An interesting project that is soon coming out of Adobe Labs is Flash Catalyst. This will allow designers to bring their web designs directly from Photoshop or Illustrator and add in interactive elements, such as how forms should work, or scroll-bars operate. Often there is a gap in communication and understanding as the developer tries to interpret from a static design how things should work. An additional benefit to these tools is that the client can see immediately at design stage how things will work once live. This would be of most benefit on larger, more complex websites with a lot of functionality.
This is not the first tool to do this kind of thing however, and it is worth looking at other software out there, most notably Protoshare, and Axure, both of which have some good features.
On watching the Gadget Show (Ch5) last night I became quite interested in the idea of Augmented Reality. The idea being you can do some very clever image recognition techniques to bring the virtual world into the real world. Already this concept is very promising for the video games industry, but it has also been used successfully in other ways, including the new smart phone G1, powered by Google Android.
It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a
general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy
all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content.
Clearly sense has prevailed and they realise that AAA is often unobtainable without putting severe restrictions on the design and requirements of a website
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum):The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following: (Level AA)
Large Text: Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1;
Incidental: Text or images of text that are part of an inactive user interface component, that are pure decoration, that are not visible to anyone, or that are part of a picture that contains significant other visual content, have no contrast requirement.
Logotypes: Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no minimum contrast requirement.
This is sufficiently different, and has been more clearly defined than in version 1 of the guidelines. All designs must therefore be checked for ratios if we are to conform with AA standards.
2.4.5 Multiple Ways: More than one way is available to locate a Web page within a set of Web pages except where the Web Page is the result of, or a step in, a process. (Level AA)
This is very interesting. Certainly I have always stressed the need for good navigation in a website, but this really forces the point home.
There is still no automatic process to determine if a site is accessible as so much depends on human judgment, but it would have been nice to have gone more into the correct testing procedure. Still seems rather vague to me.
What is done well though is the guidelines on how to conform to each point, and the sheer amount of information available.
What I think these guidelines show is that in order to meet them you really need to bring in accessibility from the first design/prototyping stages to ensure that you dont hit major problems further down the line.
Swift was created by 2ergo, a smart little company that makes mobile marketing products used by big name brands.
Here is an excerpt from there website:
“From mobile Internet sites to SMS messaging campaigns to entertainment content storefronts, our products help companies create innovative marketing initiatives, drive additional revenue and build their brands. At 2ergo, we pride ourselves on providing premier mobile marketing applications, and we’re thrilled to offer Swift as a free product to help bloggers, content publishers and other individuals create a mobile presence. Read more about us at www.2ergo.com.”
The three things that pulled me in to try-it-out were….
“Is Swift free? Yes! It is free for you to create a Swift site. It is also free for anyone to access it, although some mobile operators may charge for data access, depending on the user’s data plan. We are able to offer the product for free by serving targeted, third-party ads through Swift sites. This ad revenue supports our development, hosting and marketing costs and allows us to keep making it better and better.
We offer a “Pro” version for $10/month if you’d like to remove the advertising from your site. Log in to your account, and click on “Account Info” to upgrade.
What phones does Swift support? Swift features an advanced device detection capability that will render your Swift site properly on almost any phone in the market today.
Does Swift create an iPhone-friendly version of my site? Swift formats your mobile Internet site to look great on the iPhone (and iPod Touch!). Our advanced device detection technology serves up the proper logo and styles to make your site look its best on almost any phone in the market today.
Are Swift sites optimized for mobile search engines like Google? They sure are. Once your site is live, it will be searchable by bots from Google and other search engines. Depending on the type of content or text you include in your site, your site will show up in mobile search results for relevant keywords.”
We at “digitallblog” really dig Silverstripe!!! They have just announced the latest RC 2.3.0 here is a caption from the email we were sent. (I have also inclided the download links for you!!)….
1600 improvements are currently incorporated in our upcoming release, SilverStripe 2.3.0. Example improvements include page caching, increased CMS customisability, and support for installation on the Windows IIS server.
We’ve issued two candidate releases to allow you to download, test, and file bug reports to us. As soon as we’re confident that the release is stable, and that there is a smooth process to upgrade from version 2.2.3, this will be deemed our stable release!
SilverStripe is both the name for our free software as well as our company, so we’ve recently relaunched our website to make it easier to learn about the two different interests.
Some great videos by Photoshop and Digital artist guru Bert Monroy. Here is is one of my favorite videos…. enjoy…
My only comment is everyone is using the glow filter effect these days! So photoshop documents are basically “glow tastic” I guess you just need to be careful where and how you use it.
Behance network is a great new website to view some amazing pieces of graphic design and artwork. If you want to showcase your work I would certainly suggest putting it up here!
We seem to be doing more and more video effects for presentations and promo cds and I have managed to find Video Co Pilot which has a load of great Adobe After Effects tutorials on the site for you to watch and download. You can also download the projects and assets for you to working along with while watching the tutorial!
Oh and I have also found that the Creative Cow is a great place for tutorials and help with After Effects.
This website makes great use of Google Maps to associate places by feelings. I think it’s a nice idea and will be interesting to see how it develops, once more social features are added to it.
So photoshop documents are basically “glow tastic” I guess you just need to be careful where and how you use it.
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