Microsoft Premix/Remix 2011
This year, Felthy and I went to Microsoft Premix/Remix 2011 to check out some keynotes and announcements from the team who are bringing out Kinect SDK, Windows 7 Phones and Windows 8.
If you follow @garry_law, you can re-live the event tweet-by-tweet, but here's a chronologically-ordered summary of the tweets over the two days. Will post more in-depth articles on some highlights soon!
Premix 1/Jun
- cannot wait to see web tech keynotes @REMIXAU (and #premixau drinks tonight of course
) #remixau #RIA - Mini hotdogs ftw @remixau #premixau
- Awesome! Mr percival live jam @remixau
- Michael (guitar) Cordahil takin the floor to introduce Dan Ilic, proves all cool people wear dark clothes @remixau
- Dan ilic believes #tv is killed by #internet . Netflix takes 20% of usa bandwidth. Farmville 70%, planking 10%
- @danilic great insight into building brands @remixau funny guy!
- #ie9 speed test on windows phone 7 mango. Deeplinking into apps looks so useful
- Music played by human body via #kinect sensor #remixau so much cooler than interpretive dance
- Good to see oldmate #microsoft researcher give insight into the future of lifeblogging for pensioners #remixau
Remix 2/Jun
- Will continue tweeting the #remixau conference today... after i sleep off the #premixau drinks from last night
- Just saw glasses-free 3D monitor in action. Effect works well in discreet viewing angles #remixau neet one for my portal 2 gaming
- Cordahil discusses midern web devs with aaron powell. 'Supporting lowest denominator is actually targeting a minority' #remixau
- Vaughan knight intro- wearing a portal 2 shirt, disappointed with lack of portal love in audience. Will talk about html5 gaming l8r #remixau
- Intro of dan beaty (he built the mr percival music app from last nite.) Will talk about SVG tech l8r #remixau
- Dan beaty wantd to build mrpercival app in html5, but it cannot support sounds. Needed sulverlight plugin #remixau . #flash also gets a nod
- Aaron powell takes the stage #html5 #remixau . html5 Boilerplate demo. Conveniently sets up your html5 project via template
- Aaron powell introduces modernizr and yepnope.js to simplify browser feature detection #remixau
- Vaughan knight takes the stage on #html5 games #remixau . Why? Ubiquity, broad reach, instant on, distribution, amazing community
- Impact JS demo- the html5 game framework looks like a great entry point for #flash devs to start building #html5 games #remixau
- if(zombies) { run(); } #remixau great advice
- Shane morris and nick randolph talking about 'inspirational' #windows 7 phone (mango). Qantas smart boarding pass app #remixau
- Nick randolph vs shane morris typify conflict between dsignr and coder: one hates version control, other ends copy with semicolons @remixau
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@soapcreative talkin abt worlds biggest pac man #html5 game, wont need worlds biggest monitor to play @remixau
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EaselJS allowed similar coding style as #actionscript. Mootools n modernizr also helped @soapcreative build pacman #html5 #remixau
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Final #remixau presso by dan beaty on canvas n html5- points out #silverlight is used to get around #html5 audio limitations.
- Just saw #windows8 preview @remixau thx for following my live tweets on #remixau
Flash vs HTML5 (vs Silverlight, vs AJAX…)
People who want HTML5 to replace Flash have no heart.
People who want to get rid of Flash have no brain.
As little as two years ago, very few people would have questioned the dominance of Flash as a solution to rich user experiences. In fact, it had an adoption rate so far ahead of its perceived competitor Silverlight, and had an entry level so much lower than its predecessor Java that Adobe could be forgiven for feeling pretty good about their platform.
That was until Apple declared war on Adobe. HTML 5 has now replaced Silverlight in its challenge against Flash, and circles everywhere see this as a showdown between two technologies that appear to do similar things.
Apple has banned Flash on its mobile platforms, claiming that it's a memory-hog, and that Flash is unsuitable for mobile browsing. Instead, Apple is banking on HTML5 - the next incarnation of HTML that, with the help of Javascript, will be able to create animations, rich user experiences and other previously Flash-exclusive content. Considering that Apple has become a leader in the smartphone market - this has caused more than a little bit of panic among Flash developers.
Adobe has long suggested that they will create mobile-friendly Flash environment, but sadly this looks like a broken promise.
The only catch with HTML 5 is it will not become a W3C recommendation for years to come. To put this into perspective, all this talk about HTML5 becoming a new standard won't be standard until at least we've gone through several 2-year iPhone contracts. In fact, the existing HTML 5 showcases on the Apple website can only be viewed with the latest version of Safari (which has a very un-standard user penetration rate of around 3.4%), so if you created a fully-featured HTML 5 site, you would be shutting out more users than you gain from Apple's iPhone and iPad products.
As a developer who uses Flash as my favoured platform, I don't feel that HTML 5 will affect our work any time soon, but it doesn't mean that Flash will stay around forever - after all, it is only natural for newer, better technologies to come and go. This is a fact of our industry and completely investing yourself in one technology is close-minded and risky.
Where I work at The White Agency, there are no 'Flash developers', but we are known as Rich Internet Application (RIA) developers. The team understands that though Flash has its benefits today, tomorrow things may change and we shouldn't try to shoe-horn projects into the Flash platform if it could be done better in HTML 5 (or Silverlight, or AJAX).
The smart developer would realise that actively adapting to, or at least understanding new technologies is the key to having a long and prosperous career, while those who are stubbornly holding onto any technology are setting themselves up for a very nasty surprise at the end.