Although Flash is reaching more and more devices every day and expects to be on 50% of all mobile devices by 2012, it is always a good idea to have alternative content for older devices that can not support Flash, or users that choose to disable it.

Here are a few quick ways for web designers/developers to display alternative content for devices without Flash.

1) Embed Code

2) SWFObject

http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

You can display the alternative content in the <div> that you are writting the Flash object to. If you wish to do other things (redirects or content changes) you can detect if Flash is installed with the JavaScript below.

     var flashSupported = document.getElementById('myContent');
     // if flash is not supported then go to a HTML page
     if( flashSupported.innerHTML.indexOf('embed') == -1 )
          document.location.href="noFlash.html";

3) Flash Player Detection Kit

The Flash® Player Detection Kit helps developers implement robust player detection for a variety of deployment environments by providing a set of templates and techniques to successfully detect the version of Flash Player installed on a user’s computer, and, if needed, to then install the latest version of Flash Player. The kit also includes a detailed explanation and sample files for implementing the new, player-based Flash Player Express Install experience.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/download/detection_kit/

4) User Agent

If you have some programming knowledge you can check the User Agent sent from the browser. If you know the agents that do not have Flash support or you would like to show alternative content this is easily done.

List of User Agents

http://www.user-agents.org/

C#

Request.UserAgent

PHP

$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']

JavaScript

http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html

Posted by Beau Durrant

“GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.”

“It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.”

“GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.”

“GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.”

Read More …

I recently found a plugin (Resynthesizer) that has been around for a while, it compares to the “Content Aware Fill” recently released with Adobe Photoshop CS5. Although their website is not the greatest, the effects you can do with the plugin are amazing.

I have two examples of what I was able to do with the plugin in minutes.

Original

Modified

Original

Modified

This is a great alternative that is free and runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It has many plugins also allowing you to have the flexibility to make your own or have them created for you. If you don’t mind learning something new to help your pocket book I highly recommend it.

To find out more about GIMP use the links below.

Official Website
Features
Plugin Registry

Posted by Beau Durrant

I am not going to debate in this post (you can find enough of that on the web), but just list 5 pros and cons for each technology. Each has it’s own uses and often more than one is used on the same site as an option for the viewer or fall back to reach a broader audience. There are lots of options out there for videos players, make sure you are using the one that fills your needs.

Silverlight 4

pros:
- DRM (Digital Rights Management)
- GPU acceleration for HD video rendering
- plays multiple video/audio formats
- IIS smooth video streaming
- out of browser (desktop applications)

cons:
- installed on 60% of computers
- only plays back on new MS (Microsoft) mobile devices
- design tools are Expression Blend/Design not Photoshop
- all development must be done on Windows
- proprietary technology

Flash 10

pros:
- installed on 98% of computers
- custom UI with vector art
- FMS (Flash Media Server) Streaming and Security
- development on Mac and Windows
- out of browser (Adobe Air)

cons:
- only plays on mobile devices with the 10.1 release (not yet available – May or June)
- GPU acceleration only with 10.1 release (not yet available – May or June)
- proprietary technology
- fragmented non-standard players (without the use of the Adobe OSMF)
- development toolkits (Flash & Flex) both cost to make applications

HTML5

pros:
- open standards
- works with new mobile devices
- development on Mac, Windows and Linux
- free development tools, no need to purchase software
- in the future it should work across all browsers and mobile devices (in theory)

cons:
- no full screen video
- no video standard (no h.264 playback in Firefox)
- can not be embedded
- only supported by new browsers
- won’t be finalized until 2022

Posted by Beau Durrant

Twitter. You have heard of it. But is it useful for anything remotely useful? The easy answer would be “no”.

If it were easily dismissible, we can cross another new-fangled technology related trend off our over-crowded list of things to keep up with. Sorry, the answer is “maybe”.

If you are finding ever-trending technology simply exhausting, please read this post for its entertainment value only. If you you’d like to find out if Twitter fits into your ambitious social marketing strategy, hopefully the following stories will inspire.

Comcast Cares
Frank Eliason, arguably the most infamous customer service manager in the United States is using social networking every day to directly impact business operations. Eliason is monitoring Twitter all day every day – searching for signs of unhappy Comcast (an internet service provider) customers. On his dual screen set-up, one screen is dedicated to searching live tweets from people all over the country. He’s looking for Tweople (People on Twitter) who have chosen to voice their displeasure over poor service they’ve received from Comcast. Using his second monitor, opened to his Twitter account, he can reply to these tweets in real time and get in direct contact with these customers.

Sometimes the instant contact is enough to surprise and satisfy his unhappy customers. Other times, service calls are scheduled and problems are resolved in days rather than seconds. The ability for Comcast to read and respond instantaneously is changing the way the company does business and the way it’s perceived by it’s customers. This social media strategy has a direct influence on Comcast’s bottom line.

Tacos via Twitter
The Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck is a social media phenomenon in Los Angeles. It’s daily whereabouts is only available on Twitter. Check out this clip:

In these cases there is a direct correlation between social media and real results. The challenge is finding a platform that engages your clientele and then deciding how to use  it creatively. Don’t give up because the pace of change is scary – with every change comes opportunity. Plan carefully and test the waters – your real life social media success story may be just around the corner.

Posted by Neil Gilbert

If anyone has seen the previews for Flash 10.1 it is very exciting. One medium for playing videos, games, animations, ads, navigators, … working across all platforms, except Apple.

Using Flash can bring down the cost of developing mobile apps. There are currently 5 major app stores for mobile devices; Palm, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Blackberry. As things are right now you would have to make an app in each market (using different languages and technology) to reach the entire mobile audience, but Flash 10.1 will change this.

Flash 10.1 is set to run on everything; netbooks, tablets, computers and smartphones. So every site that works on your computer will also work on any internet connected device if it supports Flash 10.1. Flash 10.1 is also GPU (hardware) accelerated, so animations and video will run extremely fast even on lower priced hardware. This also brings me to question if Adobe CS5 will also have 3d rendering with openGL or DirectX. Flash 10.1: Full Flash for Everyone But iPhone, Actually Playable HD Vids

The exception will be any of Apple’s mobile devices which are unfortunately becoming the IE6 of mobile devices. They hold just enough market share to have to support them, but don’t play nice with everything else out there. Some companies are falling back to HTML5 when encountering a devices from Apple, others are turning to apps. This is a major inconvenience to have to spend extra time and money to develop something specifically for 24% of the smartphone market.

HTML5 is nice for video, but if you support HTML5 with h.264 video then you choose to not support anyone using Firefox (50% of internet users). Also features that can be done on Flash; multi-bitrate streaming, full screen, embeddable video, video ads, overlays, hotspots and interactions are not available. So HTML5 can not be used alone, but only in combination with another technology. If you want to see more about HTML5 you can view my other post for more information.

Fortunately for everyone Adobe has an answer that will save time and money. If you created a mobile application in Flash 10.1 it will not run on Apple, or will it? With the new Adobe CS5 Suite you can now export Flash to an iPhone app. So you will be able to build an app to run on everything with one technology.

There is an example below of Flash application that was built by the New York Times for a mobile site. It can also be exported as an iPhone app, submitted to the store where it will undergo a 2-6 week approval process, hopefully be accepted then can be used as a fallback for the mobile site. The development costs will be lower and the user experience will be consistent across all platforms.

Here are a couple more examples of Flash 10.1:

Flash Player 10.1 prerelease software demos and interviews

Packager for iPhone Examples

I guess only time will tell if Apple will adopt Flash or if it will affect Adobe or Apple’s market shares.

Posted by Beau Durrant