What the new iPad means for web developers & designers At first glance I like many others scoffed…
What the new iPad means for web developers & designers
At first glance I like many others scoffed at the new display in the iPad 3 but after seeing it for myself and watching keynote I have compiled a set of tips to make sure your website looks great on the new iPad.
Tip1: Use the media tag in conjunction with your images
Explanation: Just like icon designers make different size icons so that they look great on any screen resolution you need to make different images for different PPI's You don't want to link to a high-res 2MB image for your shopping cart when you don't have to.
Tip2: Don't use text in your images
Explanation: With the advent of webfonts and CSS positioning there is no reason to have text in your images. By using text in your images you risk anti-aliasing and pixilation in all the wrong places, a font is vector based and gets rendered by the browser at runtime which means you'll take advantage of every pixels the new iPad has.
Tip3: Remember the 50' UI
Explanation: Remember that with 2048-by-1536 screen real estate you have a lot of room to bring your design to fruition. But with that your user has a lot of information to have to perceive. Make use of the white-space your given, spread things out, make them bigger, don't be afraid to use 16pt font in a list of items. I know we have all been stuck at 1024X768 forever now. Use that media tag and break free.
Tip4: Remember the call to action
Explanation: With all that new screen real estate you might get carried away with big images and lots of white space but don't forget your call to action. It should be upfront and clear.
Tip5: Make your website look like an app
Explanation: With HTML5 there is no reason your website cant function like an app. In fact many of the native apps on IOS are just HTML5 extensions of the companies website. Safari is one of the most HTML5 compliant browsers according to: http://findmebyip.com/litmus
Tip6: Use a CDN
Explanation: How do you think you are going to deliver those huge images and jquery libraries across america much less across the pond? What about to China? I recently did speed test across to Beijing and had over 200ms/packet latency can you imagine having HTML5 video or ajax updates stream across that? Seriously if you might even potentially have international customers get some Amazon S3/EC2 or Azure hosting, put your videos on +Vimeo (They have HTML5 video streaming) and get closer to your customers.
I hope you find the above useful
David Bates
#iftttb
You could have seen it first on Google +
Adobe Flash 10.1 The Good, The Better, and The Scary
Today Adobe released their new version of the flash player 10.1 and I will say it was a much anticipated update for me. I love flash and have developed in it since it’s early day when it was another product altogether. Flash started out as a way for me to program desktop apps that looked and felt the way I wanted as I have always loved to be able to create the interface and then program it to do what I want. Since then my love of Flash has faded in and out as changes and flaws where found in the system. I almost completely wrote off flash until YouTube and Air had launched. I had been writing projectors for autoplay cd’s for years and air gave me a whole different type of application delivery mechanism. Anyway I love flash and even though I use Silverlight quite a bit, when someone needs a project completed in a hurry and want it to look custom my default is always Flash. So with that here are my thoughts on the release.
The Good:
As you all are aware Apple recently hit Adobe below the belt saying that security flaws and memory errors. I would have expected that in Adobe’s press release they would have addressed that first. But instead they slyly take on the mobile market slating that performance and low power was their main focus. This should make Google happy as it show them that Adobe is not lying down and taking Apple’s low punch lightly.
Better Hardware video decoding… they already own most of the video market. HTML is too early and silver light is just now hitting the market hard. I would have liked to have seen more about HTML 5 video and how Adobe was going to provide tools for video publishing compatible with HTML 5.
Mac Specific Improvements: this is a straight jab at Jobs. I read this as here you go. You wined and we fixed it, now put us in the iPad 
The Better:
Mulitouch: I have been having to use third party apps to accomplish this thusfar it is great to see this come to the mainstream and is also another sideways jab at Jobs
Multi-Tab memory usage: This is much improved and a much anticipated release. If you have a ton of windows open and multiple flash objects they each have their own memory space. Adobe has streamlined this now.
The Scary:
Ok this one paragraph scared the heck out of me:
“Now, content that runs in Flash Player will automatically shut down when the available memory is running low.”
This is scary because what if you are running a mission critical flash app and you run out of memory? They also did not state whether it was physical RAM or paged? Scary stuff.
Hope you enjoy
David Bates
Admitting it, is the first step on the road to recovery!
You may say to yourself one day, “I seek help elevating my electronic promiscuity, so I paid astronomical dollars for a product as an idiotic higher echelon of retarded dimwits member.”
Fear not my friend, there are those of us willing to help. But first, we need to break down your statement to better understand the complexity of your issues and to be able to give you the help you are so desperately crying out for!
“I seek help elevating my electronic promiscuity” – The solitary reason you buy Apple products is because everyone else has one, right? You don’t want to seem “uncool” so you “just have to” buy one too. Failure to do so will decrease your chances of being viewed as cool, which, when dealing with gadgets, seriously lowers your potential promiscuity. This is known as an “iSheep” syndrome.
“I paid astronomical dollars” – $499 for the cheapest model, but did you stop at that? Of course not. You *need* that 32GB model, I mean after all, where are you going to store you movies, right? You know, the ones you more than likely already own on DVD or Blu-Ray and enjoy watching through that 35″+ wide screen TV with sweet surround sound setup, but are about to forget all that to watch them on your beautiful 9.7″ LED with audio heard through the Built-in speaker. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of books that you, as an avid reader who somehow sidestepped purchasing a Kindle, are going to now purchase for your new device. But, as said avid reader, at least you don’t have to toss out all your physical books, right? I mean, you can’t toss what you didn’t purchase. We call this the “iPad” syndrome.
“idiotic higher echelon of retarded dimwits” – The definition of insanity is sometimes thought of as “repeating the same process and expecting different results.” Well, based on my observations, I can safely redefine the definition to state “when consumers buy first generation Apple products.” The observations, you may wonder? Simply put: Apple releases a product and a consumer buys it. One year later, Apple releases a second generation of the product with one or two more features, and the same consumer rushes out to purchase it. Repeat a year later for the third generation. It is with this third generation that the Apple product finally reaches that I would say is the “complete product” – yet the consumer isn’t asking why these mundane and basic features were left out in the first two generations, oh no. They are to busy with their “shiny new innovative” toy to even stop and ponder the common sense questions. This issue is collectively called the “iHerd” disorder.
An iSheep, buying an iPad to remain in the iHerd! You, my friend, are a true and through, Apple fanboy! But fret not, we have the cure! Merely submit to us ten* payments starting with the forgettable amount of $0.99 and doubling every payment. Before long, your disease will be gone and the light will have shown you the way!
*Some treatments may require twenty “doses” to be 100% effective, if you are in doubt, please do not take any chances!
This post was made by Inacurate a friend of mine I met on twitter. He is a great Nokia enthusiast and leader of the iSheep resistance.
Check out his blog here. His twitter profile reads: I am me. Learn to love me because I do everything in my power to always be right or hate me because you can’t see the effort and think I am arrogant. 
