Force IE7 Compatibility

I'm not a HTML dog so this may be old news to many people, and for all I know it's the way you fix issues with IE7 and IE6. Nonetheless, I've noticed many web pages are not rendering correctly in Internet Explorer 8 for me. There's a tiny icon in the right of the address bar (looks like a broken page...very appropriate icon). When you click it, it forces your browser into IE7 mode so pages built to be compatible with older browsers will still render correctly. And IE8 keeps track of that domain so you don't have to click it on every visit. Exactly what they changed and why, I do not know. I do know we'll be seeing a lot of this meta tag hack added to tweak the doctype/browser into believing you are using IE7. <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

IE8 adoption is under 2% today but growing, of course, as it will be bundled with nearly every new PC. You can test your pages using the new Developer Tools that come with IE8 which are really nice (hit F12 to see) and then you can toggle between IE7, IE8 and IE8 Compatibility modes. Adding the meta tag above will make it so your users will not have to click the broken page icon or toggle between modes.

It's a Ad Ad Ad Ad World

I’ve spent many hours over the last month trying to figure out a way to have the flexibility to put any ad network’s tag I want inside my Flash RIA. I cannot because we use Google/DFP and that means I am forced to tell our advertisers “use DART Motif or else we cannot serve your differing and competing ad network’s ad tag inside our Flash application”.

I wish I was not in so above my head as far as creating a piece of software that would let me place ANY ad network’s tag in my Flash app via DFP(Dart for Publishers). Maybe this exists and I’ve just never seen it? If you know of a company trying to make this a reality, please let me know. If it does not exist I think Adobe should perhaps start working on it if they are not already.

My reasoning is this:

Over the past decade we’ve all watched Flash grow from simple web doodle beginnings into a mighty powerful application building juggernaut. The Flash Platform has rightfully claimed its stake as a standard medium, if not the de facto medium, for creating and displaying rich content and ads across a wide spectrum of industries and consumer electronic technologies: sports, movies, automotive, financial, network TV, mobile apps, set-top boxes, car navigation, kiosks, interactive learning, games, and the list goes on.

There is one element in the aforementioned, however, that if you took out – I think the rest may not have happened and I see this now as something to be pretty concerned about. That is advertising and tracking inside of Flash Platform based RIAs.

Ad agencies, publishers and Freelancers using Flash to create rich media advertising over the last decade have been a cash cow for Flash developers and Macromedia/Adobe - if not THE cash cow.

Although Flash itself is getting more powerful and the platform expanding daily– what has been principally stagnant for the past decade is the way in which we traffic and monitor ads. We are at a point now with RIA building where many enterprise projects are not getting done with Flash because monetizing it is simply too difficult. I run across this more and more with each passing day. A cross-ad-network system for integrating ad units into Flash does not exist as far as I know. If it does, please correct me. Now that we are moving toward a world of RIAs everywhere, I see more and more sites opting to use AJAX technologies simply because it integrates easier with their ad serving and tracking needs.

The point of all this? Flash RIAs need advertising trafficking help…badly. The problem is not so in our faces now, but give it a year or two as hopefully the demand for in-Flash advertising is requested for RIAs, games, mobile etc…, otherwise this could get ugly for Flash.

The companies that run the advertising show are not going to help Adobe. The company I work for created and sold Google a prototype of what is now their ad inventory management software. I’m sure if we were inspired enough we could pull off inventing a cross-network ad system - but that is so very far from our core business it will never happen. By the same token, Google, MS, Yahoo or XYZ ad network could open their network to any 3rd party rich media tags – ain’t gonna happen either.

It is very much an uphill battle in today’s world. Especially because so many big sites’ IT departments (including ours) are either .net or Java based and gladly choose something they understand out of the box (AJAX) over Flash any day especially when it comes to scalable advertising.

Hate to sound so glum, but I hate roadblocks and I can see the darkness at the end of the tunnel unless Adobe somehow gets down-and-dirty into the ad serving world. With each passing day I see another ad tag go into an AJAX RIA for amongst other reasons, the fact that it is too hard to implement granular metric driven advertising into Flash Platform RIAs. I see AJAX developers quite excited and anxious to use HTML 5 and Canvas. And why wouldn’t they be jazzed about this? It will enable them to do cool flash-like things with JavaScript and SVG. It will be slow as heck, buggy, force your browser to crash even more and not cross-platform for sure…however not enough seem to care about that anymore. Many developers are paid by the hour and usually people blame Flash for browser crashes anyway.

At the top of the advertising food chain there are now (after the many mergers) about 5-7 companies who dominate about 95% of online ads (Google/Doubleclick, Microsoft/Atlas, Pointroll, Eyeblaster, 24/7, Value Click and a small handful of others). Each one of these companies has a proprietary technology to deliver and more importantly, TRACK rich media ads so they can say to advertiser XYZ – “we delivered the x million impressions we promised you”, for e.g.. None that I know of really has any inspiration to make embedding advertising and/or tracking INSIDE Flash based RIAs easier – and certainly not for a competing ad-serving company’s tag. Some like Google and Microsoft actually gain a huge advantage to NOT make it easier.

Unless we can advertise cross-network in the Flash Platform, big RIA projects will continue to not be created in Flash. Why would Microsoft/Atlas make inserting ads into Flash easier when what they really want is Silverlight based ads via Atlas Rich Media everywhere instead? Why would Google help a technology that can compete with Doubleclick? I think the answer is an outside company like Adobe to make the ultimate cross-network rich media ad wrapper.

Yes, there are hacks and roll-your-own wrapper solutions that are very complex at best to build and retain the primary ad networks metrics, but this will usually be for only one ad serving technology. None of these technologies play nice with each other. Sure we can traffic an Eyeblaster ad through DFP, but not when it comes to Flash.

It does not look like an all encompassing solution will come out of any one company so I think Adobe needs to perhaps step up and either create a universal ad platform plug-in of sorts, or stir things up and make the case for a a consortium, standard, or something to make monetizing Flash Platform based RIAs easier. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and I welcome your comments.

Another Flash CS4 review

First off:

Thank you Adobe, for continuing to provide amazing tools which incite and inspire me to be creative. I am sure there are many reviews out there so this is just my opinion; and I have learned that they are subject to change with time. For e.g. now I really like the new icons that sent me and many others into frenzy a while back. I think I likened it to the change of Coke to Coke Classic, fixing something that wasn’t broken. That was absurd of me and I apologize. Frankly, I’m still wrapping my head around AS3 design patterns, Gumbo libraries and complicated (for me) valueObject data models, but I know I am well qualified to talk about the Flash UI having started with Flash 3. This review is geared toward looking at the product from an Animator perspective rather than Developer - since when I'm developing code I don't use the IDE often. I am using the CS4 Master Collection on a Dell Precision 490 dev station with two dual-quad Zeon chips (air conditioned), 8 gigs of ram, Windows XP Pro and a snazzy graphics card. This box is 64 bit capable and I can use up to 32 gigs of ram, however, I am using the 32 bit version of the Suite.

Pros:

THE STAGE:

Finally, I can opposite-click an object on the stage and find in the library! I say ‘opposite-click’ because I use a left-handed mouse and although ‘right-click’ covers 80% + of users, is an inaccurate term. I’m over it - don’t fret. I have wanted a ‘find in library’ feature for a long time, added to the ‘wish list’ so thanks! I still do animation and prototypes in the timeline quite often so I am not always using Flex Builder or Flash Develop for AS only projects. I’d say I’m 50/50. I have found this feature does not always work though if you have assets nested folders in the library. I had to try a few times, close and re open the library to get it working when I was showing someone the feature.

SPEED:

Publishing is noticeably faster even with large, bitmap heavy and code heavy swfs. Kudos!

SEND:

Send To feature. This is great! File > Send pops open your email client and attaches the current FLA even if you still have it open (this surprised me that you can leave it open and not get a Windows error).

ANIMATION:

Of course the new 3d, bones, inverse kinematics, motion editor are fantastic. It takes bit of getting used to after doing it differently for so long but I like it and know behind the scenes there is a lot of heavy lifting going on that I no longer need to do. Perfecto!

LIBRARY ASSETS:

You no longer get the alert “Are you sure you want to delete these items from the library” because it’s undo able instead of a revert. That is great. However, I would like more control of the tabs within the library. I don’t use “how many times an item is used” and want to customize the library fields to remove that one. And not sure if anyone else got this before.. but when I used to import bitmaps they would come in at 75% and I'd have to change them. Now they are always 100%. Nice.

SCRIPT TIMEOUT:

Although 15 seconds was pretty generous…if you’re making Flex components or large scale enterprise apps this feature can come in handy.

LIBRARY IMAGE PROPERTIES:

Deblocking for jpgs. Sounds good, however, it does not seem to work for me. I do not get the option to click it and not sure why. Any clues?

PANELS:

Overall they are more flexible and that's good. Only wish I had to option to use the property inspector of yore insted of the new one.

CONS:

APPEARANCE:

I’m sorry but I really at this point do not like the visual appearance of the UI and the flat gray colors. Why? Because I cannot discern what the heck is what easily. The panels and windows just blend into one another and it’s frustrating. I understand the objective is to unify the UIs across other programs in the Suite, but the flat shades of gray are really slowing me down. If you click an object on the stage to see where it lives in the timeline, good luck. The ever so slightly grayed out single frame requires much visual hunting and that is not good. I can find the layer quickly yes…but the single frame where that object lives..not so much. I would love to see the Flash UI be more like AE/Premiere where you can adjust the visual appearance and add/remove gradients and adjust the brightness. I would like to change window colors in a perfect world.

PROPERTY INSPECTOR:

This is a bit too big for me (as in either wide or tall with too much unused real estate). I felt CS3 nearly nailed it and now I think we’ve reverted. I do not want to use drop arrows to hunt where to add a filter, or to change the alpha… I was pretty shocked by this change that slows down production. Between this and the Motion Editor,you really more than ever need two monitors for Flash. Don't love the scrubbys but I'll grow to accept them for x,y,h,w in the Property Inspector. I notice it now jives with the Flex Builder horizontal style x,y,h,w fields. I'll make a few hundred mistakes by inadvertently changing the X and Height instead of X and Y, but I'll learn. Side note, would be nice to be able to force Flash to place images on whole numbers only so I don't have to change 10.2 to 10. I often move elements using these boxes or now scrubbys. I'll actually probably never use a scrubby to enter the exact coordinates I want - would be far too slow.

MOTION PRESETS:

Although there are some cool features for quick and dirty blurry and bouncy animations… some of them really are dirty especially when it comes to adding these to text fields. Make that text field dynamic, add a hyperlink and watch what happens: The text becomes blurry and the size changes. If you use these presets on animated hyperlinked text and look at the generated source..there is a hyperlink entry for every single frame bloating your export file sizes. I'm sure there's an excellent reason for this I just do not understand.

SAVE AS CS3:

Still as annoying as last few versions. I’ll learn to deal with it.

MAIN and CONTROLLER are now pretty much useless.

I guess rather than fix what was obviously a problem docking the Main toolbar (the one with Save, Open etc..) they decided to just make it non-dockable now. I used to stick the Controller and Main pallets in the uppermost part of the UI but often it would magically appear at the bottom (bug). I liked it atop because I would rather click once to Save than two clicks File>Save or to lift my hand off my (left handed) mouse and use ctrl-S. Just an ever so slight speed differences but they add up over time. Double-clicking the Menu or Controller chrome as it’s floating actually throws an error for me “An Invalid Argument was encountered”.

LAYERS:

I would like to not have to use Guy Watson's tool extension to duplicate a layer. Nothing against Mr. Watson, of course, just think that should be standard at this point.


DOUBLE CLICK BACKGROUND TO OPEN A FILE:

I thought for sure this would make its way into Flash. In Photoshop, you can double-click the gray background to browse to and open a file. I would really like this functionality in Flash since it’s a time saver.


COLOR PALLETE:

Not sure if this is by design.. but I imported about 20 images into my library and the color panel made swatches of them all. Is this a feature or a bug?


LASTLY:

Amazingly, Keith Peters' bit-101.inviso button tool extension STILL works after all these years! I've disabled it for fear it could be the cause of some of the funkiness I've seen but it's a handy little sucker for quick prototypes.

FINAL ANALYSIS:

I do love It and I’m sure I’ll get used to the Property inspector and maybe even like it more some day soon. Perhaps I’ll grow to love the bland flat appearance that I find it hard to navigate.
I do enjoy the interoperability with other CS4 Suite products: AE, InDesign, Premiere. Keep up the great work Adobe and thank you.


If anything I've said is my own user error - please feel free to correct me.

Lisa Barone, please do YOUR homework

I was a bit stunned to read such a bizarre twisted emotional reaction to Adobe's announcement about Flash SEO today from Lisa Barone, someone with a lot of SEO clout. Why she apparently assumes this SEO announcement will spawn the return of 100% Flash, in-your-face, blinking, "click here to skip intro" sites that existed for about 14 minutes ten years ago is laughable.

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2008/07/dont_build_your_site_in_flash.html

I encourage you all more versed in Flash SEO to comment directly on her blog.

Dancin’ by the Moonlight?

Looks like Novell (MS) released an Open Source version of the Silverlight plug-in for Linux named Moonlight.




The goals according to the site are:

• To run Silverlight applications on Linux.
• To provide a Linux SDK to build Silverlight applications.
• To reuse the Silverlight engine we have built for desktop applications."

Interesting they've come across some of the same problems of Flash player with their version of 'window mode' on Firefox. I do like the Known Issues from the project page:
Especiall this one "Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in is installed but it doesn't do anything"

It just partially funny really. I applaud them for having this be open source so users can create their own version of Silverlight Players, yet this particular version completely lacks most if not all multimedia playback. But I'm sure it will soon so I'll be keeping my eye one it.

Alt + double-click frame = Actons???

This was weird, but as I was doing a prototype the other day I was thinking it would be cool to double-click a frame in Flash to launch the ActionScript panel.

I know. I know. I could just hit F9, or right-click and choose Actons; and I usually do. However, there are those times..., and I know we've all had them where you're literally too tired to lift your elbow and reach for the F Keys; plus I usually work with very low light so I'm not entirely sure I'm hitting F9 or not and need to look sometimes. So, I tried a few different things, including Alt + double clicking in a frame and it does in fact bring up the Actions panel. Since I use an ergonomic keyboard my finger is almost always next to the alt key and my hand is always on a mouse so it's a match made in heaven. Okay that is a stretch and yes, this is perhaps laziness at it's finest, but I was happy I just went looking for this shortcut and found it.

Has it always been around and I'm just learning what everyone else already knows?

CGAM 2008 Conference review

I realize this event was a month ago, but better late than never.

CGAM 2008 (March 10^th/11^th) in Hollywood was the first-ever global conference for marketing and advertising professionals focusing on cutting-edge technology and the value of Computer Generated Images (CGI).

Brochure Verbiage:

“CGAM clarifies the CGI world by giving you access to key, world-class suppliers in the industry. Learn firsthand the services they offer and their benefits. CGAM also allows you to see what others OEM's and their advertising agencies are doing in the industry. And keeps you connected with the latest trends and technologies, allowing you to be one step ahead.”

Topics:

From the Beginning: The History of CGI
Taking Care of Business: The Process
Product Evolution: Using Data Planning
The Art of the Sneak Preview: First to Market
The Value Proposition: Saving Time and Money
CGI 101: Make the Impossible Possible.
The Great Debate: CAD vs. Digitized Modeling
HDRI Photography & Motion Capture
HDRI: What is it? How to use it?
Keep Things Moving: Capturing Motion
Creating a Work of Art: Utilizing the Team
Success: Who Can Help Make it Happen?
Keeping it All Together: Managing the Process
Innovating with CGI Series
From the Big Screen to Your Office: What Can We Learn from Hollywood?
How the Agency Works?
Goofing off? Or Getting Things Done?: The Creative Process
A Whole New World: Creating Virtual Sets
CGI Myth Busters
Under Lock and Key: Is My Data Safe?
The Bottom Line on the Bottom Line: Is CGI Cost Effective?
Moving Towards a Virtual World: Will CGI Replace Traditional Media?
Keeping it Real: Is the Quality There?
Change the Channel: Embracing New Media
The Future: Oh the Places We'll Go

Venue:

The two-day event was held at the Renaissance Hollywood hotel. Located in the heart of Hollywood, the Renaissance Hotel is part of the Hollywood & Highland Center and home to the Kodak Theatre (home of the Academy Awards Ceremonies) and is steps from Grauman's/Manns Chinese Theatre and Hollywood Walk of Fame. I was born about a mile from there, worked for a spell at Cannery Agency when it was across Hollywood Blvd. above the historic El Capitan Theatre, so I’m biased as these are my stomping grounds and find it soothing to visit, albeit seldom. It was a perfect place for an event (hint-hint FITC) – don’t get me wrong…North Hollywood/Universal City is great…but it’s different than the being in the heart of Hollywood.

This was a very well organized event – especially considering it was their first one. From parking and badge pick-up, speaker sessions, vendor exhibitions, Wolfgang Puck catered lunches – it all went really very smoothly. This event had just one track, meaning you don’t miss any speakers and I think I like this approach more as opposed to having to choose between two or three people you enjoy speaking at once.

Content:

The speaker list was superb and people indeed came from all over the world to hear them. I knew CGAM would be automotive focused, but I wasn’t expecting it to about 75% automotive related, which it was and since that’s the field I’m in – I was pleased. That enabled me to get a chance to talk with speakers Sam Mancuso (GM), Alex Hultgren (Ford), Tom Haynes (Chrysler), Jim Jandasek (Chevrolet), Linda Kato (Nissan) and many of their ad agencies, CGI and software vendors.

I found out the cost of CGI has dropped significantly and it is still pricy, but about the equivalent of a major photo shoot. The difference is once a photo shoot is done, it is pretty much the end of an assets lifecycle; it can be manipulated later but not very much. CGI is vector based, so you can of course, always edit, move, transform, change texture, color, environments etc... One great cost-savings example a vendor shared was about an OEM who took a 2007 automotive TV ad and swapped out only the shell of the car to a 2008 body style –so they got two commercials for the price of one.

I wanted to know more specifically how to streamline CGI data from OEM to Agency, to where I work, a 3^rd party online publisher. Part of my job is creating unique advertising apps. I spoke with GM, Chrysler, and Nissan and found out that traditionally this data is “owned” by a mix of OEM and agency. In the end though, the OEMs keep the super sensitive CAD data vaulted, and then they give a ‘watered’ down model to the ad agency for TV/Print/Web purposes. I sensed an unspoken theme regarding content, i.e., the agencies and CGI vendors want to keep control of it as much as possible. I can under$tand why. You won’t find many CGI houses bypassing an agency of record to get CAD data directly from an OEM – they get ostracized if they do. Which makes sense, but something I suspect to change in the next few year with the proliferation of UGC (User-generated-content).

This is not to say the car manufactures or OEMs are not willing to share CGI assets with 3^rd party vendors. They are interested, actually. Where I work, we could certainly gain from using these assets and that can enable us to build unique ad products.

I met some extremely helpful reps from software vendor, Bunkspeed. I had not heard of their software (Hyperdrive) until this show. It’s truly amazing and was very easy to use. I was making rather fascinating, animated 3d environments in minutes.

A technical engineer has since been helping me achieve an effect I have wanted to do for about two years. I cannot do without a 3d modeling app and they have been very enthusiastic to help me fuse their software with Flash. I’ll let you know when I’ve actually finished this one. When I mentioned the effect to a London-based television director attending the show, he said, “brilliant, may I use that, mate?” I said “sure”, and then he then showed me how he took footage of Steve McQueen from Bullet and created a national TV spot using $200 software! That was amazing.

To wrap up:

From Pal Debevec’s keynote to Richard Chuang’s session, The Future:Oh the Places We'll Go”, it was captivating and I left inspired. Perhaps the biggest revelation for me was that I came into the conference thinking CGI was only for creating dancing M&Ms, Halo type games, and resurrecting dead actors to do new automotive ads. It turns out CGI is all around us in ways that surprised me. And, technology used to create these experiences has matured greatly in the last four years. Combined with massive advances in personal computing power (10 million-fold since the beginning of CGI), one no longer need be a 3D expert to use CGI. Today, 3D models, HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging), and software are inexpensive and trickling into all forms of digital media. They say we’re at a crossroads with CGI and it will trickle more and more into new media.

There were two stand-out speakers who addressed New Media and the streamlining of data. The OEMs agree they now require “Asset Czars” because even with current efficiencies, there is much more to do in this area – including getting these assets to 3^rd-party publishers. One stat was that for any given CGI asset, 75% of the time it is unnecessarily replicated at least 10 times across each organization it touches. I see this happening too.

In all, I was very grateful to attend, I recommend the show, and I will surly come back in 2009.