Rubénerd!

In follow up to my previous post AJAX: repeating past mistakes where I discussed my views on why AJAX was heading down the same path as Flash, I found an article over on the Flash Magazine site entitled The hidden power of flash.

In the introduction, Barry Munden explains why he still uses Flash for his sites:

I was missing out the true strengths of the .swf format. The stuff that makes it, in many ways, far superior to other web-based design solutions.

And his secret for using Flash for his clients' sites when he admits that on the mention of Flash said clients "run away screaming."?

I don't tell anyone I'm using Flash. Even more to the point, I build websites in Flash that a non-developer would never suspect were even made in Flash. There is no fancy animation, no music, no admonishment to download the latest version of the plug-in, no loading bars...just a simple, clean interface with attractive, readable buttons that behave predictably. Nobody knows it's Flash and nobody cares because it does what it's supposed to.

Smooth... don't let the client know what you're getting them into ;)!

I digress. The fundamental problem with Mr Munden's entire article is he makes several assumptions:

1. Everybody is using the internet on a desktop or notebook computer with a standard display
2. Everybody is using a Flash-enabled web browser and operating system
3. Everybody is accessing web sites in the present, not the future
4. Everybody likes grilled cheese sandwiches

While it is true the vast majority of people do meet the above criteria, to simply target one segment of the web browsing public and ignore the rest reeks of late 1990's thinking when people would only write their sites for Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator and only for certain resolutions. It is now generally accepted knowledge that completely ignoring certain users is unacceptable.

Here's an example. I run FreeBSD on my main production desktop machine, an operating system which Adobe/Macromedia has yet to support with their Flash plugin. If I were to use this system and access one of this writers' sites, I would have to download a Linux version of Firefox, run it in FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer, download the Linux version of the Flash plugin, and cross my fingers that it works without breaking. And what if I were running another OS that didn't have a compatibility layer at all as well as not being an officially supported platform for Flash?

Here's another example. Say I have a shiny new mobile phone or PDA that allows me to browse websites. If I had one of the few phones or PDAs that support Flash at all, I would launch said browser and point to the writer's website. Provided all the Flash files didn't clog up my small browser's cache and freeze it up completely, I would probably be presented with a page I would have to scroll for tens of screens across just to read sentences which wouldn't be wrapped to fit the screen like regular text would.

I could go on and describe the real dangers of creating files that can only be read by proprietary plugins such as future readability and so forth, but suffice to say even if you were to believe the above examples are rare cases, they would be non-existant cases if as a designer you created web pages in the markup that the world wide web was designed for: HTML.

Fortunately like some sort of mind reader he anticipated my exact response and sought in the next paragraph to alleviate my fears:

OK, I can hear you choking. Cough it up and bear with me. You are probably thinking, What's the point? Why use this nifty animation tool to build a humdrum interface that any geek with an HTML editor could replicate?

Because they couldn't. Not one that downloads this fast. Not one that appears exactly the same in every single browser and monitor it appears on. Not one that prints clear and crisp and without cropping. And, for all of that, is a breeze to maintain. Try it yourself and see.

What's that term that describes someone who sounds like they're trying to convince themselves they made the right decision after they discovered they were in error, to make themselves feel better? Damn it, it's on the tip of my tounge!

Anyway, those arguments are all pretty weak; he concedes it himself when he says "any geek with an HTML editor could replicate". The fact of the matter is it is possible to do all of the above with HTML and CSS instead of Flash, and not only will the results work on more devices, platforms and in more applications but it will be in a standardised markup that, by it's open nature, will still be readable in the foreseeable future by newer devices. Sure it may take more work, and let's face it CSS compatibility can be a bit frustrating at times, but it's the standard, and it's what they're paying you for as a web designer.

There's an old adage in the BSD world: It works, so it must be good is flawed, it should be it's good, so it will work. Just because you can generate the same content in Flash doesn't mean Flash is as good as or better than the methods you replaced it with.

I do agree with the last line in his post though:

It can be pretty without being pretty complicated. Think about it.

True. Stick to plain old HTML and CSS ;).

Looking for more information regarding VMware's Fusion product for Mac I came across a comment on a page on the MacWindows.com. See if you can see where the problem is.

Peter Mitchell of Adelaide, Austria uses it with iSight:

You asked to hear about the VM fusion beta. I have been using the VMWare Fusion Beta alongside Parallels Workstation and it goes well. It does some things that the Parallels program does not. It can run an iSight driver so that you Skype in Windows. (I haven't tried MNS Messenger yet with the iSight.)

Another person mistaking Australia for Austria. I mean, I can understand how you can confuse them. Just for starters: one is huge island with vast deserts, one is is a mountainous temperate landlocked country; one is in the Pacific, one is in Europe...

Come on guys, it's not hard. As my grandfather (who lives in Australia) says: sheeeeesh!

Here's a little guide to help you remember: this is the region where you can find Australia:

And this is the region where you can Austria:

There. See? Wait a minute.

Just came back from the hospital in Singapore with my mum.

It was good to see Dr Tan again. My mum has been seeing him every few weeks since early 1999, since I was 12 years old. I think it's safe to say we think he's a member of the family now. I cannot say enough about Dr Tan, he is the most intelligent, compassionate, friendly and selfless doctor on the planet, and he has a great sense of humour :).

As for the latest news, she went in for blood tests, x-rays and ultrasounds today on her chest to get the latest on what's going on with the tumours and the fluid in her lungs. He assured us there are are still plenty of treatments available still after all; we were worried given the fact she's been having treatment since we lived in Australia back in the dark ages.

I'll be going back with her tomorrow for her to start the chemo regime again. Let's hope it has less side effects than the last one and doesn't take away all her energy.

Whew, this subject is a bit depressing. Here's a funny promotional picture for Windows Vista:

Not sure if this is a result of the Leo Laporte bandwidth-sucking-field, but have been having trouble getting through to Jaiku all day today:

If you'd read my post yesterday about Twitter versus Jaiku shenanigans I've decided now to keep using Twitter for the time being and use Jaiku as more of an aggregation page for all my web 5.0 content or whatever the version number they're up to now...

I'll be taking down my local Rubenerd Aggregator page sometime over the next few days as a result, when their servers are all good of course. Maybe I'll .htaccess a redirect so you go from that to my Jaiku account.

I'm sorry but I have to say it: despite the problems that sometimes rear their problamatic heads I love the friggen internet :D.

If you don't really follow many internet trends, Twitter and Jaiku are two painfully hip services that allow you to post exactly what you're doing and where you're located at any given time. It's a very simple formula that seems to be all the rage at the moment, and I admit I'm hooked!

I learned about Twitter from my very smart friend Feeeeeeeeeeeelix and have been using it for about a month. I think the mix of a clean and easy to read homepage mixed with the Twitterrific for Mac client I reviewed yesterday makes it a very nice distraction, plus I've been added by some interesting people and can keep up to date with their shenanigans.

My Twitter profile page

Anyway reading Scripting News this morning and looking through my unread tweets I read that Dave Winer has got himself a Jaiku account. At first I rolled my eyes at the prospect of another website that I thought obviously was just riding the wave and shamelessly copying, but while the two services have a similar basic premise (aka: post what you're doing) they have radically different features, and I consider my initial position officially debunked!

From what I can tell Jaiku seems to be an aggregator for Web 2.0 goodness as well, so whenever one of my RSS/Atom/KitchenSink feeds is updated somewhere (post a comment on my blog, post a new show, upload a photo or bookmark something) it will be posted on my Jaiku page. Ironically I can even use this feature to subscribe to my Twitter account, continue to post on it and have my tweets routed to Jaiku as well, until I can decide which to use full time. Argh!

The other advantage of Jaiku is the commenting feature, with one click you can view all the comments for a particular post. I posted two messages and had half a dozen replies to each within an hour, crazy!

My Jaiku profile page

Who needs MySpace when you have these slick services I ask you now? Really makes me think though how dependent I really am on Web 2.0 stuff, and it seemed to happen so gradually I didn't see it coming, crazy!

Seem to have said "crazy" a lot on this post. Crazy.

Sometimes when you're in Singapore or have been there before you forget just how friggen small it is. While you're there it feels like you're in large city, and it's easy to forget that outside that large city, there's... nothing more! No suburbia, no endless plains, nothing.

Case in point I was looking at Google Earth. Singapore is the only city/country in the region that has had its roads and whatnot traced so far. What it shows is something that just looks spooky:

That's the entire friggen country! There are more than 4.5 million people living on that thing that's less than 50km's wide! The landmass to the left and most of the islands south of Singapore are part of Indonesia, the landmass directly above Singapore is Malaysia.

You can view it for yourself here.

Well the Chinese New Year festivities are mostly over, and Kuala Lumpur seems to be getting back to normal. Peak hour traffic is back along the highway to Gita Bayu, most the dissapearing people I posted about on Saturday have reappeared again and the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in KLCC is full of business people and students once more ;).

Took my mum yesterday to the hospital for her weekly chemo and all the beds in the therapy ward were taken again. Guess people didn't want to be sick during their lunar new year break either; understandable. Those chemicals they give you are nasty SOBs.

Obligatory Malaysian flag post:

Some people have the whole week off though, so I guess we won't see a full change until Monday, but walking around here it certainly feels like the bustle is back. So much so that I've even got my first blog comment from a Malaysian!:

all the chinese went back to their respective hometowns (me included), cant imagine how deserted KL was :p

I was going to respond and say g'day, but her latest comment on her blog she linked to made me think twice... ahem:

This is what i get when i approve lame dumbass psychos online, i swear it happens more often than i can even say fcuk off. I've blocked a couple dozens of them. Oh go out and socialize you poor bastards.

And I'm an Aussie-living-in-Asia student ang moh too, we're the worst kind of dumbass phychos who need to socialise! ;). I mean, look at that freak!

rubenerd,

Your account on Joomla! Community Forum has been deleted. This may be because you never activated your account, in which case you should be able to register again.

Regards,
The Joomla! Community Forum Team.

Oh well, guess I won't be looking into their CMS after all.

So I was at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA to people in the know) for a long drawn out reason which I won't attempt to explain here, and I found myself trying their free WiFi access. Given my experience with TMNet's WiFi at the Starbucks coffee shops here I was a bit sceptical about how good it was going to be. As it turns out it was faster than out DSL at home in Gita Bayu!

As you would know if you read this site in any manner resembling regularity I love screenshots, so here are some from my WiFi adventures :D.

Here's the initial welcome screen when I logged on for free on my MacBook Pro:

Here's the welcome screen when I booted into Haruhi KDE FreeBSD ;):

And what better thing to do on free WiFi network in a Malaysian airport but listen to Whole Wheat Radio?

After a few days of testing I've applied the new layout of the Rubenerd Blog over to the Show. There are still a few quirks I'm ironing out, but I assumed it would be a work in progress.

Cheers :)

Rubenerd Show c.2006

Rubenerd Show c.2007