As another year draws to a close, its perhaps time to take a look back at what has been happening and of course, expectations for the coming year. Plus, now that I’ve finished my last big social engagement before new years, it seems as though I have some time on my hands!

2007, a look back

One of the big things that has happened this year was of course the announcement and launch of the iPhone. If you have managed to miss that one, then I can only imagine the amount of beer you must have been drinking to dull the outside world!

The iPhone

I have one, its a sexy phone, and in many ways I think has got people thinking about different ways we can interact with our technology, rather than relying on old conventions. The iPhone has also, I think, started to really drive a shift in how network operators look at data. In the US it has let to mobile operators taking the first steps towards embracing the concept of ‘unlimited’ data; whilst in more advanced European markets we are seeing greater competition between operators and also a push towards creating ubiquitous wifi access plans for customers.Its not the best phone in the world, with no support for things I have been used to, such as MMS. Plus, it has a really rubbish camera compared to my previous Sony Ericsson Cybershot, but its sheer usability would make me hard to take that step back.Hopefully, this will be the catalyst for more cool and innovative devices over the next year.

Operating System Wars

February marked the release of Windows Vista, which no-one seemed to notice.With many early adopters going back to XP, it seems as though Microsoft tried to bite off a bit too much with this one, ending up delivering an operating system which sucks resources and alienates existing users with its new features.October marked the release of OS X Leopard from Apple, which a few more people seemed to notice.With many early adopters going back to Tiger, it seems as though Apple perhaps let this cat out of the page a bit too early, delivering an operating system that adds many fantastic incremental enhancements but at the sometime has managed to alienate existing users with a slew of annoying bugs.

The Social Geek

One of my personal highlights has been the explosion of geek events over the past year - from the usual skillswaps and networking sessions to wine and cider tastings. I’m not sure if this has just been a Brighton thing, but it is fantastic to be working in an industry with so many diverse, skilled and interesting people.

Another Bubble?

Its been like the late nineties all over again, with massive investments in technology and innovative web applications springing up left right and center. Too be honest, I think its a serious problem as soon there will be no domain names left! We already have web applications dropping vowels ll vr th plc, Shakespr would turn in his grave!One thing I’ve noticed is that innovation still seems to be in place, but this time around many of the business models seem to be a lot more conservative. Hopefully because of this, we are not on the brink of another crash.

Micro-whats?

Last year, one of my predictions was that microformats would be one of the next big things to hit us this year. Looking back, I seem to have got that one a bit wrong. Whilst many sites have implemented them into their markup, I think various community issues and the lack of any decent applications which consume them; has really hit hard.Although they serve a worthy purpose, putting a semantic structure around complex data types and this making them easier to parse and detect, I don’t think they are going to be the next big thing. For a start there is very little consensus around many of the specifications in development, hindering their adoption and leaving developers to go and mark up their data in their own way. Instead, the next big thing I think is going to be data detection at the OS level.One of the cool things about Leopard is how you can hover over an e-mail signature and automatically import a person into your address book, with excellent accuracy. No strings or hCards involved! Rather than relying of developers to standardize on a markup sub-format, lets put more energy into recognizing data. I would expect Apple’s data detection technology to work its way into Safari and other applications soon enough.

2008, the year ahead

So what about 2008, lets have a look.

Browser Wars

The recent legal challenge to Microsoft, by Opera Software, over Internet Explorer’s poor standards compliance is an interesting one. I think ultimately it is a bit pointless, but we should also realize that Microsoft are in a position to do something substantial with their browser.For a start, IE8 has a new rendering engine which passes the Acid2 test - that in itself is an big win for web developers everywhere. What could really be game changing is if that engine was in fact Webkit - lets stop it with proprietary rendering engines each with their own quirks and embrace common platforms, giving web developers of the future a few less things to worry about!

AIR Heads

Q1 will see the release of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which I have been excited about for a while. Mainly because it offers a viable and straightforward route for web developers to create widgets and applications for the desktop. With the ubiquity of the Flash player, and the many exciting developments this year and on the board for the Flash Platform, I can see AIR doing well.What makes me so positive about this is the open relationship Adobe are forging with the development community. Proactively seeking input and critique of their software and strategies, and at the same time releasing things such as Flex and AMF as open source. Things have definitely changed for the better.

Personal Stuff

On a personal note, 2008 should be interested for two reasons. The first being that I have recently accepted a new role, one which should open the door for some interesting projects and technology work. Sadly, it does also mean I will be leaving Brighton (I’ll be back!) for the shiny lights and hustle of New York City - a nice adventure!The second item has been on the cards for most of the past year, I have a book coming out later in the year dedicated to Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR which I have been writing with my good friends David and John. Quite exciting, though Amazon continually seem to be discounting it, which may not be a good sign! Get your pre-orders in today!Also on the drawing board is a blog redesign, which I have been working on for a while… watch this space! (more…)

Its been almost two years since Ajax exploded onto the web, with more and more sites adopting it for pretty much everything. In my view, one of the defining things about 2006 has been the maturity of Ajax as a web technology. Frameworks such as Dojo and Prototype have came a long way, facilitating JavaScript development and offering out-of-the can functionality. We have also seen many hosted applications such as Yahoo Mail and .Mac using Ajax to enhance the user experience available, and we are getting to the stage where this kind of functionality is also cropping up in other web applications, from e-commerce to social networks.If 2005 was the time when geeks were going wild with the technology, 2006 has been the year where developers have sat down and thought “How can I best use this to create a better website?”, and this has really helped Ajax to break into the mainstream.To compliment this, we have seen some great strides in the tools available to the developer, in particular, browser extensions such as Firebug which really are a godsend when it comes to testing and debugging applications.Of course its not all good, we are seeing one bad side effect of this Ajax explosion - page bloat. Using the Prototype library adds about 50kb to the page weight, Dojo can add as much as 300kb (especially as very few people seem use the include system). Obviously, if you are building a JavaScript heavy application then this is justifiably, but I do see a lot of sites which use frameworks specifically for a single piece of functionality, such as the $ function or a single visual effect. In these cases, we need a way of stripping down our JavaScript libraries based upon the functionality we, the page authors, require.Thankfully, for 2007 it looks as though there is a solution for this, in the form of JS Linker. A Java application which analyzes your code and removes JavaScript functions which are not used. Although its currently in its early stages, this one is worth keeping an eye on.Another such tool to watch is Flash Aid, which uses Flash in order to solve a big challenge faced by Ajax developers - using JavaScript alone, there is no way of knowing if someone is using a screen reader, and thus you cannot offer screen reader specific content/functionality to boost the accessibility of your site. Flash Aid, developed by Jeremy Keith and Aral Balkan, is a small piece of Flash which sits invisibly on your page. It allows JavaScript to check if a screen reader is present, using the built-in API’s within Flash.So, 2005 had lots of developers getting excited, 2006 put a bit more structure around this and presented us with some new challenges (many of which we discover have been faced by the Flash community for years - we can look there for inspiration and potential solutions) and plenty of opportunities for innovation. Here’s to a happy 2007 for the Ajax community! (more…)

In January, if someone asked me what I thought about Flash then I would have probably slated it. Now at the end of the year I find myself tinkering with ActionScript 3.0 and appreciating it as a platform upon which rich internet applications can be built. Perhaps more than Ajax, 2006 has been a great year for the Flash platform.On the technology side, June saw the release of Flex and Flash Player 9 - giving developers a very flexible and refined programming language in the form of ActionScript 3.0 and a set of components specifically designed for creating web applications. We have also witnessed the explosion of Flash Video, helped by the popularity of sites such as MySpace and YouTube. As a result, Flash is now the number one technology for video distribution over the web, and adoption of newer versions of the player has been increased significantly.On the creative side we are now past the stage where we have Flash-based intro animations for sites, and totally Flash-centric micro-sites also appear to be on the decline. Instead we are seeing Flash being used as part of progressive enhancement, often in conjunction with traditional HTML content. More and more, I’m seeing pages which I’m not even sure if something is HTML or Flash - I like that feeling, and I think it makes the technology much less intrusive, which in turn makes for a more compelling user experience. A good example of this is on the Sony Ericsson website. Designers are finally starting to realize that Flash is not the answer to everything, there are things that Flash is really good for and things where it is better to stick with HTML/CSS.Moving into 2007, what’s next? I can see Flex (really I mean ActionScript 3.0) being used across the Web and even more examples of Flash and Ajax working together to create great experiences and solve common problems.I’d like to see advances in how search engines interact with Flash content - one of the number one challenges for anyone who is building Flash websites is SEO. Google makes a token effort to extract keywords from Flash documents, but nothing of the semantic structure is preserved, meaning that Flash pages often find themselves with a much lower search engine ranking. Any solution here needs to come from both Adobe and the search engines - Adobe need to create a solution, or perhaps refine what is available, and the likes of Google and Yahoo need to take responsibility for implementing it. Will it happen? Hopefully, though I wouldn’t put big money on it!The final flash-related technology which I think will make a difference in 2007 is Apollo (just search this blog for more information!). I predict a move to the desktop for more Web applications, and support for offline-mode in many of these applications. Should be fun! (more…)