doesn’t mention web designers or programmers specifically, but you can be sure they are a serious part of the mix. One thing the article does mention though, is that the more skills you have, the greater chance you will get a job and the more money you will make – something I’ve been pushing for years: web designers need to evolve into 21st century web designers and learn:
These days Firefox is a key tool for web designers and web developers because of all the great plug-ins that you can install (for free!) that add all kinds of useful functionality.
In the following video I introduce you to three of my favorites:
