Flash CS5 will have the ability to create iPhone applications

Adobe announced yesterday that in the up and coming Flash Pro CS5 you will have the capability to create iPhone applications from Flash. The beta will hopefully be available towards the end of the year.  This will allow developers with Actionscript 3 (AS3) knowledge to develop iPhone apps with ease. Flash will tap into multi-touch features, accelerometer etc offering some exciting potential.

Not only can new applications be created but previously developed Flash games or apps can now be published in the iPhone format. It also works the other way around; if a Flash application has been developed for the iPhone it can also be published as a file for the web or cross platform desktop application using AIR.

So is Flash now supported on the iPhone?

No. The new Flash CS5 Pro will only allow developers to package what they have created in Flash and publish them in a native iPhone application format. Users will still not be able to view Flash files through the built-in Safari browser.

This sounds like great news for Flash developers. I think we’ll see a lot more iPhone applications being submitted for approval when Flash CS5 Pro is out!

There is of course a little bit more to it than just publishing an iPhone app straight out of Flash. Firstly, you need, of course, to be a member of the iPhone Developer Program, then make sure your app follows the developer guidelines, and then finally you’ll need to submit the application for approval on the App Store!

There is a good post about the new release on Mike Chambers blog called  Building Applications for the iPhone with Flash which has a bit more of a technical overview.

Some useful links:

Applications for iPhone (Adobe Labs website)

Adobe Flash Professional CS5

What is Google Wave?

I think everyone has heard about Google Wave, but what is it and how has it supposedly re-invented email? Below is a video which tries to explain just 2% of what Google Wave can do in simple terms. I am personally quite excited about The Wave and have been trying to get my hands on an invite but with no luck. Does anyone have any spare they would like to throw my way?

Google’s description below

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

You can view the loooooong version of Google Waves developer preview below

Design

I am very interested in seeing how I can use Wave for commercial web design projects and how much it really does help when there are a few people collaborating on one project. It will be really good for bouncing ideas around, creating mood boards and presenting different snippets of information/images/links/videos etc. Having everything in one central place is another really handy feature. I currently use Google Docs for a lot of my admin work, Google Picasa web albums to host my images, Gmail for my email and Google Calendar to organise myself; so if all these tools can be used in collaboration I think Google Wave will be the next obvious step. I am not sure if the ‘live’ element is such a good thing at this point.  I find it hard enough to drag myself away from refreshing my emails never mind seeing messages being written in real time. Once I have finally get my hands on an invite I will give you an update.

Some useful links below:

Google Wave Live Collaboration Video

Google Wave – Natural Language Processing Video

Google Wave API

Google Wave API overview

A variation of fonts that can be used when implementing @font face

A good article about using custom fonts in modern browsers for your new web designs.

So what is @font-face?

@font-face is a CSS rule that allows you to upload a font and link to it from your style-sheet, allowing users accessing your site to view it.

Mozilla’s explanation of @font-face:

“@font-face allows authors to specify online fonts to display text on their webpages. By allowing authors to provide their own fonts, @font-face eliminates the need to depend on the limited number of fonts users have installed on their computers.” – mozilla

An example syntax you would use would be:

@font-face { 
 font-family: MyNeoSans; 
 src: local("Neo Sans Light"), 
 local("Neo-sans-light"), 
 url(myNeoSans.ttf); 
 font-weight: bold; 
} 

Find the article over at http://spyrestudios.com/

Another article explaining @font-face in depth

Free photoshop template file

I have found it extremely useful when designing for the web to use a 960 12 column grid. I also find it very useful using the folder structure from a Photoshop file post on webdesignerdepot.com. So I decided to combine them both and created this Free Photoshop file to use as a basis file for my website design.

The image below shows the structured layers palette in photoshop.

I hope you find this useful and I’d be interested to hear any feedback or suggestions.

Click here to download Free Photoshop file

99 Design and Design Contest are two of the web's biggest speculative design sites.

Speculative work and in particular design contests are a hot topic on the design world at the moment. With the economic climate in its current situation, and work all too hard to come by, businesses are cashing in on vulnerability of fledgling members of the design community to submit pieces of work for free. While the prospect of a cash prize is incentive enough for some designers, others say it is damaging to the industry; for both designers and clients.

What is spec work?

Speculative work is when a designer is asked to submit work to a client before entering into a contract with the client. Designers will be given a brief and asked to submit preliminary work before the client agrees to take them on and pay them for their completed work. If the client does not choose to use the designer after seeing their preliminary work the designer will receive no payment. It is not uncommon for design agencies to use this strategy. It is up to the individual designer to choose whether they want to spend time completing designs that may never be used or paid for.

Design contests

Design contests are one form of speculative work and are being used more and more commonly by organisations who attract potential designers by offering the possibility of winning a cash prize. Entrants submit their work, which may be used by the contest host regardless of whether the entry is a winning one. Some companies run competitions themselves (generally advertised on-line or in magazines) but more commonly, agencies such as 99designs, DesignContest and crowdSPRING (to name just a small selection) host contests on behalf of clients, and have designers sign up to them to enter their work in the hope of winning the cash.

Who owns the work?

There is a large amount of variation in the way these contests are run. Reputable companies will run their competitions with closed entries, usually sent in jpg form to an email address and only published once the winner has been announced and the prize paid. Winning entries become the property of the organisation hosting the contest once payment has been received by the entrant, and non-winning entries remain the property of the designer and are not used by the host without consent of the designer. Full acknowledgement published along with the entry ensures that the designs can be traced back to their original creator.

This is a far-cry from contest websites, who offer very little security over submitted work. Entries are available to view in almost full size and can be easily dragged into Photoshop and edited, without even logging into the site. The sites themselves warn about penalties for members who plagiarise designs, but there is nothing stopping a member of the public from browsing the site and using submitted designs.

There is no mention of any external regulation of contest sites. Obviously the success of the sites rely on their ability to attract clients who will pay for work and designers willing to submit to the site. This means there is a certain amount of responsibility on the part of the contest site to internally observe and penalise designers who plagiarise, however, it is impossible to prevent the general public from copying or using any if the designs for their own use, and unless they were a huge multinational company, it would probably go completely unnoticed. Even if a designer did spot their design being used by someone else, there would be very little chance of proving where it had been plagiarised from. Designers who submit work to contest sites should be aware that they are basically giving up all rights they have to their own work and placing it in the public domain! Further to this, the lack of external regulation means that there are no consequences for contest hosts who fail to select a winning design or pay the prize, other than suspension or exclusion from the contest site. There is nothing stopping them hosting contests on other sites.

The arguments

So why are there so many contest sites and why does speculative work seem to be so popular amongst the design community?

Design contests enable designers to produce work casually, when it suits them. The huge number of contests run means that designers can enter as many or as few as they like and work remotely, or from home with no obligation to fulfill contracts or stick to deadlines. As one site put it “a great idea can come from anyone, anywhere – whether they’re a janitor by day and a designer by night or a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t have the time to run her own web studio” (crowdSPRING). Many fledgling designers feel design contests are a good way to boost their portfolio and gain skills and experience in a competitive industry, and many students enter design contests in the same way.

Many of the contest sites are “started by designers for designers” (99Designs) and entice the designer in with strap lines such as “click to satisfy your craving” (DesignContest)…they are actually doing the designer a favour; because the designer really just wants to be able to design. So, design contests such as these provide a platform on which designers can practise their art, with the added bonus of the possibility of a cash prize.

One claim is that the competitive nature of the sites “push the limits and create innovative new designs” (DesignContest), so they are really doing the industry a favour aren’t they?

Some would disagree.

By offering cheap, or even free labour some designers feel that contest sites are actually harming the design industry and benefiting no-one. Designs can be entered by anyone who can use the software and doesn’t necessarily have qualification or experience in the field. That is not to say that all designs entered into contests are of a poor standard, in fact quite the opposite. Many of the designs entered are of an extremely high quality and integrity, and some feel that design contests that commission work for no payment are “degrading and minimise the value of the design and the value of the designers intellectual property” (carsonified.com/blog/tag/speculative-design-work/). Students coming into the industry are doing so with a mindset that it is acceptable for them to complete work and not expect payment. This could have a significant impact in a few years

At the end of the day, why would a client pay £30+ an hour for professional designs when they can simply offer a lump sum, while viewing an average of 70 designs per contest. Clients can even suggest improvements to several designers at the same time, who can read each others feedback and alter their designs until the client gets exactly what they want, and at the end of it only one of the designers gets paid anything for their time! It could be said that the prize does not equate to a fair wage for the number of hours work entered onto these contests.

In closing…

So are designers being exploited? Speculative work is a phenomenon rarely seen in other industries; where a client would expect work to be completed and not expect to pay for it if they simply didn’t like it. All professional designers have a portfolio and a client chooses a designer based on their previous work and their reputation. Why then does this seem to be acceptable practice in the design world? The lack of regulation within the industry compounds the problem of fledgling or vulnerable designers losing out on earning a wage for their hard work.

In closing, it is obviously up to the individual designer whether they choose to spend their time working on designs and submitting them knowing that there is the prospect of not receiving any payment at all, however, there should be regulation like in any other industry to ensure fair play by clients and designers.

Update

An intersting take on the subject of Spec Work. They also have a very good collection of spec design work articles about the subject as well.

Twitter homepage design update - the old and the new

Twitter has a new homepage, but what are the motives behind the changes and what is the future for the social networking site?

Old and New

The first thing you notice about the new Twitter homepage design is the general friendliness of it. Gone are the sharp corners and compartmentalised, boxy feel- replaced by soft yet bold graphics; the clouds seem fluffier, the bird has grown wings and gained a smile and there isn’t a sharp corner to be seen! The mature colour scheme ensures that the integrity of the design has not been compromised.

The new homepage prominently features a search tool not seen at all on the original. This enables the new user to search directly for the stimulus tweet that enticed them to the site in the first place. Additionally, a large portion of the page is taken up by links to the most popular topics on Twitter by the minute, day and week; designed to draw new users into the twitter community. This is a far-cry from the original homepage, which required the user to sign up before navigating their way to a separate search page to find topics that interested them.

The new design is clearly aimed at those of us who are yet to embrace the world of twitter. The log-in function has been relegated to a small drop-down button at the top of the page, adding an extra click for regular users who don’t remain signed in between sessions.

Why the changes?

Although the new homepage design is much better than the old one, it seems that in their rush to publish the new design, Twitter has neglected to make the design changes across the board. As soon as you choose to sign up to Twitter and click on the nice shiny round-cornered button the old design is back, confusing the user with clashing colour schemes and a battle between the old, sharp graphics and the new soft ones. In fact, the only page that has changed on the whole site is the homepage on twitter.com. From a design point of view, this inconsistency is confusing for the user; it is almost like using two different websites. Is this then a huge oversight on the part of the creators or is it a tactical move, in order to avoid alienating the million-plus users who are already familiar with the site’s look?

Twitter’s founders say that the new homepage is designed to “Help people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction”. Clearly then, the changes are aimed at enticing those who have not previously used Twitter and, as they put it have yet to be discover the “power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now”. Through its homepage Twitter is attempting to draw in an audience who are for the most part familiar with what Twitter is, but who have yet to be convinced of the value it has to them.

The future for Twitter

With newspaper headlines regularly featuring the latest celebrity or sports personality to have provoked controversy via Twitter, it is obvious that the site will ultimately have evolved to exploit the media attention surrounding it; could this move be paving the way for potential commercial earnings? Like the social networking site Facebook before it, Twitter has outgrown its founders’ original expectations and it surely has enormous potential for targeted advertising. For how long will the founders be able to delay the inevitable?

Welcome to my first blog post. While I hope my designs speak for themselves, my ideas and thoughts that motive these actions are not always given the opportunity to express themselves via my work.

On the blog that follows I hope I’ll get the opportunity to do just that, expressing ideas and opinions and matters such as usability, graphical user interface (GUI) design and idea generation and development.

I hope you enjoy it.