All posts by onlyconnect

adobe, flash, google, internet, web authoring

Web video ascendant as Flash goes mobile

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It is one of those days when separate announcements reinforce a single message.

On the technical side, we’ve had Adobe’s announcement, here at MAX in Los Angeles, of Flash Player 10.1 which will bring hardware accelerated HD video to a number of smartphones, including Windows Mobile, Palm Web OS, Google Android and Symbian. Blackberry maker RIM is also on board. Spot the missing Smartphone – though who knows, there could be an Apple-shaped announcement too at any time.

Users on the other hand do not care what software is delivering their video, they just want it to work. England’s numerous football fans will care even more about that now, since the forthcoming World Cup qualifying match with Ukraine will apparently be shown only on the Web, on a pay-per-view basis. Actually it is not quite web-only; you can also to out to watch it in the cinema, harking back to the days when few had TVs at home:

Fans will be asked to pay between £4.99 and £11.99, depending on when they sign up, to watch the match on their computer and it will also be screened in selected Odeon cinemas.

I’m particularly interested in the developer angle. Web video is programmable, and where Flash goes, so too goes the ActionScript runtime. One angle is social media, which the BBC talked to me about at the end of last year in the context of iPlayer. It will be fun to see this and other innovations as the possibilities opened up by web broadcasting sink home.

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adobe, software development, Uncategorized, web authoring

Book review: Web 2.0 Architectures

This is an excellent read, though it was not what I expected from the title. It is written by three people who are always forthright, sharp and insightful, and who live on the Web: James Governor, Dion Hinchcliffe and Duane Nickull. Nickull works for Adobe, and the book labelled as part of the Adobe Developer Library, but don’t let that put you off if you are a Java guy, or a PHP developer, or a Microsoft Platform person: this is about concepts and patterns, not specific products.

So why was it not what I expected? Well, I thought it might focus on the challenge of developing highly distributed applications, looking at what it takes to make such applications reliable, performant and scalable. I know even from my own dabblings that decisions about where to locate different pieces of logic and handling things such as authentication, transactions and security are tough problems with which many of us need help. However, this title rarely descends to that level of detail – though it is a little unpredictable in that respect. The authors do find space, for example, for several pages on common mistakes in designing web forms, reflecting I imagine their level of frustration at how often they encounter them. Inconsistent, yes; but forgivable.

What you do find is detailed and often brilliant attention to the definition of terms. What is architecture? What is a model? What is a pattern? What is a Mashup? What is a Rich Internet Application? What is Service Oriented Architecture? What is a Reference Architecture? And of course, What is Web 2.0? These discussions are pithy, illustrated with real-world examples, and convey the authors’ enthusiasm for the new era which is now upon us.

As you read the early chapters you feel that this is all leading up to something big. That’s correct, but again it might not be what you expect. In fact, this feels like an introduction to a much longer book that is yet to be written, a fault which can only be excused by the idea that it is you, not they, that have the task of writing it.

Here’s a short extract from a section called The Timeless Way of Building Software: Inspiration for the next generation of Web Software:

Take a look at some of the great web software, such as Google’s search page, Flickr, or Delicious. They all have that unique yet unhurried grace that comes from perfect ease and natural balance. But what do they have in common exactly? They are beautiful, ordered and harmonious. But especially, and what strikes to the heart, is that they live. They are the perfect blend of logic and emotion, of the machine and the human experience, intrinsically intertwined and symbiotically embracing each other.

If you find this excessively rhapsodic you will probably not like this book. Note the title though: this is a Web 2.0 book as well as an architecture book; and a couple of pages on from the above quote we learn the significance of that:

…this timeless way of software architecture represents a more complete reconceptualization of what we thought we knew. We can give this place, where common sense and logic collide with humanity and society, a name.

We call that place Web 2.0.

And that is pretty much how it ends.

Overall it’s a great read, written I suspect in haste, accounting for the odd sloppy phrase or two, but always fluent and enjoyable. Recommended for those who are thoughtful about what it means to do software today.

View on Amazon.com: Web 2.0 Architectures: What entrepreneurs and information architects need to know

View on Amazon.co.uk: Web 2.0 Architectures: What entrepreneurs and information architects need to know

.net, adobe, cloud computing, facebook, flash, javascript, microsoft, open source, ruby, software development, twitter, visual studio, web authoring

Future of Web Apps cheers the independent Web

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The Future of Web Applications conference in London is always a thought-provoking event, thanks to its diversity, independence and character. That said, it is a frustrating creature at times. The frustration on day 1 was the barely functional wi-fi, which ruined a promising interactive application called HelloApp, built with ASP.NET MVC. HelloApp would have told us who we were sitting next to, what their interests were, their twitter ID and so on. Microsoft must be disappointed since the developers, some of them more used to technologies like PHP and Ruby, said how impressed they were with the framework and Visual Studio. The poor connectivity was a shame, and a bad slip-up for a web application conference. Even the speakers had to work mostly offline – cloud devotees beware.

Ryan Carson at the Future of Web Apps London, 2009

FOWA has been at London Excel recently, but this event was back to its earlier venue of Kensington Town Hall, more crowded but a better atmosphere and easier to get to. I suspect a little downsizing, but much prefer it. Organizer Ryan Carson has his heart set on enabling start-ups, proffering business advice and uniting developers, designers and money folk, though many attendees are not in the start-up category at all. When revealing the results of a survey showing that many web app hopefuls had less then 1000 site visitors a month he shook his head despairingly “you’re never gonna build a business on that kind of traffic”.

Carson has excellent contacts and the day kicked off with Digg’s Kevin Rose on how to get those visitor numbers up – he should know if anyone does. Rose exceeded my expectations with tips on massaging your visitor egos, avoiding analysis paralysis, hanging round event parties to meet influencers even when you can’t afford to attend the event, and even how to hack the press.

After that the day was disappointingly low-key, at least until midday. Then we got Francisco Tolmasky from 280 North and it all changed. Tolmasky’s line is that we should use pure web technology but with the richness of desktop applications, and to enable this he’s put forward cappuccino, a JavaScript framework inspired by Apple’s Objective C and Cocoa – Cappuccino uses Objective-J. This now has a visual development tool (web-based of course) called Atlas, and in Tolmasky’s demo it looked superb. See here for more details.

The surprising twist is that after developers told Tolmasky that they (or their companies) were not willing to trust code to the web, 280 North came up with a desktop version of Atlas with the added ability to create desktop applications as well. I am not clear about all the runtime details, though it no doubt involves webkit, but Tolmasky’s differentiator versus alternatives like Java or Adobe AIR is that Atlas uses only web APIs.

We heard a lot at FOWA about social media, how to use it for marketing, and how to integrate it into applications. Cat Lee from Facebook gave us a breathless presentation on how simple it is to hook into Facebook Connect. It was OK but it was a sales pitch, and that never goes down well at FOWA. 

The later afternoon sessions were excellent. Bruce Lawson of Opera gave us an entertaining overview of how HTML 5 would make life easier for developers. There was nothing new here, but nevertheless a revealing moment. He showed some rich media working in HTML 5 and made the comment, jabbing at Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, that the web was too important to place control in the hands of any one vendor. A loud and spontaneous cheer went up.

This was echoed later when Aza Raskin of Mozilla gave us a browser-centric view of social media, suggesting that the browser could broker our “social graph” by integrating with multiple identity providers. Raskin’s line: social media is too important to be in the hands of any one vendor.

The Guardian’s Chris Thorpe gave a bold presentation about how the Guardian wants to embed itself in the web through its open platform. Like most print media, the Guardian has many challenges around its future business model (disclaimer: I write for the Guardian from time to time); but Thorpe’s presentation shows that his newspaper is coming up with an intelligent response, promoting interaction and building out into the wider web rather than erecting paywalls. Having said that, maybe the Guardian will try other business models too; it is a journey into the unknown.

Overall a day for social media and the open web, and a good antidote to the more vendor-centric conferences at which I often find myself. Next week, for example, it is the Flash-centric Adobe MAX; and having heard very little about Flash at FOWA that will make an interesting contrast.

open source, Sun

UK lagging rest of Europe in open source adoption

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Sun conducted a survey of small and medium-sized businesses (up to 500 employees) to discover their usage and intentions towards open source software and MySQL in particular. I was interested to see the report, particularly after attending an open source round table last week about open source software in government.

The researchers interviewed around 100 people in each of 7 European countries, targetting the “CIO or IT-Manager”. The results were surprising to me. Only 34% of UK (or England; the report uses both terms and does not seem to understand the difference) businesses claim to use open source software, versus 72% in France and 69% in Germany. The only country with lower usage is Sweden on 33%.

I’m sceptical. It seems to me that you have to make some effort to use no open source software anywhere in your business. A web site with PHP and MySQL. Someone editing audio with Audacity, or  using Firefox to browse the web, or Filezilla to upload files. Still, let’s take the report at face value for the moment.

Another question is more interesting, asking what percentage of a business’s IT infrastructure is open source.

Even in Germany, the biggest user, only 2% claimed to be completely open source. 72% were less than half open source, and 31% did not use it at all.

In the UK, none were completely open source, 84% less than half, and 66% have no perceived usage.

Here’s a good result though: among UK companies that do use open source, 65% use it for critical projects. This figure is actually above the European average.

Another striking figure: the biggest driver for open source adoption is to save money (61% in the UK, 66% in Germany). Next comes freedom from lock-in (34% in the UK, 53% in Germany), and after that flexibility (20% in the UK, 34% in Germany). Multi-selection must have been possible as figures add to more than 100%.

This last one gives me pause for thought. Most IT companies claim to save you money; it’s part of the standard sales pitch. Open source software generally does though, partly because the whole concept is a form of commoditization, or pooling of resources for mutual benefit. Is it inevitable that if if open source continues to increase its usage share (as most indicators suggest), that overall revenue in the IT industry will diminish?

You can pose the same question substituting “cloud computing” for “open source”; both together could have a substantial impact.

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email, exchange, microsoft, windows

Why Outlook rules copy a message when you asked for it to be moved

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Ever wished computers had a “do what I mean” button?

Here’s a case in point. I use Outlook/Exchange rules to sort email into subfolders. I set up a new rule, and was annoyed to find that while messages were correctly being moved into the selected folder, they were not being deleted from the source folder. In other words, I’d asked for move but I was getting copy.

Bug in Outlook/Exchange rules? I don’t entirely trust them; but on this occasion it was my fault. The problem: these messages also matched another rule, which moved them to a different subfolder – the one, in fact, that I was treating as the “source folder”. When confronted with two rules that both move a message, Exchange makes a copy. Whether that is the right behaviour is arguable, but it is not a bug.

Here’s the solution. In the Actions for the rule, also check the option to “Stop processing more rules”.

Problem solved.

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.net, adobe, flash, silverlight, software development, web authoring

Flash spell check developer upset by competition from Adobe Squiggly

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Grant Skinner is the developer of Spelling Plus Library, a spell checking engine for Flex, Flash and AIR. He is displeased that Adobe has now released Squiggly on Adobe Labs – a free component that does the same kind of thing. Skinner refers to the general lack of commercial Flash components:

One of the things that the Flash world really lacks is a strong commercial component marketplace. We have a thriving OSS culture, which is awesome, but while it is very prolific it rarely creates highly reliable, documented, and well-supported libraries. It’s a weakness of the platform, especially when you look at the hundreds or thousands of enterprise class commercial components available for languages like Java or C#.

It is an interesting point. I have always found it intriguing that the commercial component market is so much dominated by Microsoft, thanks perhaps to its early success with VBX and then ActiveX controls for Visual Basic. Despite the maturity of Flash and its popularity among developers, I can more easily name companies with commercial Silverlight components than Flash equivalents – companies like Devexpress, Infragistics, ComponentOne, and Telerik.

Skinner is therefore upset that Adobe has picked a spell checker for its free offering:

When Adobe spends a large amount of resources building a spelling component that directly competes with one of the few successful commercial components in the Flash world, it frustrates me.

though I imagine the impact on his sales is a large factor in his reaction.

The truth is that component vendors always have to play this game of trying to stay ahead of what developers can get for free, either from open source or from what is bundled into the core SDK.

Note that Intel’s just-announced AppDeveloper program for Atom netbooks includes a component marketplace for AIR. I am not sure how significant it will be, but it is another outlet for Flash component vendors.

microsoft, security, software, windows, windows 7

Hands On with Microsoft Security Essentials – terrible name, but product looks good

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Microsoft has released its free Security Essentials software, antivirus and antispyware protection aimed at home users. It runs on XP 32-bit, or Vista or Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit, the only technical restriction being that Windows must validate as “genuine”.  Businesses are meant to use Forefront Client Security, though “home-based small businesses” are specifically permitted in the license agreement. I installed it on my Windows 7 64-bit desktop PC.

Installation was smooth, guided by a simple wizard with a castle logo:

The trickiest moment comes when the installer recommends that you “remove other antivirus and antispyware programs”:

I am glad that Microsoft is confronting this issue, since running multiple antivirus applications is terrible for performance. It does make the point that this free software will not be good for competitors at this end of the market. The other issue is that removing other security software will probably mean a reboot as well as passing one or more dialogs pleading with you to reconsider. Do this before running the installer.

Once done, Security Essentials – a terrible, unmemorable, tongue-twisting name – announces that your computer is at risk while it goes off and downloads updates:

When the update completes, it does a quick scan, which took around 30 minutes on my machine. I let this complete – nothing was found – and then had a poke around the tabs and settings.

The user interface is nicely designed and there isn’t much to see. Be default Security Essentials will scan your PC once a week on Sunday night. You can specify quick or full scans. The software also monitors all file activity looking for malware. I get the impression that Microsoft has tried to make Security Essentials as unobtrusive as possible, which is most welcome.

One thing that did annoy me is the settings for recommended actions:

In patronising style, Microsoft offers “Recommended action” as the default when malware is detected, but does not tell you what that action is. It is explained here – for severe or high alerts, it attempts to remove the malware, while for medium or low alerts it quarantines it. However, it does seem to ask first, which is important in the case of false positives.

I couldn’t find any way of setting the frequency of updates, which surprised me.

I gave Security Essentials an easy test by downloading eicar, a harmless file which for testing antivirus software. Security Essentials sprang into life:

I clicked Show details and got another red dialog offering to perform the recommended action, which was Remove. Another click, and it claimed to have done it, with the dialog turning a reassuring shade of green.

Is it any good? That’s a tough one. I don’t have high expectations of any security software based on scanning for known malware. Such software tends to fail when new viruses appear, as they do constantly. Another problem is that the bad guys can run the same security software as you, and design their malware to avoid its effects. In general, it is obvious that antivirus software has failed to prevent the spread of malware. I rate other things as more important, such as keeping systems up-to-date with patches and observing best practice concerning what you allow to execute. Unfortunately clever social engineering can often defeat good intentions.

Still, if you consider antivirus software a necessary evil, this one impresses by being nicely designed and mostly staying out of the way. If you are looking for the highest detection rates, you will have to wait for statistical analyses to be done. I am sure the commercial security companies will be quick to report on failures.

Personally I’m delighted that users can now get the Windows security center (Action Center in Windows 7) to stop bugging them without installing third-party software. Another advantage is that the software won’t stop updating when the user fails to subscribe or renew. Microsoft has plenty of incentive to get this one right, and to deliver something at least as good as the competition without slugging performance or annoying the user with advertisements and/or  constant exhortations to upgrade. I think it is worth a try.

Uncategorized

Hands On with Google Chrome Frame

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Google Chrome Frame is an interesting twist in the browser wars. Web developers can now add a tag to a page that forces Internet Explorer to render it using an embedded version of Chrome:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">

The concept is not so different from Mozilla’s Screaming Monkey, which replaces the IE JavaScript engine with its own, except that Chrome Frame has its own HTML renderer as well. The idea is that web developers need no longer be constrained to HTML features which IE supports. IE users do not need to change their browser; just install the plug-in.

The question though: why bother? Why not just ask users to install Chrome itself and use it to browse your site? Chrome on Windows is a great piece of work, and I use it regularly, whereas there’s something odd about using one browser embedded within another.

I suppose there is some small subset of users who have to use IE at work for compatibility with some application, but are allowed to install plug-ins; or others who are brave enough to install an add-in, but feel somehow more comfortable sticking with the default and official Windows web browser.

Still, I’m not sure that there are many users in that category. It also turns out that the Chrome Frame concept has some problems, as I discovered when I tried it out. Note that this is an “early-stage release”, so some things can be expected not to work. Even so, some of the issues cast doubt on whether this a sensible approach. The problem area is integration. For example, when Chrome Frame is active, should the browser announce itself as IE, or as Chrome? When you click a link, should it open in Chrome Frame, or in native IE? When you have a plug-in installed in IE, would you expect it to work in Chrome Frame as well?

The answers currently are that the browser still announces itself as IE, though chromeframe is added to the User-Agent header. Links open by default in IE even if Chrome Frame is active, and plug-ins like Adobe Flash do not work in Chrome Frame even if they are installed in IE. Overall, if you want a page to run well in Chrome Frame, you really need to code for it specifically. In other words, IE+Chrome Frame is yet another browser variation to worry about.

Fortunately, Chrome Frame only kicks in when activated by the tag above, or forced by prefixing the URL with cf; and if users do the latter, they should expect trouble. When I tried it, I had a disappointing experience visiting Adobe.com in Chrome Frame, even though Flash was installed and up-to-date. I’ve included the right-click menu to show that this is Chrome Frame:

 

Gmail also has problems, probably because it is delivering markup designed for IE:

Of course Chrome Frame is not intended to be used like this; but it does demonstrate the challenges that exist if you decide to target Chrome Frame. In compensation, you get the HTML 5 goodness and fast JavaScript that Google has in its browser.

This feels like a last resort. I doubt network admins will welcome Chrome Frame, since it does undermine one of the reasons for using IE: that the system browser is kept up-to-date by Microsoft with security patches using Windows update or Windows Server Update Services. I’m not tempted to keep it installed myself.

The opposite approach strikes me as better, where other browsers emulate IE by embedding it, as in IE Tab for Firefox.

Still, while I’m sceptical of the technical merits of Chrome Frame, it is a great PR move. It puts pressure on Microsoft to implement more HTML 5 features and speed up its Javascript engine, or risk the embarrassment of sites which require IE users either to switch browsers, or to suffer this add-in.

Update: see also Browser Soup and Chrome Frame by Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, who does a good job of explaining why this is a bad idea – though bear in mind that she works for a competitor.

.net, microsoft, open source, silverlight, software development, Uncategorized

Microsoft, Moonlight and open source

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I was surprised by the announcement that Silverlight is being ported to Intel’s Moblin Linux, which I’ve already reported both here and on The Register. It feels like a u-turn from Microsoft, which had previously stated that while it would build Silverlight for both Windows and Mac, Linux support was to be done by Novell. This is from the 2007 press release:

Microsoft will work with Novell Inc. to deliver Silverlight support for Linux, called Moonlight, and based on the project started on mono-project.com … Microsoft is committed to ensuring that organizations have the best tools and resources to begin building Silverlight-based solutions with the broadest possible reach. The decision to work with Novell to offer Silverlight support for the Linux platform is in direct response to customer feedback, and both companies are optimistic about the impact this extended partnership will have in the industry.

Now, given that Microsoft has long expressed an intention to bring Silverlight to mobile devices, and that many mobile devices run some variety of Linux, you can argue that the Moblin announcement is merely in line with that strategy. This is what Brian Goldfarb told me – that the Intel deal is in the “mobile device” category, and therefore distinct from the work with Mono.

That said, if you look at the specs for something like Dell’s Mini 10v with Moblin – 1.6Ghz Atom CPU, 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, 10.1" 1024×600 display – it really has more in common with a traditional laptop than with, say, a mobile phone. Further, I’m getting the impression that this will be a full Silverlight 3.0 implementation, not a cut-down version like Flash Lite, complete with the Silverlight version of the .NET Framework.

If Microsoft had announced this kind of deal in the early days of Silverlight, it would have have been encouraging for open source advocates. Even though this Silverlight for Moblin is not an open source project, it extends support for a key Microsoft technology to Linux users. Silverlight developers may well prefer that the same code will be running on Moblin as on Windows or Mac, subject to whatever has to be done to make the port work.

Unfortunately at this point the announcement is having an opposite effect, casting doubt on Microsoft’s ability to work with open source partners. The impression is that Mono was a useful means of ticking the Linux box for Silverlight’s launch – though the version which includes .NET is still not complete – but that when it really wants to support a Linux OS, Microsoft is quick to find another route.

It is stating the obvious to say that the open source community is wary of Microsoft. Everything the company does is eyed with suspicion. Microsoft’s official support for Moonlight, along with great work from people like John Lam who works on IronRuby, was beginning to soften some of that hostility. Miguel de Icaza, leader of the Mono project, has been a great bridgebuilder between Microsoft and the open source community – so much so, that Richard Stallman recently called him “basically a traitor to the free software community”. Stallman has done his cause no credit with this remark. “I think we officially hit a new low here”, says OS news.

A terrible moment then for Microsoft to snub Moonlight by doing its own thing with Intel for Silverlight on Linux. What was even more striking is that the company seemingly had no idea of the impact of its announcement, and that it might be a sensitive matter, and apparently did nothing to prepare the Mono team in advance for the obvious questions that would be asked.

What is more important – that Silverlight works smoothly on Moblin, or Microsoft’s relationship with the open source community?