State of Installation

Posted by Vaughan on Sep 17, 2008 in Random | 0 comments

As a developer, over time the gradual corruption of your computer through installing, compiling, crashing, and bending your OS into shapes it was never intended for, leads to only one solution.  A fresh install, and while we’re at it, a new PC.

Time to dig up all the software installs, which some how after 2 years, are still where I left them.

Vista install kicked off, and head to dinner.  Back from dinner and Vista is installed, ready to rock.  I install live mesh and synchronise my tools folder.  Less than a minute later I have my swiss army knife of software downloaded, installed, and configured out of the box.  Now for software that requires an actual full installation.

Office, check.  Takes only a few minutes.  Last but not least, I’m lead to reinstalling the Adobe software I need.

10 minutes pass.  15 minutes.  20 minutes pass.  At this point I start writing this rant, and now I’m waiting for the installation to complete before continuing.  45 minutes pass, on a new PC, and the installation is completing.  I could understand if this was an installation of the full CS3 suite.  But Photoshop CS3 only, as a minimal install, I am confounded.  This is not the first time I have had this experience, but in the past I thought it was because the PC I was installing on was past its prime.

I don’t have a problem with software taking forever to install if I get a list as long as my arm in features, but when an application evolves to be a polished version of the same software I used over 10 years ago, and it takes longer to install than the operating system, there is something seriously wrong.  It is time for the CS3 install team to wake up to themselves.

Update: CS2 required installing on an older machine at work.  It was significantly faster.  I thought maybe I had not noticed it in a previous release, but once again, it’s just CS3. 

Adobe Makes Flash Crawlable

Posted by Vaughan on Jul 2, 2008 in Flash | 0 comments

SEO takes a step up in the domain of Flash applications, with Adobe announcing that rich media search will be available for Yahoo! and Google.  With RIAs becoming more common on the web, it has often been the decision to step away from Flash when SEO was a priority.

So who benefits?  I can see anyone with a Flash site full of data jumping up and down with glee!  But if your Flash application is heavy on data, it is likely to be pulling relevant data on demand from remote back-ends, and if this is the case, Adobe’s new initiative will not be improving SEO for you.  Where it will help is for the more monolithic Flash sites.  Big bang flash sites where all the static content is screaming out to be found by the search engine crawlers.  For those sites, this is a tasty SEO burger.

Sproutcore vs Silverlight vs Flash

Posted by Vaughan on Jun 18, 2008 in Flash, Silverlight | 0 comments

The three way battle begins… or never start, ever.  Apple is getting plenty of coverage recently on their love for Sproutcore, but I can’t see where the hype factor is really finding justifcation, other than the hype factory.  A Javascript framework for MVC isn’t going to compete with the rich animation tools that Adobe already has, and the pipeline that Microsoft is reaching with Silverlight.  Javascript is cool, but it is not a selling point.  Sproutcore might have some shiny features out of the box, but true open standards are already being offered in many forms, including Google’s GWT.  How one would do video streaming via Javascript starts to hurt my brain.

Javascript is an exteremely powerful language, and for products such as Sproutcore and Silverlight, it is a great thing.  I questioned it in Silverlight initially, but came to love the Javascript support.  Rather than being proprietary, it opens the door to so many more businesses who can not step into the realm of Flash due to lack of skills and toolsets within their delivery teams.  With Silverlight 2 just around the corner, you will be able to take an array of languages that have excellent application building tools, even allowing Ruby could power your applications front and back, with Silverlight as the glue.  These languages have a solid history, experienced developers, MVC frameworks, mature tools, and online communities.

Of course the main place Sproutcore is going to be exciting for Apple, adding ease of development, and more depth to browser applications, is on the iPhone.  In general the current selection of iPhone applications are good.  Not great, not cool, just good.  But writing iPhone applications is cool.  With the cool factor driving development and innovation, Sproutcore applications written for iPhone are likely targets for the Nokias and LGs in the market. 

Could it be that the ultimate mobile combo a Silverlight RIA front end with a Sproutcore MVC driving it in the background?  Only if banner advertising is brought to you by Flash.