Category Archives: Technology

What the iPhone means for web developers

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As I drool over the streaming video of today’s iPhone launch, one reality is starting to sink in. It is time to start thinking of the web for mobile phones. Of course, numerous phones currently have web browsers and mobile devices have accessed the web for several years now. But now Apple has done it. And as much as you want to hate me for being an Apple evangelist, when Apple does something, people notice.

Now they have created a mobile phone. And it has wi-fi. So you don’t have to pay for high speed mobile data network plans to get internet access on the iPhone. For some people, paying expensive monthly fees for high speed data access over a mobile network is a no-brainer. But for those of us who could never afford such plans, having wi-fi built into the iPhone makes all of the internet-based features of the phone (email, messaging, web browsing) accessible. Assuming that the iPhone will sell a few units (wink wink), the mobile web is about to go mainstream.

For a web developer, this is an exciting time. Work that I do now can be accessed from nearly anywhere at anytime. The caveat to that is: work that I do can now be accessed from any size screen on any number of products with any combination of processors, and form factors.

That means that we need to build websites that scale, literally for any size screen. To make life easier on us, Apple’s iPhone uses the same HTML rendering engine as their Safari web browser. One can only hope other phone manufacturers follow suit, because the multitude of proprietary browsers on mobile devices up until now has made transitioning to the mobile web a difficult task for web developers. Having to make sure a site looks good on 3-4 browsers is a difficult task. Having to make sure a site looks good on 20 different mobile phone web browsers makes web developers poop their pants. It’s a messy task.

So now we have a mobile phone coming in June that has wi-fi, a standards compliant web browser built in, and a sub-4 inch screen. Did you catch that hint? Standards compliant. If I as a web developer use web standards in building out websites, I can offer clients a smooth transition to the mobile web. No expensive ports or re-designs for mobile devices. Build the site with content (XHTML) and presentation (CSS) separated, using semantic coding practices, and the transition to a mobile web can be achieved without touching the site content.

As smooth as it sounds, moving to the mobile web will not be without hickups. On any site, there is the content layer (XHTML), the presentation layer (CSS), and the behavior layer (Javascript, Flash). As the web has advanced, that behavior layer has become considerably more advanced. Many sites on the web simply fail to work with Javascript disabled. Moving those advanced behavior layers to a mobile device hasn’t been easy up until now. Javascript support in mobile devices has been spotty at best, and poop-my-pants-bad at worst. We’ll have to wait and see how Apple has handled it in the iPhone to get a gauge of where we stand with mobile devices. It is promising to see a slick implementation of Google Maps on the iPhone. Google Maps is an advanced web application with a complex behavior layer.

Again, I know all of this technology exists in phones available today. But it can’t be understated that Apple has now entered the market. That single fact that will change the shape of the mobile phone market and the mobile web over the next 12 months and beyond. As a web developer, I’m excited to see what comes from this and I’m looking forward to developing for mobile users in the months to come.

Please feel free to tell me I’m full of shit in the comments. (Do I detect a poop theme?)

Cheers

Bridge School on iTunes

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Many, hell, most of my finest, most poignant memories of live music come from performances I witnessed at one of the 20 (I’ve been to 7) Bridge School Benefit Concerts put on every October in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bridge School helps kids with disabilities excel in life and academia, and the concerts benefit the school. Although, anyone who has ever been to one of these shows will tell you the glow of life, love and creativity that surrounds this event benefits everyone.

Thankfully, a sizable chunk of those great moments have made their way to the iTunes Music Store. The Bridge School Concerts (iTunes link) is an 80-song collection of tunes from the 20 years of “Bridge”. It has many of my personal favorites (Pearl Jam’s reworked Corduroy from 1996, Thom Yorke doing Street Spirit sans accompaniment, and Rebel Yell from the year when Bridge was “knocked the fuck out” by Billy Idol). I can think of several more tunes I’d like to see added down the line. Pete Townshend showed up in 1996 and was amazing. Sheryl Crow needs to be in there as well. But that’s a small knock on what is otherwise an iTunes addition that makes my day.

The beauty of the deal is that, like all things Bridge, proceeds from the sale of the tracks go to The Bridge School.

Buy up and enjoy.

3-way iChat

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iChat with 3 people

The other night at work, I finally found myself surrounded by enough Macs to pull-off a video chat with two other participants. The feature has been part of OSX since 10.3 (Panther), but I’ve never known enough people with iSight cameras to do it. It requires a G5 or Intel processor to initiate a chat with multiple video feeds. Being on a Powerbook G4, I couldn’t initiate the chat, only participate.

It was quite fun. Full disclosure: two of us were already sitting right across from each other! So, I wouldn’t call it a test of the capability, just good old fashioned geek delight! Find a couple of friends with Macs and get the party started.

Installation Day

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Rob at Desk
In January, I had the unenviable task of reinstalling Windows XP on a computer in my father-in-law’s office. I’m no stranger to Windows installs, but let’s just say I’m more accustomed to Apple’s OSX. The two tasks are quite different, as I learned. Windows needs to be installed, then updated, and updated, and updated so you can go on the web safely without getting one of the millions of Windows-related plagues lurking on the Internet. Then you have to go get Firefox, some type of spyware eliminator, an antivirus program (or two) and finally you can roll.

On this day, that process took about 4 hours (mostly because of Service Pack 2). Lucky for me though, the other computer in the office is an iMac G5 with built-in iSight camera. After installing the iLife 2006 suite on the iMac, I figured what better way to spend my “Windows Wait Time” than make a short film about my day. The new version of iMovie features a variable capture rate, so you can make stop-action movies by setting it to capture a frame every second, instead of every 30th of a second. This feature is KICK ASS! It turned a scriptless, horribly colored little short and made it entertaining enough to share with the world.

The entire thing was done in iLife ’06 using iMovie, and Garageband for the audio. There is even a cameo by my father-in-law. Enjoy (Quicktime 7 – 7MB).